Homesteading Today and How to Quickly Turn Your Community Against You
Homesteading Today is a very large online community dedicated to the practice of homesteading. The forum was acquired by Carbon Media Group (CMG) in July of 2014, as part of a large package of sites they bought from Group Builder.
Beginning late last year (according to this apology), the company started taking posts from certain sections of Homesteading Today and republishing them on other forums owned by CMG. The practice went unnoticed until a few days ago, when a member found that posts they had made on Homesteading Today were showing up on Cattle Forum, another CMG community.
The member, willow_girl, posted a thread talking about how she discovered that posts she made on Homesteading Today were showing up at Cattle Forum under the name “Alice.” She hadn’t made them and had no idea who Alice was. One of the posts shared a pretty personal story about saving a cow, which this Alice was now taking credit for.
The reaction from the community was swift, loud and predictable (for veteran community professionals, anyway). Extreme disapproval. For examples, read this, this and the CMG CEO’s apology (more on that in a moment).
Deceptive Activities
A CMG employee identified as Steve apologized and took responsibility for what happened. In his announcement, he explained that posts made on Homesteading Today had been taken automatically, using RSS feeds, and posted on two other forums owned by CMG. Not only that, but they had also posted canned responses from these accounts, to make it appear as though these were real people posting on these other online communities.
Steve said that he acted alone and that no one else at Homesteading Today or CMG was aware of these activities. He apologized, admitted that he was wrong and that it was unethical. Steve said that he would be resigning any day-to-day authority over Homesteading Today, effective immediately.
While Steve’s message was a pretty straightforward admission of guilt and acceptance of responsibility, there is a lot wrong with what transpired.
Community Posts Are Personal – Not Just Content in a Database
You can’t just buy a forum, take the posts made by members and put them wherever you want, attributing them to random usernames. We’ll get into the legality of this mess later, but at the very least, it is highly unethical and misleading.
To take someone’s posts – where they often share parts of themselves and their lives – and republish them elsewhere without permission, removing their name from their words, is wrong. To be clear, even if you used their name, it would still be a bad practice. But attributing it to someone else makes it much worse. Their posts represent their experiences as a human. That can be very personal. It’s jarring and disheartening to see your words taken and used by someone else.
What About the Members of the Other Forums?
A lot of the focus on this story will understandably me on the members of Homesteading Today. But let’s talk about the members of Cattle Forum and the other forum where content was republished.
Let’s imagine that you visit an online community and you find a person who is posting cool stuff. You interact with those posts. You like them and feel like you know them a bit. And then you find out they don’t exist, that the owners of the forum have created a fake account. Your emotions – the way you felt toward that member – were just a game meant to generate more forum activity.
I feel strongly this is evil, and I have spoken out about this practice persistently. Creating fake accounts is lying, and you should not lie to your members. It isn’t hard to ethically seed an online community. Lazy people who lack ethics rely on deception to grow their online community. It is not an admirable practice. It is not a legitimate practice. Period.
Once You Lose the Trust of Your Community, You May Never Get it Back
When people catch you in a genuine lie one time, you have breached their trust. It is so hard to get that trust back. The cost of lying is so great, that it should scare anyone from lying to their community. I am pretty upfront with the members of my community for this reason. You may not like me, you may not agree with me, but I will tell you what is going on. You can leave, you can stay, but I don’t lie to you.
Without trust, it is very difficult to build community. This is the type of situation that can do irreparable harm to a community.
Legal Issues and the Terms of Service
Note: this post represents a general discussion of legal topics, not legal advice.
Part of the discussion, from members of the community, has centered on the terms of service (TOS) and what Homesteading Today is legally entitled to do with their posts. There is some conflicting information on Homesteading Today and in the terms of service agreements that exist. In order to get a full picture of the agreements in place, I went through the registration process for joining the community.
When I registered, I was prompted with a link to the CMG TOS agreement. I had to check a box indicating that “I have read, and agree to abide by the Carbon Media Terms & Conditions.” This effectively binds me to this agreement from this day forward. The agreement includes this passage:
By posting content on the Websites, you also grant, and warrant that you have the authority to grant, the Company a perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive worldwide right and license to display, reproduce, adapt, modify, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform, play, make available to the public, use, and exercise all copyright and publicity rights with respect to any and all content that you post on the Websites. If you do not wish to grant Carbon Media Group these rights, do not submit content to the Website.
The part about having a perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive worldwide license is fine. It’s common and necessary. Online communities must have this, in order to properly function. You can’t allow a person to join your community, make a few thousand posts and then demand you delete all of them. It’s harmful to the community as a whole (more on that shortly). The key here is “non-exclusive.” This clause may be a bit overzealous (“exercise all copyright and publicity rights”), but it’s not too bad.
However, a big problem is that is unclear how long these terms have been in place. Since CMG bought the site in July, they could not have been in place prior to that. A bigger problem: unless CMG specifically asked members to agree to those terms when they updated them, the only members who they apply to are people who registered for the community after they added the link in the registration form, with the check box.
It doesn’t matter that the CMG agreement says this: “If you visit, use, post on, or otherwise interact with our Websites, you accept these conditions, so please read them carefully.” This is considered “browsewrap.” If you link to your user agreement somewhere on your website, but never actually make people agree to it by clicking a button, that’s a browsewrap agreement. As we learned when Zappos’ TOS was invalidated in court, a browsewrap agreement is not an agreement at all.
Instead, you should make people have to click a button to agree to your TOS. This is called “clickwrap.” For example, include it as part of the posting process. Each time a person submits a post, include language next to the submit button that says that by submitting this post, they agree to your terms of service. This constitutes an actual action, rather than an assumption.
Conflicting Agreements
However, there is more going on here. The FAQ, linked at the top of the page, includes a “terms and conditions of use.” That document includes this passage:
Any communication which you post to the Site or transmit to homesteadingtoday.com or to the Site by e-mail, private message (PM), public post and/or other medium can be used by homesteadingtoday.com on a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, nonexclusive license with the right to reproduce, modify, publish, edit, translate, distribute, perform, and display the communication alone or as part of other works in any form, media, or technology whether now known or hereafter developed, and to sublicense such rights through multiple tiers of sublicenses. …
It’s fairly similar to the other clause, but there are some differences. That said, directly above the agreement, there is an FAQ entry for “Who owns the content of this site?” Here’s the answer:
When someone posts original content on this site, the content enters the public domain. As such, the moderators of this site are free to censor, edit, ban, publish or delete any information voluntarily posted to the site, with the possible exception of previously copyrighted work that does not belong to the poster. In that case, the work shall retain whatever copyright terms and conditions that it had previous to being posted here and should be shown to be so copyrighted.
Emphasis mine. This is separate from the terms of service, you could argue. But it is in direct conflict to it. If a work enters the public domain, you don’t need licenses and sublicenses. You can give it to whoever you want. So can I. So can anyone. So to suggest that a license exists, but then say that posted content is in the public domain, is a contradiction. It can be one or the other. It cannot be both.
Are They Legally Right?
As I said, I believe they are ethically wrong. But are they legally right? That depends.
It depends on whether or not the members they took content from actually agreed to a terms of service permitting them the right to use the content however they want. If that happened, then they may very well have the legal right to use that content. Even if they have that right, the members who made the posts still own their words – Homesteading Today just has the ability to use them in this manner.
Credit: Marion Doss (CC BY-SA 2.0)
If anyone were to suggest that these posts are in the public domain because of the FAQ text, I would say one thing: good luck. No legal advice here, but my expectation is that any judge would laugh at that idea. You’d need more than an FAQ page entry for a relinquishment of rights like that. Edit: plus, as copyright consultant Jonathan Bailey pointed out in the comments, it is practically impossible to voluntarily release a work into the public domain in the U.S.
If they cannot show that members agreed to a terms of service permitting this use, then most likely we revert back to square one, rights-wise. This would mean that each individual member would own the the rights to all original posts they submitted. When they chose to submit their posts to Homesteading Today, members had a desire for their words to be displayed on the website. Due to that, it would be reasonable to at least infer that they had granted Homesteading Today a non-exclusive license to display those posts on the Homesteading Today forums.
However, for the reasons described above, even if they can show they have the legal right, they would have to be insane to actually exercise that right in this way. That right should be used to share a public post on television or in a blog post – properly attributed. It should not be used to take someone’s words, post them on a totally different website, and say someone else said them. That is madness.
Finally, let’s not forget that being legally right doesn’t always mean you are doing right by the community.
The CEO’s Response
No doubt aware of the massive firestorm on the community, Hyatt Chaudhary, the CEO of CMG, posted a long apology message on Tuesday. Unfortunately, it became clear that Chaudhary was not particularly well versed on how to interact with the members of the community his company owns. As such, he took a bad situation and made it worse. There are things he said that were OK, even good. There were many things, however, that only made matters worse.
When you treat people like this, when you make such a big mistake, they only want to hear very specific things. They want to hear that you know you were wrong, they want to hear you apologize, and they want to hear you say what you are doing to make it right. That’s all. Here are things they don’t want to hear:
- That your company is not full of “suits.”
- That your company is full of young families who rely on you for a living.
- The implication that, by being angry, they are trying to put young families on the street.
- That you are one of them because you garden.
- That your company is not evil.
- The implication that some of the people who disagree with your actions are just bitter/out to get you.
- That you have great upgrades planned for the future.
- That you can’t control all of your employees.
- That you will be available for one week to answer questions. (Why are you saying you only have a week for the members of your community?)
Some of these things are obvious. But, for all of them, people generally do not care. Not unless they ask about those things specifically. There are definitely some people on the community that are grinding an axe. But you shouldn’t say that. It does no good. This is all seen as an attempt to talk around the problem, to obfuscate. Get to the point and be contrite.
Though some members responded to it positively, most did not. Most took him up on his offer to answer questions, but his answering of them was decidedly unsatisfactory. His responses were short, curt, defensive. As an example, this was his first reply on the thread he started (after some specific questions had been asked):
I have listened to replies and complaints. I have reprimanded Steve and I promise you he will never be a part of this forum. What else do you want me to do? You tell me and I will make it happen, but Angie and the other mods honestly had nothing at all to do with this. Blame me, blame Steve, but please do bring the others into this. Steve did this and I’m the CEO and employ Steve and will take the blame, but no one else honestly knew about this, including myself. We are honest people just trying to do our best and we are spending SO much time trying to get you guys a better forum. Villaininize me as much as you want, but i have nothing to hide – I’m honestly here for you guys, period. Go ahead and beat me up, but I’m you’re biggest advocate.
No specific answers. Just pushing hostility back onto members of the community. As you can see if you read the thread, it only grew worse from there.
He apparently violated community norms by using profanity – multiple members called him out for it – which should never have happened. In fact, the guidelines (as vague and unhelpful as they are) for the community seem to have been suspended during these threads, creating a challenging environment for productive discussion. If you are going to say that the community must be civil, then that should also apply to discussions like this. Instead, plenty of people (including the CEO) are being allowed to objectively violate that policy.
A moderator, wr, rightfully called Chaudhary out on his attempts to show he was one of the community. “If you’re so very involved in living the life, why wait until now to join us and how often do you plan on visiting after the big scandal?,” he wrote. It’s hard to argue that. The moment they bought this forum, the CEO should have been on it. By participating casually, he would have built trust and credibility he could now use. People would know him and be more likely to trust him. Fair or not, all he looks like now is a greedy businessman exploiting the community.
To his credit, I think Chaudhary’s responses have improved since he started that thread initially. As such, the community has responded more positively.
Bad Decisions Are Being Made to Placate the Community
Credit: Nicholas Eckhart (CC BY 2.0)
Now that Chaudhary and co. have dug this hole, they are in a mode where they are agreeing to ideas suggested by members, in an effort to win them back, that may be harmful in the long term. They have lost the ability to lead.
For example, Chaudhary first agreed to delete the posts of any member who requested that he do so. This is a terrible idea. If CMG had anyone at the company who knew community, that person would tell Chaudhary this. Mass deletions harm the community. If you remove 10,000 posts from a forum, 100,000 posts and 10,000 members might be affected in a negative way.
To elaborate on this, when you have a discussion, each reply builds on what came before it, even speaking directly to a point that was raised or the member who raised it. If you delete large groups of posts, it devalues the contributions of the other members and gives the appearance that they don’t make sense. You can’t allow someone to harm your members that way. It’s not fair.
Later, Chaudhary backed off that statement and said he would only delete accounts. Removing accounts/identifying characteristics is a more reasonable solution. But the fact that he had to back off the initial statement can’t have helped his credibility.
Another example is when one member suggested that moderators and administrators be appointed “by popular vote.” This is almost always a bad idea. It turns moderation into political campaigning. The best moderators and administrators are often unpopular with at least a portion of members. Moderation is not a game and the best moderators are normally not the people who the average member would vote for. A moderation team needs to have a strong leader that carefully selects moderators to ensure they represent the best of the community, know the tools and can work in a team environment.
Elections mostly lead to a collection of individuals, not a cohesive team. Too many private moderator forums are just a collection of randomly assembled people arguing about what to do. It’s not productive.
Just because someone has 5,000 posts on a forum doesn’t mean they know anything about managing a community. Just because they have moderated a forum before doesn’t mean they know how to do it well. It’s one of those things that a lot of people think they understand, but few do.
Unfortunately, since CMG has now lost the trust and ability to lead, they may very well concede on these issues as a means of saving their investment. Again, this reeks of a company who bought big communities without strong internal community voices at the company.
This doesn’t mean that this is not a good time to get feedback from the community. But maybe the person who decides what feedback to act on should not be the CEO.
What Should Have Happened
Before I say anything, I have only been watching this from the outside. I have spent hours upon hours reading posts on Homesteading Today, but it is fair to say there is a limit to my knowledge. With that in mind, here are some suggestions on where this should have gone.
Before this happened, people from the company should have been active participants in the community in order to demonstrate that the company was there to support the community, not simply exploit it. Obviously, they should have never republished those posts. But that ship has sailed.
Once they were caught, they should have deleted all republished posts (which I believe they did). This should have been followed by a better apology. One without all of the extra stuff. Simple, to the point, contrite. Answer people, don’t be defensive. Allow a substantial period of time for it to be addressed before moving on. Then, spend every day from that point forward earning back the trust of the community by never doing anything like that again.
You have lost the trust of many members. Some of them will never trust you again. But if you are going to earn the trust of some, you have to demonstrate that you care about the community, not just say it. That’s going to take a long time and won’t be solved in a day, week or month.
What Should Happen Now
The hole is so deep now, that there is a lot to work through. While the impact is notable, it might be exaggerated a bit if you are not reading other threads on the community. Other sections on the site continue. Possibly less active, but they gave moved forward nonetheless. This doesn’t matter to every member. Many of Homesteading Today’s visitors are unaware of this issue (and some others probably don’t care). Of course, a ton of active members care and that is more than enough.
To begin, I’d make 100% sure that this was fully cleaned up. Make sure none of those copied posts remain anywhere. Then, I’d try to reboot the CEO’s apology to be more in line with what I described above. Start over once more. He said he would answer questions, so he should do so. Not with short answers. Not by writing “ABOVE” to every question he thinks he’s already answered. But by taking the time to answer.
Next, ideally, I would hire a professional community manager – someone who understands how community spaces work, how to treat members and how to deal with challenges like this. Hire a good person, pay them well to clean up your mess and get the heck out of their way. A fresh face could do a lot of good. Someone who is free from the baggage and not personally involved could lend a much needed, independent perspective. That could begin the healing with a fresh start. Unfortunately, they may not be willing or able to make that sort of financial commitment. In which case, maybe they can hire someone part time, possibly even hire a consultant.
They need someone who knows what they are doing to instill some professionalism into this operation.
Outside of that, they could try to identify someone within the company or community. However, if it is someone already at CMG, that might lead to the community doubting their intentions.
While picking someone from the community might seem like a good idea, it could lead to some issues. It will be a challenge to find someone who isn’t so connected with the baggage and has to worry about their loyalties. There is a simple reality here: CMG owns Homesteading Today and whoever leads the community will need to have a good working relationship with them. So while you could hand the keys to a community member, there still needs to be solid cooperation. Otherwise, you’ll just be dealing with drama down the line. You can’t put a community member in charge and say you’ll leave them alone/ignore them.
The role of administrator is not a volunteer role and shouldn’t be looked at as such. A community as big as Homesteading Today requires someone full time. Volunteer moderators are wonderful, and I have had approximately 150-200 of them over the years. But it is unfair to expect volunteers to shoulder the load. In addition, they need management and leadership to be as successful as they can be. They need to be a tight unit working toward a common goal, not a collection of individuals. There needs to be one person who, at the end of the day, provides definitive answers and the leadership necessary to move forward.
There is a lot to be learned from this situation. I wish everyone involved the best of luck.
Thank you to Jonathan Bailey for making me aware of this story.
As a member of Homesteading today since 2008 with nearly 10,000 posts. This incident has come as a shock. I do believe you are spot on with your article.
The CEO made the situation much much worse with his arrogant posts.
I was not one of the people copied (that I am aware of) but the incident whether legal or not was unethical and deceptive and many people at the board no longer trust the company.
The only asset a message board really has is the good will of the members – thats very much up in the air right now. They lost a good deal of good will and some members over this.
I don’t doubt the board will continue, but the days of the feeling of “members sharing a cup of coffee at the over the fence” is gone – and thats sad.
Hi Patrick. :-)
I suspect the reason for the major fuss over Carbon Media’s refusal to delete or edit posts is that in the past, users could edit their posts at any time, and could also request that a mod delete a post or posts. Mods would generally honor those requests.
I can remember more than once, users went, “Where did XYZ thread go?” And a mod replied to the effect of, “The original poster requested that the thread be deleted. We honor those requests.” — It was site culture, and an unofficial but fairly well known site rule.
I think it was reasonable for users to expect that, when they found out that Carbon Media was mirroring posts on other sites, they could request their posts be deleted to prevent future similar incidents. After all, in the past, if they wanted a post or posts deleted, all they had to do was ask, and the management would oblige.
I see Carbon Media’s standpoint here (and understand your stance), but the fact is that Carbon Media’s CEO “changed the rules” when he said that posts would not be deleted. He also tried to say they COULD not be deleted, from a technical standpoint, which is ludicrous.
And that, I think, is why there is a huge fuss on HS Today over their refusal to delete posts.
I have been a member since about 2002. Carbon Media’s attempt to hide the truth and subsequent damage control methods are the equivalent of putting out a fire with gasoline. The place is filled with tension and not really much fun.
Great writeup Patrick and I’ll be leaning on/linking to it heavily in mine.
One thing to add about the public domain dedication. Currently, it is completely impossible in the U.S. to put a work in the public domain voluntarily. Period. You can license something under a CC0 license, which is functionally similar, but not place it under the public domain.
Furthermore, you certainly can’t do it without an active agreement. That browse wrap license is meaningless.
Thank you for the comments, Mike, Cygnet, David and Jonathan. Responding below.
David: I appreciate you sharing your perspective. I’m glad that you found the article helpful. Mr. Chaudhary’s responses were hard to read, and it’s unfortunate because it probably could have ended there (for the most part), if handled differently.
Cygnet: I appreciate you sharing that. If they allowed it at one point and then decided to change that policy, that should have been clearly announced to prevent the confusion you are referencing. You are totally right – they can be deleted. To suggest otherwise is factually incorrect. But, generally speaking, they shouldn’t be.
Now, if there are posts with very sensitive content – pictures of your kids, for example – then I think that is the type of situation where an exception can and should be made. But general posts about livestock or gardening are usually not sensitive and so the poster is not harmed by them remaining. I am all about policies that make sense, but allow for exceptions for sensitive circumstances.
Regardless of past issues, it just isn’t a good practice to allow members to mass delete posts. A member with a thousand posts can harm hundreds or thousands of other members by creating disjointed conversations. An online community is very different from a Facebook profile, for example. It’s a shared space and inherently different norms apply.
Also, as a point of clarification, on the forums I saw that you mentioned that you thought you knew who I was, that I had a wife, etc. I am not married, so I am probably not the person you are thinking of. :) No big deal. I’ll follow up via email to make sure you know this as I don’t think you subscribed to comments here.
David: Well said. I think, for the most part, a lot of members just want this to be done with and properly handled so they can get back to enjoying the community. These types of things are very stressful – for everyone, really.
Jonathan: Thanks! Great point. I am going to make a small update this article to reflect this.
Although I’m unhappy that someone would write an article about the internal goings-on at HT and post it on their own website, I realize nothing that takes place on the internet is private.
One thing I want to clarify, though is since I’ve been a member of HT since 2003, members have never been able to go back and edit their posts indefinitely. Right now for supporting members, it is somewhere between a 12 and 24 hour window, probably less for non-supporting members. BTW, Supporting Member does not necessarily mean one who has paid money — long-time members were designated as Supporting.
Members could ask to have a thread removed that they started if it began a firestorm — I asked that one time. But since I’ve been a member, departing members were not able to have their entire posting history deleted.
Brigit-Carol,
I thought the editing window was much longer. If I was wrong, then I apologize for the misinformation.
I am bad about weird typos that I never see until I post, and I could have sworn until recently I had the ability to fix typos. When you edited a post, the site deleted any “likes” to the post(for obvious reasons) but I coulda sworn … anyway. I apologize if I had my assumptions or board knowledge wrong.
I can only think of one member who I know of personally who was deleted completely wholesale from the site, but there was at least one. The mods may or may not be able to tell us if there were others.
However, as you noted, there have been quite a few of both complete threads and individual posts deleted over the years by user request. The mods could probably give more details on their specific internal policy(s), but I’ve certainly gone many times to reply to something (usually because of an email notification of a new post) only to find the post or entire thread gone.
I had a few that were fairly old deleted for a variety of reasons, a few years back.
The sad thing it that this could have been avoided. When it was first discovered that posts were being copied and credited to a ficticous poster, the employees of Carbon removed posts, locked threads, made a few misleading statements and I believe even called out posters in an effort to sweep this under the rug. The huge cover up is what really got everyone interested and then it began to snowball. I personally have decided to give Homesteading Today a break. I can connect with the few close friends I have made Via email and other sites and means. The ironic thing is that yesterday my membership payment was due.
Hi, I moderate the Singletree section of homesteadingtoday.
My take on the matter is that we will be fine after this current problem has been dealt with. The CEO made a mistake when he promised answers but then took perhaps 200 posts to stat DELIVERING those answers. His expressions of his good will were fine, but that was not what we were waiting for. We had been lied to, he promised us the truth, and we would accept nothing else.
When people are angry and you make promises, fulfill those promises as soon as reasonably possible or people will get even angrier. You can even say “I will find out and get back to you at X o’clock”, as long as you are there at the correct time with answers. So, a mistake was made when he took so long to give answers. Expressions of good will are fine but we were promised answers and nothing else would be acceptable.
We have never had much input from our owners and we never needed much input, but there is a large differences between NO input and not much input. In the past we have used the owners as a tie breaker and for general guidelines.
In the past if there was an issue we could not resolve amongst ourselves we would ask the owners what they would prefer. And sometimes they would give the decision back to us and we would work on it some more.
The point that I am making is that the owners are at the center, and if we do not *TRUST* the center then the forum can fall apart.
On the good side, some things were done right. The CMG CEO answered all of the questions that he could, people are calmer and we are talking instead of yelling, new ADMINs have been chosen, and the 2 chosen from Homesteadingtoday have the reputation of being both competent and reliable. We are getting aquainted with the new ADMIN from CMG as I type.
I expect the forum to be stable in a few days time.
I think one of the problems was that the Carbon Media people just kept compounding the issue rather than remedying it. Quietly changing the TOS, then the actual debacle of publishing posts on other forums – especially with new user names, and then, promises “to fix things” that have since been taken back due to “reasons” that are clearly untrue. But the thing that ultimately rubbed me the wrong way (and I am a 10 year member of the HT site)is that the CEO tried to throw some homesteading jargon about gardening at us to prove that he was a standup guy. Although homesteaders may not be the most sophisticated audience in the world, we are not stupid. His “yes, that awful employee, Steve, screwed up and I’ve moved him to another forum, and oh by the way, gosh, golly, folks, can you help me with my problem of having my vegetables rot in the garden???” (paraphrased, not the actual quote, should be read dripping with sarcasm)was downright insulting.
Online community managers and owners, take note from this cautionary tale. Don’t try to screw the very people whose content, submitted freely and sincerely, is building your site. If you use people’s writing to gain profit elsewhere, compensate them fairly. And please don’t try to pretend that you are one of them when you are not. That type of deception conveys such disrespect.
Thank you for the comments, Brigit-Carol, Cygnet, David, Terri and Lilly. Responses below.
Brigit-Carol: I understand how this might be unsettling. That said, online community is the focus of my work and when something like this happens, I often cover it here. I don’t look at what happened as internal goings-on, but a rather public episode. That said, again, totally understand your perspective.
I appreciate you sharing details as far as the editing and post removal history.
David: Agreed. They had a chance to change the tone of this whole thing by how they responded. Unfortunately, the initial response was not a great one.
Terri: Thank you for sharing your perspective. Things appear to be looking up today, and I am sure that the community will survive this. Of course, some people will be gone forever, but this was a pretty big mistake and, as you said, pretty poor follow-up to that mistake.
I agree with what you said regarding the importance of the owners. It’s not healthy for a community to dislike those who are ultimately responsible for it. It’s untenable.
I hope this all works out for the best.
Lilly: Agreed. It was one mistake after another. Like I said in the post, it’s a classic case of a company buying a forum and not understanding community. You just can’t treat people this way and expect they will stick around.
The simple fact here is that no community professionals I know of would have signed off on this. Personally, if a company I worked for made me do this, I would quit. It’s a massive mistake. The problem is they didn’t have anyone who really understood community. I am not sure they do now, honestly. Who knows.
This really was all avoidable. There are much more difficult audiences to deal with than homesteaders. Trust me, I’ve dealt with them. They did something very wrong and people are justifiably upset by it.
Thanks again,
Patrick
I’ve been a regular at HST for 13 years, and close to 20,000 posts.
We’ve always been a very tight, very personal community. We’ve been involved with each other IRL as well as online, and that’s what made our community unique.
As outspoken and independent types, with a stated and implied allegiance to responsibility and avoidance of intrusive, over-reaching bureaucracies, it is no wonder a very involved number of the HST membership would find none of CMG’s behavior acceptable. The unannounced change of the TOS, and the perpetuation of the plagiarism debacle by refusal to accept responsibility and attempts to lay blame on the membership by CMG, are beyond insulting to our intelligence and morals.
Your article is very insightful, and highlights the numerous faux pas committed by CMG.
People can forgive a lot, but lost trust is incredibly hard to rebuild, especially when the person/entity who erred has the audacity to twist the truth, outright lie, blame the wronged, AND put a timeline on how long the process of restoration should last.
It’s a darned shame. HT has been my online home for over a decade, and I’ve contributed quite a bit of “Content” – but not because I wanted to be viewed as a widget or source of income.
I did it because I felt that I was a contributing member of a worthwhile community. I don’t know that I will ever be able to feel that way again on that forum.
From Terry’s comment above
“…new ADMINs have been chosen, and the 2 chosen from Homesteadingtoday have the reputation of being both competent and reliable. We are getting aquainted with the new ADMIN from CMG as I type. …”
It should be noted that the CEO made the announcement of the 2 Admins before he verified that either would accept the position. They have both declined. Things are starting to blow up again.
I have been posting as wy_white_wolf for over 10 years on HT
Thank you for the comments, Pony and Jess.
Pony: I think your comment raises some great points. Especially the thought that their handling of this situation not only represents bad judgment for dealing with people in general, but especially bad judgment for people who live the homesteading lifestyle. It’s definitely a case of not understanding who you serve.
Thank you for the kind words on the article.
Patrick
It WAS a mistake to announce Admins when they had not yet agreed to the job.
This, however, is something us moderators can help with. I am certain there are some red faces, but with a few words said at the proper time it can be dealt with.
We now are getting some understanding as to the direction the owners would like to see us go, and that is always reassuring! And, just as importantly, moderators can help the changes go more smoothly.
Some of the moderators are stepping down. But, most of us are staying, and we will continue to try to take care of the forum and to try to perpetuate the values of the members of Homesteadingtoday.
I was a member for several years . After I read about what the website was doing I was furious . I took what the CEO promised about deleting members & all their posts seriously (unfortunately ) & asked to be deleted along with all my posts as promised .
I was deleted as a member but my posts remain . Obviously it was another in their long string of lies . I’m still furious . How can a company violate their members & hope to regain anyone’s trust ?
Excellent analysis of the debacle. I’ve been a member of HT since it was a lusenet site. It has been an unparalleled source of information on not just homesteading topics but anything you might want to know. Within that community is a great range of experiences and knowledge — any subject you might want to know about, there will be someone who has either done it or knows about it, and their wisdom is generously and freely given. But now, that trust is gone.
I do not know if any of my posts were plagiarized, but for those people who are asking that their posts be deleted, I think that would just give CMG carte blanche to use them to populate more of their fake posts at other sites, with no proof of the original left. Willow would not have been able to prove that the stolen posts were hers if her originals were not still up at HT. So I would urge people not to delete their posts. I certainly do not trust CMG not to plagiarize again.
This situation has been made much worse by the CEO, IMHO.
It was agreed upon that those of us who wished to have our accounts deleted, have our NAMES removed from our posts and the name “Guest” substituted. That would not impact upon the flow of the threads, nor would it remove participation numbers.
My account was deleted, yet my name remains . Another lie.
I read with great interest the now-closed CEO initial answer thread. The CEO had gone back and edited many , if not all of his original replies removing some sarcasm here and there . It certainly does not no read as patronizing as it did initially.
When someone makes so many errors as a CEO, one has to ponder how the company survives?
I thought I would follow up on my previous comments re: deleting posts.
If you go to this link:
http://www.homesteadingtoday.com/admin-archives/homesteadingtoday-announcements-support/529354-deleting-past-posts.html
There is a posted dated 12/2/2014, so it is recent (and after Carbon Media purchased the site). In it, Angie, the site’s paid admin (Carbon Media employee at that point) addresses a question from a user regarding deleting posts.
The user points out that the page that lists the benefits for paid membership specifically states that paid members can delete their posts. He also copied and pasted the text. (The formatting is a bit munched, but there were three columns — the far right column was for paid members and indicated “yes” that users could delete posts.)
Angie states that the page needs to be updated because that information is a mistake, which pretty much acknowledges that the page did say paid members could delete posts.
Some of the people demanding that their posts be deleted now are paid members. The question then becomes, “When did they sign up?” And I think the answer for a lot of them is, “Before 12/2/2014.”
I would also note that the CEO has gone back and edited some of his more inflammatory comments, which simultaneously refusing to allow users to do the same. I don’t think he’s a bad guy, but I’ve never seen anyone bungle a forum crisis worse than this.
Thank you for the comments, Terri, WV Hillbilly, snozy, Lesley and Cygnet. Responses below.
Terri: Glad to hear it. I appreciate the update.
snozy: Thank you for your kind words about the article. I appreciate you sharing your perspective here.
Lesley: I’m sorry to hear that. I agreed, it’s clear that further deception, intended or not, is only making this issue worse.
Cygnet: That is very interesting. The inconsistency is unfortunate – even worse is the apparent lack of announcements for policy changes. Any meaningful policy changes should be announced clearly, not quietly mentioned in a thread like that. Sigh.
Thanks again,
Patrick
As the “Willowgirl” whose posts brought this situation to light, I wanted to thank you, Patrick, for your very good analysis of the controversy.
I was infuriated to find “Alice” taking credit for a rescue whicch had cost my friends and I a significant amount of time and money. Even more infuriated by the response from CMG, which obviously left — I’m being diplomattic here — a lot to be desired.
I was a 12-year veteran of HT with more than 14,000 posts. My significant other and I met there. I won’t be going back. Need I say more? Probably not.
Thank you so much for the comment and for sharing that, Willowgirl. I find your story tragic.
For most people, the place where they meet their significant other is a cherished spot that they wish to return to. But imagine that place was purchased by a business that treated you so badly that you never wanted to go back. Just terrible.
Thanks again,
Patrick
Thank you for outlining the event and the various mistakes made by CMG. I’ve been a member since 2004 with over 14,000 posts. HT has been a cozy place to ask questions, give answers, and get a glimpse into the lives of others whether or not you agree with them.
Former forum moderator, Melissa Norris has created a new and very similar site on pro boards, Homesteading Families. People are moving there in amazing numbers. I’m there and will no longer be checking in on HT. It is nice to find a place where the owner just ‘knows’ what is right or wrong. I am sure HT will continue because new people find the board and will form their own community, unaware of the problems we just faced.
After more than a year Homesteading Today is much less active than when Carbon Media began all of this and then did their version of damage control. The entire atmosphere their has changed dramatically. It’s sad but inevitable with the way it was handled.
Thanks for the update, David. That’s unfortunate. Events like this can really damage a community.
Sorry to hear that Carbon is at it again. It almost appears that they have a death wish for their forums. HomesteadingToday has never even begun to recover from their ownership and mistakes over the past 2 plus years. That forum is a shell of its former self with activity way down. It’s seems most steps they take are to the detriment of their communities. Someone needs to teach them public relations.