Creative Cow censorship
It would seem that Creative Cow has decided to ban users that mention competing sites. Now, moderating posts is one thing. None of us wants to go to XYZ site to read about digital production techniques and read about Viagra.
However, the wholesale banning of users (2500 at current count) for mentioning competing sites is, IMHO, beneath contempt. To add insult to injury, the site apparently brings up a misleading error message to those banned users who attempt to post on the forums.
To be honest, I never used the forums except in about 2 instances of desperation. I always hated their forum software (vBulletin / PhPBB are MUCH better solutions). So for me, the impact is of no consequence. However, our collective communities need to foster the free exchange of information in order to carry forward the flag of democratization in this industry.
Jonas over at General Specialist has more details. I am not the type to call for a boycott or anything of that nature. You should use your own good judgment. CC is a business for profit. That's understood. But, I think that they have the potential to chase away customers with this practice.
However, the wholesale banning of users (2500 at current count) for mentioning competing sites is, IMHO, beneath contempt. To add insult to injury, the site apparently brings up a misleading error message to those banned users who attempt to post on the forums.
To be honest, I never used the forums except in about 2 instances of desperation. I always hated their forum software (vBulletin / PhPBB are MUCH better solutions). So for me, the impact is of no consequence. However, our collective communities need to foster the free exchange of information in order to carry forward the flag of democratization in this industry.
Jonas over at General Specialist has more details. I am not the type to call for a boycott or anything of that nature. You should use your own good judgment. CC is a business for profit. That's understood. But, I think that they have the potential to chase away customers with this practice.
Labels: censorship, Creative Cow
posted by B-Scene Films at 11:28 AM
1 Comments:
I myself was banned for merely asking a blogger about the audio quality of his new XDCam EX. A few hours later, I found I could not sign into my account. And then I found I got ONE e-mail from Ron Lindeboom, with some vague statement that he was tired of me.
It seems it's not enough to be a gentleman on video forums like Creative Cow--you also have to suck up to their sponsors. Any factual criticism (in this case, the bad audio on the Sony HVR-V1U) gets your account deleted.
I'm maintaining a blog of sorts on this at a public site: http://members.tripod.com/JapanRadio/
It's rapidly filling up with links to sites like this one--there area alot of CreativeCow former members who are unhappy with the Cow's policies.
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