Climb to the Stars - Latest Comments in Blog Host Ugliness

Re: Blog Host Ugliness

kukac — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 16:59:57 -0000

I had a blog on blog381.com, and I am sorry that I can not export my blog to a different location. I hope we will have a chance to do that and to try to continue on WP blogging.

And Stephanie, you sad it wright,
qoute
" if one of your users is the object of a police investigation, how does that justify “punishing” other users? I can understand you removing his blog from your system, but forbidding people from linking to him or letting him comment on their blogs seems a little extreme"

Re: Blog Host Ugliness

Mihailo — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 11:04:02 -0000

You absolutely can question my comment, and that is fine with me. There is a reason why I asked Mr Matt to check their records (if possible), about that one specific blog that is closed on their system. There is a chance that blog is closed due to credit card fraud. I am sure, we all here, take credit card fraud seriously.

According to our Terms of Use, we had every right to close any blog for any reason, even without notice. If you check wordpress.com terms of use, they have the same thing there.
We took actions the way we thought it was best for us at that moment.

I am also very interested to hear other blog platform owners on this one.

Re: Blog Host Ugliness

Stephanie — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 09:47:10 -0000

Mihailo: if one of your users is the object of a police investigation, how does that justify "punishing" other users? I can understand you removing his blog from your system, but forbidding people from linking to him or letting him comment on their blogs seems a little extreme.

I'd be interested in hearing other blog platform owners on this one.

Even if this information sheds some light for the decisions you made, it doesn't make the manner the ultimatum was put to "innocent" users acceptable to me (taking Sanja's example, as I know it first-hand: short delay, no obvious way to export data).

Re: Blog Host Ugliness

Aurora Borealis — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 08:21:00 -0000

OK, Mihailo. If that's a truth, why you couldn't write something else in the announcement to 381 bloggers (which is above in this post) ?

Re: Blog Host Ugliness

Mihailo — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 06:54:51 -0000

I was sure some part of this story should be kept from the public, but after receiving a ton of bad publicity, i have to add a few more words.

Anyway, I was contacted by the police. They have been asking questions about ‘pretty popular serbian bloger’, and his activity. I was told they are investigating credit card fraud.

We did not want to support any criminal activity, and we asked (or blackmailed?) bloggers to remove links and comments related to ‘pretty popular serbian blogger’.

Now when Mr Matt is here, I am sure he can check their records why zmajcek.wordpress.com has been suspended on their system.

Re: Blog Host Ugliness

Marie-Aude — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 04:47:23 -0000

Tu peux dans des cas pareils essayer un soft d'aspiration de sites comme HT Tracks... ça suit tous les liens et ça fait une copie de la page html sur le disque.

Re: Blog Host Ugliness

Dossy Shiobara — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 20:57:46 -0000

Stephanie, you think so? I'll try to write up a blog post about it tomorrow, with the Tcl scripts I used to do it.

Re: Blog Host Ugliness

Aurora Borealis — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 19:52:08 -0000

I have to say THANK YOU twice:

To Matt, thank you for offering help to ex-381 bloggers. I was sooooo happy when I saw your comments here! :)))

To Dossy Shiobara, thank you for Wordpress WXR. I think that Stephanie will e-mail you tomorrow, because my knowledge about computers and WP isn't "very good" :)

Re: Blog Host Ugliness

Stephanie — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 19:41:07 -0000

Dossy: you need to publish how you did this. Could come in handy for others. Thanks so much.

Re: Blog Host Ugliness

Dossy Shiobara — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 19:35:25 -0000

Sanja/Aurora:

I may have a workable Wordpress WXR that you can use to import into a new Wordpress installation based off of Stephanie's posts and comments RSS that she downloaded.

You can reach me at dossy@panoptic.com and I can email it to you.

Re: Blog Host Ugliness

Matt Mullenweg — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 16:16:19 -0000

I've thought about this a bit more, and I'd be happy to purchase or assume the costs of blog381.com from its owners if they'd be willing. We could re-enable the export globally and provide redirects to help ease the transition of the people to other hosts. If the owners are interested in this, feel free to contact me.

Re: Blog Host Ugliness

Stephanie — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 15:50:00 -0000

Hey Matt, thanks for stopping by. Thankfully, the situation seems less dramatic than I thought at first, as it seems the blog381 hosts are letting bloggers export their posts if they wish (if that's still the case -- haven't heard from my friend Sanja, so I don't know if she got hers).

Quite a few of these bloggers have moved over the wordpress.com, from what I've seen.

Re: Blog Host Ugliness

Matt Mullenweg — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 15:33:20 -0000

Is there anything we can do at WP.com to help out?

Re: Blog Host Ugliness

Stephanie — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 15:03:14 -0000

Ozon: you're right. However, note that I let slip your first post "continuing" the subject I didn't want to discuss. We we'll leave whisperer's too, but you're right. I won't accept anything more around that.

Re: Blog Host Ugliness

bruhly — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 14:54:58 -0000

blog381 good luck ...

You can't force anyone to stay on your system. Disabling export function doesn't help. because if someone can read posts they can be also saved and moved somewhere
else.

BTW I do regular backups #:))) so restore shouldn't be a problem ....

It's my pleasure to host LudiZmaj....

Re: Blog Host Ugliness

Ozon — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 14:49:49 -0000

Good evening Stephanie, I thought you said decisively that the discussion about loyalty is finished. Why selective moderation of my comments, and none of whisperer's? If you have closed the discussion on this off-topic (for which I fully took responsibility), please close it for everyone and moderate accordingly. I am sure you strive to remain objective, and wouldn't you agree that fair moderation suggested herein would be a reasonable way to achieve this?

Re: Blog Host Ugliness

whisperer — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 10:09:31 -0000

And yes, it was a blackmail.

Re: Blog Host Ugliness

whisperer — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 09:58:08 -0000

I have to say this:
1.
I was user of 381 blog system. There was export option, I have a proof for that, 'couse I exported my posts and comments a while before "case" in matter, and import those files to WP. If that option did not existed, how that was possible just a few days before?
2.
We're not familly or friends with the owners, we were just users, and it's sneaky to impute something like "loyality" or good maners...it's a two-way street. I don't want to dispute any longer, have a nice day.

Re: Blog Host Ugliness

Aurora Borealis — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 09:33:19 -0000

Very important thing:

The announcement of the export possibility appeared at 381system on Friday ,
AFTER the whole system was disabled.

There was an discussion at the 381forum, on Wednesday and Thursday. This is where the owner of 381 has given us "explanation" for the ultimatum (showed above, in this post) But not even once she said that we can export our data. On Thursday afternoon, the blogs of us who refused to remove those links, were disabled. On Friday, the whole system was shut down. After that, on www. blog381 .com was this text:

For the export of your data contact admin@********

When Mihailo, the 381 administrator, wrote here in the comment that I should sent him the e-mail with a request of retrieving my own data, I did it. I've sent the e-mail.

But!

Late last night, I've posted a comment at blog www.blogowski.com, where Blogowski was writing abut all this fuss, and it was followed with a comment of the 381 owner, where she said :

".....Because of the rudeness and sassy comments on this and some other blogs, the export at 381 will not be possible any more..."

So, if anyone didn't menage to ask for it's own data in past two days. . .well, it is too late now.

Re: Blog Host Ugliness

Mihailo — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 08:43:59 -0000

Ozh, we had several things different than wp.com

Besides, technical support in local language, unlimited disk space and bandwidth usage per blog, we had one nice feature that is not available on wp.com (nor wordpress mu). Bloggers were able to fully customize WP themes. They could fully modify CSS and all themes PHP files absolutely free. This feature provided great flexibility, so blogger could install all kind of gadgets, widgets, etc.

Re: Blog Host Ugliness

Ozh — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 06:39:15 -0000

Why would someone who want to be hosted on a MU platform avoid wp.com anyway ? :)

Re: Blog Host Ugliness

Stephanie — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 05:56:47 -0000

Mihailo: you'll see I've updated my blog post to reflect my new understanding of the situation.

Re: Blog Host Ugliness

Stephanie — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 05:48:56 -0000

Mihailo: thanks for the information. (Though WPMU or WordPress, what I said about the export function being in there out-of-the-box remains.)

Glad to know there's a "reasonable" explanation for deactivation of the export function -- though I'm not sure it's the course of action I would have taken.

You have to admit that the timing is pretty bad. If people are under ultimatum to clean up their blogs and they notice that the export function, which was there previously, is not there anymore -- well, it kind of looks scary from their perspective, doesn't it?

Re: Blog Host Ugliness

Mihailo — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 05:45:10 -0000

FYI, we were not using WordPress MU.

Export feature was disabled. Several blogs were hacked (due to weak passwords) and posts were exported.

Re: Blog Host Ugliness

Stephanie — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 05:43:34 -0000

Ozon: a contract does not require money to exchange hands. Subject is closed.