What is Digg?Sponsored by Sony Pictures
Watch a scene from 2012, in theaters November 13 view!
whowillsurvive2012.com - Get ready for the biggest event in history – the end of time. How will you survive? 2012- opening 11/13
41 Comments
- ostrakon16, on 10/03/2008, -0/+10Flickr needs to revamp the block procedure. There is no checklist to aid Flickr into knowing why you are blocking a specific person. They just inform you of what blocking someone will do and asks you to confirm. It'd be nice to be able to select from a list of reasons. 1. he's a douchebag, 2. spamming, 3. etc.....
- trevorcarpenter, on 10/03/2008, -0/+7I'm not much for swearing, but this isn't a proper business practice. It kinda smells of hurt feelings and a knee-jerk reaction.
- superchou, on 10/02/2008, -0/+6the whole thing just does not make sense. I hear of deletions from time to time - always very poorly communicated and usually with little to no warning. Shame really. I liked his work.
- gbrmn, on 10/03/2008, -0/+5Okay, all I'm going to say is the threat to terminate a account over being blocked too many times is inane... A little oversight would be a good idea.
- thomashawk, on 10/02/2008, -0/+4dozhdbog, Heather was the one that deleted his account.
- crobins, on 10/02/2008, -0/+4ive seen heather use the F word on flickr before.. thats *****!
- dozhdbog, on 10/02/2008, -1/+5Fickr needs to curb their rogue employees. I simply won't believe that heather approves of this sort of heavy-handed crap.
- spatialk, on 10/03/2008, -0/+4Deja vu all over again! Heather seems to be angling for the Chalk Wars, Part Two. I'm sure she'll have just as much success with Pierre as she did with Chalky, ie. none.
- future15tbd, on 10/03/2008, -0/+3I'd comment, but I expect that Flickr would delete my account.
- thomashawk, on 10/02/2008, -0/+3yobosensei. The money is not the issue. I think the $25 account is inconsequential actually compared to the thousands of hours that a person who is as active as Pierre has put into that account. It's too draconian of a response to his private email to Flickr. Pierre should have his account reinstated with an apology from Flickr staff.
- yobosensei, on 10/02/2008, -0/+2I think private email is okay right? It's not even shown for public. That's kinda ridiculous! I'd ask for refund!
- theblueprint, on 10/03/2008, -0/+2To a degree, the money *is* the issue.
If the person in question was using the free service, I don't really see where they have much of a valid complaint. However, if he's a paying "pro" user, then he has every right to demand some sort of resolution. He's paid for a service which has been canceled, without explanation.
I can respect that Flickr may elect to keep his account deleted (lame as that might be), but it's inexcusable for them to cancel his account and not refund a pro-rated portion of his yearly Pro fee. - thomashawk, on 10/04/2008, -0/+2Derek all I did was suggest that you disclose the fact that you're married to the person who deleted Pierre's account. Seems like fair disclosure to me. I certainly didn't call you or her an ***** or a jerk or call you abusive.
Not sure how bringing up a fair disclosure makes it personal. Certainly you could understand how people might assume that a spouse of someone involved in a dispute might not be the most objective party to comment.
You saying that I "made this personal" and thus deserved to be called an ***** abusive douchebag by you seems a bit much. Nice try though.
Watch out. Try calling me that on Flickr and they just might delete your account. - dpowazek, on 10/03/2008, -0/+2I thought Thomas' history of getting kicked out of places for being abusive was relevant when discussing his passionate defense of someone getting kicked out of Flickr for being abusive.
- thomashawk, on 10/03/2008, -1/+3Derek, you should disclose that you're married to the person who deleted Pierre's account.
There's a big difference between say being thrown out of Starbucks for being rude and having Flickr destroy thousands of hours of your work.
If you are thrown out of a business for being rude you've lost very little. You can complain about it, maybe come back another day. You can tell everyone how ***** of a business it is, etc. It sucks, but so be it. It's quite something else to be thrown out and have thousands of hours of your work destroyed. The punishment doesn't fit the crime in this case. This may be hard for you to see being married to the person who deleted the account and all. But I'm sure if you had a lapse in judgment, behaved poorly, and then had thousands of hours of work destroyed you'd be a bit upset too.
The email that Pierre received was an automated response and a stupid one at that. Far from a suitable warning about being rude before having all his work lost permanently and forever. - carwax, on 10/03/2008, -0/+2nice job, TH
- dozhdbog, on 10/03/2008, -0/+1Someone posted this on flickr central: http://www.flickr.com/groups/central/discuss/72157 ...
- monkeyleader, on 10/03/2008, -1/+2Bunch of Arse ... dam am I going to get my Digg account banned now ?
- tf5bassist, on 10/03/2008, -1/+2For as much as I like Flickr as a service, their handling of "customer service" issues makes dealing with the likes of Comcast, ATT, AOL, PG&E, and others seem like candy-coated deliciousness.
This is lame. - aguther, on 10/03/2008, -0/+1I do have problems understanding why someone decides to send such an email in the first place. In my eyes this is simply not the right way to communicate. But deleting the account as an answer does not sound right to me either. Deleting an account which was supposedly used actively over many years is a very serious action. It is hard for me to image that Flickr takes this easily. It is time to read (again) http://www.flickr.com/guidelines.gne and the terms of us.
- thomashawk, on 10/04/2008, -1/+2Wow Derek, so I'm a douchebag ***** and abusive jerk? And it was my fault that I was kicked out of the SFMOMA for taking photos huh? Why don't you throw in there that I'm a ***** photographer while you're at it.
Nice of you to make this so personal. I don't seem to remember calling you or your wife any names or attacking either of you personally -- simply presenting an opinion about a friend who got axed when I thought he shouldn't have.
Good thing digg doesn't delete people's accounts for name calling like Flickr does. But I suppose it's ok for you to call me those names because you disagree with me but not ok for Pierre to use names when he disagrees with something. Very mature.
Are you sure you're not just pissed that I didn't ask JPG Magazine to delete the testimonial I'd written for them as you requested of me months and months after they canned your ass? - onionbagel724, on 10/03/2008, -1/+2Blue hair and living in Alaska are valid reasons for blocking someone as far as I'm concerned.
- aaronkrug2, on 10/03/2008, -0/+1He wasn't being abusive, he was taking pictures. Big difference. I am in complete agreement with you that Flickr was completely within their rights to 86 Pierre, but when you refer to people as douchebags and stretch situations to fit your reasoning you are not helping your cause. The fact of the matter is Pierre had it coming, and Flickr should not expect their people to be spoken to in that manner, nor should anyone else. Take the high road on this one. No need to call Thomas a douchebag ( I see that you've edited that to be 'jerk' and 'abusive', thank you) or imply that he was being abusive at SF MOMA. He is defending his friend even though he already admitted in the link I posted that he never would have used the language Pierre chose to. We would all be so lucky to have a friend like Thomas who would defend us even knowing we were wrong.
- zombizi, on 10/03/2008, -0/+0It's a bizarre decision...the people at flickr usually try to pick their way through this stuff with care - this time some oaf has really ballse it up.
- dpowazek, on 10/04/2008, -0/+0Aaron - Neither of us were there, so we have no idea what happened. My point was only that Thomas is pretty much an expert at getting kicked out of places.
And Thomas, I have nothing against you and have no reason to make this personal. I was just expressing my opinion. You made this personal when you brought up my relationship to Heather. And then to go bringing up old ***** that has nothing to do with this? If your point was that you're not an abusive jerk, you're not doing a very good job of proving it.
Bottom line is, Flickr is simply managing its community like it has always done and has every right to do. Screaming at the host is usually a good way to get thrown out of the party. It's a lesson we could all stand to remember. - aaronkrug2, on 10/03/2008, -1/+1Hey now, the SF MOMA thing wasn't really Thomas' fault Derek. You are in the right on this one, which means there is no need to stoop to the same level as the person you are saying rightly should have been tossed. If you don't keep it clean why should anyone else? Be the change you want to see in the world my friend. I would be pissed if anyone said anything like this to my wife too, and I'm sure Thomas would be as well, but that's why you get to be the bigger man and be right. Saying stuff like this only lends credence to those who would say this action was unwarranted.
- aaronkrug2, on 10/03/2008, -1/+1Thomas are you really still trying to argue this? Folks, check out http://tinyurl.com/546bvx where Thomas already tried to make this same argument. What is the deal Thomas? You seem like a smart upstanding guy who understands that when you treat people the way that Pierre did they don't want to have anything to do with you. Pierre was abusive in his email and its not even close to the first time. The Flickr folks just had enough and booted him, and I say good riddance. If his thousands of hours of work were more valuable to him than a few extremely low brow remarks then I might feel sorry for him, but getting the last word was obviously what he valued. Now he doesn't get his account or the last word, and you are sullying your reputation as an upstanding individual standing up for someone who acted in such a rude and immature way.
- CiaoChessa, on 10/03/2008, -0/+0Some guy blocked me just bc I replied to a rude comment he left on my stream. Flickr obviously should not have deleted the photo or his account bc he had been blocked - that's absurd. But, his reply, in my opinion, was over the top. Yes, they should definitely "grow the ***** up" but come on...he had a fit and now he looks ridiculous no matter how idiotic the Flickr staff and the "magic donkey" might be.
- phoneyman, on 10/05/2008, -0/+0This, by the way, is the response I sent in in a separate Help By Email request, and the response I did expect to be read:
My account was recently set to Restricted with absolutely no warning whatsoever. After it was reset to Safe I discovered, AND ONLY THEN DID I DISCOVER, that 6 of my pictures had been moderated by Staff. At no time did I receive notice that any one of my photos had been moderated by staff, and I was going along thinking all was right in the world. Until the INCREDIBLY rude and shocking email today letting me know my account had been restricted.
Now 6 photos, maybe that's a lot maybe not, but for me it is 0.19% of my account ROUNDED UP. For Flickr as a whole that has to be a number approaching statistical zero. So could SOMEONE please explain to me how my entire account could get restricted on the basis of 6 disagreements in flagging?
I found the photos and I IMMEDIATELY requested reviews on 4 of them. One of them was an honest mistake and it was set to moderate, sorry about that one. Which, BTW, is statistical ZERO of the number of photos in my stream.
Then to add insult to the insult I'd already received, I receive a warning that I've been blocked by too many people and may be deleted as a result. RIDICULOUS. I have no idea who's blocked me or why they've done it, AND NEITHER DO YOU. You know who's blocked me MAYBE, but there is NO WAY IN HELL you know why they did it. The entire PURPOSE of the block mechanism, I THOUGHT, was to allow users to have some control over how they choose to interact with each other. And yet here is the heavy hand of Flickr once again trying to play Daddy to those of us who acquire "too many" blocks.
The VERY FIRST block I ever received on Flickr was because I was on the Friends list of someone else. Not because of anything I had done,but merely because I was associated with someone some third party didn't like. I have since had that happen a number of times that I know about, and apparently a number I DON'T know about. I am aware of being blocked by a handful of people, and since the nyctreeman kerfuffle in the Help forum revealed that the magical number is surely greater than 5, apparently the VAST majority of blocks against me I am completely unaware of.
So what you, Flickr, have done is take a tool that is supposed to empower users and use it to THREATEN users instead. That's shameful. Utterly shameful.
I've been here a long time. I've been a paid customer here for a long time. Now I know the millions and millions of pageviews from non-paying viewers are more important to you than my measly $25/year, but I HIGHLY resent being held hostage by these hordes of people most of whom I will never know. I came here for the photography. I came here because Flickr supported sharing images and had a healthy social network to go with this. And yet I'm continually running into Flickr set up barricades to how I want to use the site.
I am not a pornographer. I am not a stalker. I am not a pedophile. I am not a criminal. And yet I'm continually lumped in with them because of policies set by Yahoo!/Flickr which treat any hint of aesthetic or behaviour outside of the fat part of the bell curve as if it's some kind of perversion. That is absolutely no way to build a loyal customer base.
So shame on you Flickr, and I hope someone reads this and takes it to heart.
Pierre - dpowazek, on 10/03/2008, -1/+1Yes, Heather is my wife. I'm also a friend of the founders of Flickr and a consultant to social media companies. I have as much inside information about this case as you do, Thomas, which is to say, none.
As long as we're disclosing things, perhaps you should disclose your connection to Zooooomr, a Flickr wannabe site.
If there's one thing that Thomas Hawk does have experience with, it's getting kicked out of places for being a jerk, so I guess we know why this is so important to him.
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22thomas+hawk%22+% ... - phoneyman, on 10/04/2008, -0/+0Furthermore, if you or your wife could be bothered to actually parse English, you'd see that I'm insulting Flickr the corporate entity and the policies it holds - yes, made by people, but not by any one person - and not a person, at all.
Pierre - stodigg, on 10/04/2008, -0/+0Disclosure: I don't really know anyone in this discussion or case. I do read Thomas' blog, but don't always agree with his views though.I don't use Zooomr. I have no anger against anyone mentioned in this discussion.
Hmm Derek, that's a really strange analogy.
Because Pierre was in fact "harassed" first according to the story no-one has yet denied.
So your question should go like this:
What if I go into the store I shop in everyday and one of the employees gives me notice that some of the people shopping in the store don't want to look at me or talk with me anymore ever. (Regardless of how I dress, wash or do my hair or anything. And regardless of if I have even spoken to them ever.) If more people decide they don't want to look at me or talk with me, then I may be banned from the store without further notice and with no obvious way of defending myself. And if I then go on and explode with **** etc, will I get thrown out?
Yes, you will perhaps. But maybe the store (Flickr of course...) was wrong in the first place. Because someone blocks another user doesn't say anything at all about why they blocked the person and can't be used as grounds for deleting an account.
In my opinion the whole problem is that neither Flickr nor Pierre can communicate in a civil way and by communicating like you think the other person might well be a ***** you are creating unneccessary anger and hostility. It's unproductive.
And the fact appears to be that Flickr started this by threatening Pierre over something he has no possibility to influence.
This is not the first time I see this happen at Flickr, but it's the first time no apology has come out with short notice. It's ok that a company as big as Flickr makes mistakes, but to stand up for your mistakes is not ok. Especially when you're a social community and reputation is very important. A store might get away with it because people still need food and might be too lazy to go to another store and they don't do their business on the Internet (generally) where reputation can changes so much faster.
Personally I more and more think of Flickr as a photo hosting site and less and less as a community.
To protect my Flickr account from angry deletions I'm now using a differently named account on Digg because I don't trust Flickr anymore. Is this the image Flickr wants? - shhexycorin, on 10/05/2008, -0/+0It wasn't "one angry email" phoneyman has a long and turbulent history of run-ins with Flickr staff.
He's been banned from the Help Forum (very, very rare) - and I'm pretty sure that was (at least partly) for being abusive to staff. He'd had plenty of warnings. - crgmisc, on 10/07/2008, -0/+0The other folks are probably decent as well but I have to say if anyone watches any of the videos by Robert Scoble featuring Thomas Hawk, they will see that he seems to be a really decent, interested person.
- stevestr, on 10/28/2008, -0/+0Deleting someone's account is a bit extreme. Why can't someone build an alternate community to compete with Flickr. iPernity and Zoomer are almost there.
- stodigg, on 10/04/2008, -0/+0Threatening to delete someone's account because of blocks to that person on Flickr, well, that's crazy. Crazy in that Flickr Support build a view of a person from facts that aren't there yet. Blocks say nothing about liking or not liking a person. It may be more likely that the blocker don't like you but it's certainly not proof.
And the account deletion was not based on any other misbehaviour that Flickr has made available as far as we can see. To block a person from a service he has been using for years for one angry (and partially rightly so) message to customer service is not good customer service. A warning for abusive language in the message to Flickr Support would have been more reasonable. To delete a long times customer's account without warning is extremely poor customer service. (He wasn't warned about anything that may have caused the deletion unless there were a large number of new people blocking him.) Even if you set up terms of service that allow you to do it, it's pretty bad business practice. But it should still be a correctable mistake!
After all, you don't fire employees that calls the computer support and curse because they can't do task X because something is broken. It's just out of proportion. Maybe Flickr support should have blocked Pierre ;-) Or display more patience which is after all a part of customer service work if you do it right.
Apparently Heather (staff of Flickr) has even encouraged people to "have a go at her" in a public forum when Flickr had made a mistake, implying that it may be ok and that the punishment for going over the line is thread-locking, a much smaller punishment compared to account deletion. To then delete someone's account for a privately sent message to customer service, reeks of double standards, or at least lack of communication skills on Flickr's side.
http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/40074/21215 ...
And permanently deleting an account is just stupid. It's like saying we're never wrong. But since they even take the measure of deleting stuff from the running backup, they seem to consider themselves to always be right...
http://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/40074/21216 ... - phoneyman, on 10/04/2008, -0/+0Derek, your analogy sucks. Unless a local store can give out hundreds or thousands of form letters a day - which is Flickr's excuse, and Heather's, for not being able to always give warnings or notices. My account had also been made restricted that day, with no notice and no warning. The "block" warning was just one more piece of ***** on an already ***** pie.
I've made a habit of responding to Flickr form letters this way, and I've done so for years, Heather can check this out herself if she wants to.
Then she has the gall to ***** LIE about "in the majority of cases" a warning is given. What a load of *****. Deletions happen with no warning.
Pierre - aaronkrug2, on 10/04/2008, -0/+0Disclosure since everyone else is doing it: I work for Y!, however in a completely different department (and a different state) and have never met any of the Flickr folks, and probably never will.
I appreciate what you have said here. The fact is, deleting an account for blocks is crap. Everyone knows it, and Flickr should too. If there is an apology to be made from Flickr, I think this is what they should be apologizing for. If I saw an apology from Fickr saying they would no longer be deleting folks for blocking that would absolve them in this situation for me. I would not, however, reinstate Pierre's account in any way.
The way that Pierre chose to react and speak only shows that they were correct in this situation, that he was an abusive member of the community, and he has been advised that he is no longer welcome there. Regardless of whether or not Pierre was right in his point he ruined that by acting the way that he did. He decided instead of resolving the situation and speaking in the reasonable and effective manner in which you stated your opinion he wanted to prove that Flickr was absolutely correct in their estimation of his character by replying with language that is not acceptable anytime, ever. I can only hope that both the folks at Flickr and Pierre can learn some valuable lessons from this situation. - dpowazek, on 10/03/2008, -2/+1I challenge each of you to go into a local store and say the following to an employee:
"Oh shove it. I've been active here for 3 years or more. You guys are getting ***** ridiculous. You sensitive morons. ***** SHOVE IT. I'm sick of your goddamn moron threats. I am who the ***** I am and yes, I'm always like this. I don't harass ANYONE. Go ahead, you ***** *****, go find my harassing behaviour. These threats are beyond the pale. Grow the ***** up."
Then come back here and tell us all about how outraged you are at being thrown out. - BXRWXR, on 10/03/2008, -4/+1Those are the rules.
He'll get over it. - youliveinfear, on 10/03/2008, -5/+1the guy threw a temper tantrum. He deserved it.
Catch all of your favorite Digg shows in one place, including Digg Dialogg, Diggnation, The Digg Reel and More!
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is