archGFX » automattic

Desaparecidos: WordPress.com Sucks

adam — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 13:55:18 +0000

This is non-news. I have nothing new to report. Everything I have to say has been said by the people directly involved. I am repeating this only as a gesture of solidarity because I am so offended and disgusted by the actions of Automattic, inc.

Timethief is a wonderful person, who was one of the first people I met on the wordpress.com forums. Had it not been for Options, I would never have visited them in the first place. Timethief has amassed over 7,000 posts of wonderful support for the bloggers at wordpress.com. So I find it completely shocking that:

Both of them were asked to leave the forum
Shortly thereafter, their forum accounts were suspended
Timethief's blog, WPBloggingTips (yes, it's a blog that archives the helpful advice she gives out on the forums, so that the google-inclined can help themselves) was marked as "mature"1 .
Timethief's IP was blacklisted in Akismet's spam database 2

I'm honestly not as surprised that wank and options were banned from the forums. Their blogs, like mine, focus on highlighting issues with wordpress (theirs more the .COM side). The idea that automattic would go out of its way to silence Timethief, who has always held the community as her highest priority, is nonsensical.

This is a warning to anyone considering the use of Automattic's services: They do not have your interests in mind, and if you are ever displeased with the service you receive, they will not hesitate to use those services as weapons against you. Even for people considering the use of just Akismet, it should be disconcerting that you are not subscribing to an anti-spam service, you are subscribing to automattic's vehicle of censorship.

For your own sake, use Defensio, use Vox, tumblr, or blogspot, but stay away from wordpress.com, akismet, and wordpress.com stats. They will violate your privacy, and they will revoke their services at signs of your dissatisfaction.

The mature flag, if you're not aware, is the means by which blogs on wordpress.com are hidden from public view and denied the use of categories or tags. This, rather than the sensible solution of putting up an "Under 18" warning that blogspot employs.
Since Automattic, Inc. does not follow up with ISP's (or bloghosts for the splogs that are advertising via spam), she has no recourse with Telus.net to get a new IP address. So much for automattic caring a wit for the health of the blogging community.

from self conscious to self devouring

adam — Mon, 07 May 2007 00:58:15 +0000

Since installing the recently released stats plugin, now my wordpress.org dashboard links to my wp.com dashboard

and my wordpress.com blog links to my dotorg dashboard:

which i find terribly useful. but since my dotorg blog still links to dotcom:

it sounds like we're going to need a bigger sticky (or perhaps we should just give up and merge the forums).

Buckshot

adam — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 20:23:57 +0000

How is it that automattic can complain about users not knowing the difference between their commercial service, and the open source blogging tool, when they continue to blur and erase the line themselves? and if we assume that it's not a mistake, and they meant to use their 2nd most popular plugin to advertise wordpress.com in user's sidebars, wouldn't that contradict Matt's whining about PPP and TLA?
Reverend Ted has novell's jab at the mac vs. pc ads. Novell continues to distance themselves from other linuxes (linuxi?) by not taking a whiny nerd-boy stab at apple, but actually shifting the discussion. making linux a woman makes apple immediately look sexist. remember the one woman in the mac ads? she was a peripheral(second class citizen much?) and involved in substantial confusion between networks and peripherals (typical of most mac fanboys, in my experience).
i don’t know what these stats are. or why they keep showing up in my dashboard. they could be my overall stats if the years were different.
I really like the ideas forum. as much as opensearch and noindex could be theme competencies, they make more sense as wordpress core competencies. i really don't want to be responsible for correctly addressing introspection.
this slide is brilliant. yet another reason i love last.fm. i'm not quite sure why that woman has become such a "receptacle for people's rage" (the wifest's words). lettting that sort of slander be a defining characteristic of last.fm's service was bringing them down.
i have a twitter page now, but no use for it. other than keeping track of the wordpress.com servers.
i'm using mr. messina's filigree graphic everywhere, because it's so easy to color. i need to find a GPL replacement for it, or draw my own, though. GPL graphics are damn hard to find.

but love is not what you’re thinking of.

adam — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 17:10:31 +0000

I'm still not really getting how matt can use the word 'love', and pull stunts like this. I'm sure it'll be passed off as a simple misunderstanding, but when you do it this many times in a row, it's patently obvious that it isn't accidental. perhaps if he answered emails, he might have less trouble with people having to post his mistakes in public.

right on time, mr. lessig posts a beta of a CC-license generator that includes some helpful microformats: a rel="cc:attributionURL" property="cc:attributionName", which will remove more of the plausibility from matt's denials.

meat lovers

adam — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 14:55:52 +0000

according to How We Work, veganism would preclude me from getting a job with automattic. not that they're hiring designers. and not that i'm vested in the vegan thing. i just like the cupcakes. i'm just sayin'