Topic: I deserve a flogging

[lyonsden5]

You have one thing right: Ignoring the bullying is not going to help.

It does help my blood pressure though 

Are we misreading him? Maybe. But I doubt it. Then again, I am not sure what you are reading

I doubt it as well

But, I can say I have tried in many ways.
I tried talking to him nicely in PMs. No effect.
I tried talking tough to him in PMs. No effect.
I (and others) tried to oppose him in the forum more, even expose his behavior. No effect.

ditto
ditto
ditto
...and I'll add one more to the list. I have had many phone calls with him. Ne effect. Heck, I even sat with him and his wife over breakfast on one of their trips to near where I live where we discussed his ideas for the future of DVDP. Trust me, what you see on the forums is what is there.

I will say this. He truly does want the program to be the best DVD db in the world. It's too bad he can't be happy with having his personal db be everything he wants it to be and leave the master db to be "good enough" for the rest of the world.

Especially the last approach has one caveat: When opposing him (or even just trying to expose him) it is very easy to get mangled up in the action and "third party" watchers can't actually distinguish who's the bad guy! Tricky business.

Tricky business that I fail at miserably  Although I am better than I was a year ago.

The really ironic part is most who strongly oppose him are those of us who have had very close dealings with him. That should tell you something.


[soapbox]
I am 45 years old with three 20 something boys. I have coached more sports teams than I can count. I've sat on more sidelines then I can remember. Been scoutmaster. Was on the board of the Band Boosters in high school. Have been a manager in retail, project manager in construction as well as a superintendent, and even a vice president of a company at the last "real" job I had. In all my years I have never seen one individual do so much bullying (without any consequences) and do as much harm to an organization as I have seen here. It must simply be that Ken does not think the forum community is important to his overall business, and perhaps it isn't. I've read (as have you all I'm sure) that there are over 500,000 accounts registered with DVDP. If this is true the couple hundred people who frequent the forums and the few dozen who post regularly really don't account for much. It will catch up with him (Ken) someday IMO. Someone will come along and produce a software that rivals DVDP and have a nice place to discuss it to go along with it (cough cough ). Word will spread and people will flock to it.
[/soapbox]

[RossRoy]

We all stop posting and reacting there, people just walk away from the forums, new users scared away etc etc
Are we doing the right thing by ignoring one mans bullying and antagonistic antics, or are we all misreading him?

If the owners of the forum don't care enough to muzzle the bullies, why should we care? It's their business after all.

[lyonsden5]

Touti posted while I was composing.

I don't mean to be rude with anyone here but to be honest I don't understand why some of you still care so much when the owner of the company clearly doesn't.

For years now new contributors have been bullied by a handful of IWNL's (Idiots With No Life), the owner never did anything about it.  The IWNL's have threatened people, harassed them, blasted them constantly with no reactions whatsoever from the owner.  The IWNL's have pushed good contributors away either with their behavior or with coming up with unrealistic rules that make it so complicated to contribute that many people have decided to stop.

I was a good contributor once, I think I was a good asset for this database because I never botched my contributions, always double checked everything I added or changed before contributing it and I was contributing many new profiles in the Canada and Canada (Quebec) locality.  I also corrected many that had bad data.  When the new rules came out I decided to stop contributing because it just got too complicated, why would I make my life complicated to contribute to the database when I am a paying customer.

The IWNL's pushed me and many other away and the owner of the company clearly doesn't care........why should be ?

Not rude at all Touti. You are quite right I believe. Some of us are a bit thicker skulled though and think if we could just get the owner to see things for what they are then change might happen. I only need to be hit in the head 4 or 5 times with the 2x4 before it sinks in that things will not change. 


EDIT:
Sebastien replied while I was replying to Toutis reply that happened while I was replying to Achim so I thought I'd reply to sebastien in my reply to Touti.

You are correct as well.  See the part above abut how think my skull actually is

[Touti]

Sebastien replied while I was replying to Toutis reply that happened while I was replying to Achim so I thought I'd reply to sebastien in my reply to Touti.

No wonder you and the leader of the IWNL's can't understand each other 

[RossRoy]

Wow! There was a lot of cross replying to previous posts that had no replies until replied to 

[DJ Doena]

500,000 paid accounts or just accounts? If the first that would make a revenue of 15 million dollars. If that would be the case, why not hire programmers and moderators?

If if it's just accounts then the number doesn't tell you anything.

[m.cellophane]

But, I can say I have tried in many ways.
I tried talking to him nicely in PMs. No effect.
I tried talking tough to him in PMs. No effect.
I (and others) tried to oppose him in the forum more, even expose his behavior. No effect.

ditto
ditto
ditto
...and I'll add one more to the list. I have had many phone calls with him. Ne effect. Heck, I even sat with him and his wife over breakfast on one of their trips to near where I live where we discussed his ideas for the future of DVDP. Trust me, what you see on the forums is what is there.

ditto on all of the above except for the sitting with him at breakfast part. 

With the phone calls and PMs (both of which would come flooding in if I was "out of line") I felt like I wasn't posting as freely or being true to my opinions. It seemed like he was trying to control what I posted at all times. One step to the left or right would start the deluge, so I blocked his PMs and stopped answering his calls and now he pretty much screams at me whenever I post. Not sure which is worse really. 

I will say this. He truly does want the program to be the best DVD db in the world. It's too bad he can't be happy with having his personal db be everything he wants it to be and leave the master db to be "good enough" for the rest of the world.

I agree. He's completely sincere in his love for the program, but he can be pretty ruthless.

Regarding posts here asking why do we post there when the owner cares so little...that's a good point and one which I should consider more. I really love the program and like hanging out online with others who love it too. That means I should just hang out here instead; right? 

[Achim]

500,000 paid accounts or just accounts? If the first that would make a revenue of 15 million dollars. If that would be the case, why not hire programmers and moderators?

If if it's just accounts then the number doesn't tell you anything.

That number was mentioned at the times when it was still InterVocative. Upon inquiry we were still not told whether it was paid accounts or just free accounts (remember those...?). How many of those former free accounts have been transformed to paid accounts is anyone's guess

The problem with income I see: While there was an initial peak when all those people transferred from IVS, but after that Invelos will have to create a steady flow of new users, as only those create income. Loosing existing users does no harm, as they have paid already (I'd suppose this is where the "doesn't care" part gets interesting...) As long as there is enough new users regularly, replacing dropped out users as contributors, all will be fine.

I am constantly looking out for an alternative. I am in the Mac OS X market though. If only Delicious Library had a user built database; then again, maybe it just needs a fair chance by me. a) I could finally get rid of my attachment to DVDP and b) I could finally remove Windows from my computer. Only downside I see is that I'd miss phpDVDProfiler...

Regarding posts here asking why do we post there when the owner cares so little...that's a good point and one which I should consider more. I really love the program and like hanging out online with others who love it too. That means I should just hang out here instead; right? 

I like this better than what I had begun to think of, so I'll simply ditto it. 

[m.cellophane]

Loosing existing users does no harm, as they have paid already (I'd suppose this is where the "doesn't care" part gets interesting...) As long as there is enough new users regularly, replacing dropped out users as contributors, all will be fine.

That's the issue. Will new contributors replace dropped out users as contributors? It takes a lot of new users IMO to get a few good contributors. When someone drops out, it takes a while to fill the void. Skip's tastes are very mainstream and so I have not mourned his withdrawal from contributing.

I took some time off contributing and finally had to get myself back into the game because there were so many missing cast and crew lists on my recent purchases...it was driving me crazy.  Right now I'm backed up on 3 box sets of classic movies. There's a great contributor, synnerman, who buys much of the same stuff I do. Thankfully, he does everything but cast and crew...so I usually try to come behind him and fill that in. But the contributors are sparse right now on the fringe (classics, HiDef) of my collection. 

Try to change the capitalization of I, Robot and you'll have an angry mob though. 

[Jimmy]

That's the issue. Will new contributors replace dropped out users as contributors? It takes a lot of new users IMO to get a few good contributors. When someone drops out, it takes a while to fill the void. Skip's tastes are very mainstream and so I have not mourned his withdrawal from contributing.

I'm not sure that even the first time contributors will continue too. If they receive very critical PM when they don't follow the DVDP sacred rules (as I've read sometime on the forum), they will have what I consider a normal reaction : they will keep their work for themselves. Some users care about the database some don't and one day they will have no new buyers if the online database is useless (they will use another software who take the data from imdb, amazon, ...). I like the program that's why I continue to use it, but Ken will have to understand that if he doesn't act fast one day no more new sale will came. For us it means no more update and a lots of improvment can be done to DVDP.

 

[Najemikon]

I don't mean to be rude with anyone here but to be honest I don't understand why some of you still care so much when the owner of the company clearly doesn't.

For years now new contributors have been bullied by a handful of IWNL's (Idiots With No Life), the owner never did anything about it.  The IWNL's have threatened people, harassed them, blasted them constantly with no reactions whatsoever from the owner.  The IWNL's have pushed good contributors away either with their behavior or with coming up with unrealistic rules that make it so complicated to contribute that many people have decided to stop.

I was a good contributor once, I think I was a good asset for this database because I never botched my contributions, always double checked everything I added or changed before contributing it and I was contributing many new profiles in the Canada and Canada (Quebec) locality.  I also corrected many that had bad data.  When the new rules came out I decided to stop contributing because it just got too complicated, why would I make my life complicated to contribute to the database when I am a paying customer.

You should post that on Invelos. You'll get so many red (and probably green) zingers you'll think it's 5th November!
The IWNL's pushed me and many other away and the owner of the company clearly doesn't care........why should we ?

[m.cellophane]

That's the issue. Will new contributors replace dropped out users as contributors? It takes a lot of new users IMO to get a few good contributors. When someone drops out, it takes a while to fill the void. Skip's tastes are very mainstream and so I have not mourned his withdrawal from contributing.

I'm not sure that even the first time contributors will continue too. If they receive very critical PM when they don't follow the DVDP sacred rules (as I've read sometime on the forum), they will have what I consider a normal reaction : they will keep their work for themselves. Some users care about the database some don't and one day they will have no new buyers if the online database is useless (they will use another software who take the data from imdb, amazon, ...). I like the program that's why I continue to use it, but Ken will have to understand that if he doesn't act fast one day no more new sale will came. For us it means no more update and a lots of improvment can be done to DVDP.

 

Indeed. I had a contribution to vote on today that mentioned that the cast list is full of errors in the film credits. The user is contributing them as-credited and will change his personal data afterwards. He didn't share what the mistakes are.  But it's a shame that we must contribute known errors or nothing at all.

All of this rule worship comes from the old days when there were blind ping pong contributions changing the data each week. While the voting system would surely keep that problem at a minimum now, we have to live under rules which were created in a different time when we had no ability to evaluate contributions.

The SRP debate is a prime example. The rule was written to stop blind ping pong contributions...yet now we've seen that it can also be used to preserve incorrect data for all time. Anyone who advocates otherwise is a heretic.   

[Jimmy]

Try to change the capitalization of I, Robot and you'll have an angry mob though. 

Someone just did it, no angry mob but just four answer at this time 

I, Robot or i, Robot or I, ROBOT

[Touti]

Personally I would humbly try "I rub butt" just to see if it gets any YES vote.

[m.cellophane]

Personally I would humbly try "I rub butt" just to see if it gets any YES vote.

Could be the runaway winner!