Caveat Emptor et Lector: It's Going to the ... Never Mind
Oct 27 '01 (Updated Oct 30 '01)
The Bottom Line Managerial incompetence and hubris have come home to roost. Cerberus is on their heels. Don't be suckered into joining, or using the place to shop, until heads roll at corporate.
Buyer and reader, beware. It is time you were warned away from an abysmally bad product: Epinions itself.
Wait, though. Does it matter, any of it?
Hello, there. Perhaps you are an Internet user who has just stumbled across this site. A shopper, let us say, in the market for a pick-'em-up truck or some fly tackle or a new gas range or the collected works of that fine Southern gentleman, Walker Percy.
Or perhaps you are a relative newcomer to this site who is or had been thinking of joining it.
Or again, you might be a long-time member of this (listen closely and you may just hear a smidgen of chicken-fried irony) happy little community, who is wondering what in the Sam Hill is going on here these days.
Allow me to introduce myself.
My name is Markham Shaw Pyle. I used to be a lawyer. I have mostly reformed. I am a writer: an historian, a writer of screenplays that have won juried awards, an indefatigable scribbler intoxicated by the miracles of our common tongue. I joined this site in October of 1999, shortly after its public launch, and after two years count as one of the greyer heads around here (though actually, it's the balding that frets me most).
For most of that time, I was designated an 'Expert' a title later replaced by 'Advisor' first, and from my first months, in the Books category, and subsequently in the Food and Drink / Gourmet category as well. A few months ago, I was stripped of those titles (which are now called 'Editor' and 'Top Reviewer'), what time many of the other old timers were likewise tossed overboard. Now, please note that not a few of the best and brightest were kept on as 'Editors' and 'Top Reviewers,' and entirely deservedly. It's not a badge of shame yet. On the other hand, a new crop of 'Editors' and 'Top Reviewers' were put in place who were a bit, shall we say, lacking. In one case at least one was a known plagiarist.
And? So?
Stick around, kid. You may learn something.
When I joined the site there was a rare collegiality to it. Oh, there were problems and bugs and kinks in the hose, but there was civility and a sense of community, there was a sense of purpose and vision and enthusiasm.
Why, even members of the management team were (with, even then, a few exceptions) accessible, honest, and willing to listen.
That was then. This is now. And whatever was once here has been shot to rag dolls.
As I write this, longtime wheel-horses of this site are tearing it to shreds over management's latest boneheaded, Merkle-esque blunder.
But does it matter? After all, as I write this, the first game of the Series is playing out. (Lordy. I can remember when Craig Counsell was just a rook with the Florida Fish Sticks and got his first Series ring. Of course, I'm old enough that I remember Luis Gonzales as a light-hitting Astro, too.)
And the Series, after all, is this year not merely the Series. Against the backdrop of the world since the atrocity of 11 September, the Series and any other assertion of normalcy, of life being lived regardless, bloodied but unbowed, is an act of glorious defiance.
Glorious defiance through slogging on in the common round of life.
Back in Rockbridge County, Virginia, the South River Fire District Crew is getting ready to have its rifle, shotgun, and bow raffle. That's in addition to the weekly horse equipment auction, on Thursdays. Folks in Fairfield, Brownsburg, even Rockbridge Baths, Zack, Goshen, and Jump are doubtless excited about that. Down on the Buffalo, meanwhile, in another corner of the County, it should be about time for the Effinger VFD to have its turkey shoot and cookout.
Life, in Rockbridge County, goes on in its eternal, autumnal round, and neither war nor terror nor aught else is liable to daunt it.
In the Piney Woods of Deep East Texas, the Groveton Timberfest and the Barbecue Cook-Off is set. It follows the East Texas Deerfest in Hemphill, so there may be venison. (The Deerfest is the same day as San Jacinto's Sassafras Festival, though, and the Sweet Potato Festival in Golden
.) Then comes the Heritage Syrup Festival in Henderson, and the Indian Springs VFD Chili Cook-Off.
The good people of Deep East Texas are not deterred from their lives by any threat.
From events at the Virginia Horse Center in Rockbridge County to Cutting Horse Trials in Henderson, Texas, life goes on, the length and breadth of the Southland over. It is autumn, after all. Friday nights ring with the reverberate crash of pad and helmet on every small-town gridiron, whether the Groveton Indians are taking on the Colmesneil Bulldogs, or Rockbridge High is locked in struggle with the Fort Defiance squad. It is a time for hog-killin's and apple-butter-making, for the preparations for the Episcopal Church bazaar (plum puddings to your left, port and sherry preserves on your right), for ribbon-cane and sorghum syrup, molasses and pecans and taffy pulls and by-God Texas barbecue. For ham, and ham sausage, and persimmons with the first frost having worked its magic.
This is a time deliberately to ignore terrorists, to show them a bland and fearless mien. Is this any time, then, to give a damn about a two-bit website?
The answer, oddly enough, is yes.
In part, this is so for the same reason that, Yes, this is a time to get excited about baseball rather than bombs, Arizona's pitching rather than anthrax, Mike Mussina rather than Muslim fundamentalism, Bernie Williams rather than bin Laden.
But there are deeper reasons than a mere assertion that life goes on regardless of war and rumors of war.
In large measure, it's a matter of honor.
Anyone hapless shopper, site newbie, old veteran who has stumbled across this site this weekend has seen strange things and fearful portents. And a lot of canine references, in a Write-Off format.
What is going on, you may well ask.
Within six months, at most, of my joining this site, it had begun to go appreciably downhill. And not because of me, I hasten to add. The site was increasingly flooded with semi- and sub-literate drivel (and drivellers): obviously, the membership base had to expand, but a sort of Gresham's Law was in effect, and the tide of reviewing that had to exceed itself merely to rise to mediocrity was swamping the good newcomers.
The site management was unresponsive.
With the dimwits came the thieves and the brutes. Rating circles, scripts, and outright fraud were siphoning off the pool of royalty monies.
The site management was unresponsive.
The brutes spawned after their base kind. Articles were posted on how to rape and plunder, or advocating child molestation, racial bigotry, and genocide.
The site management was unresponsive.
The community, in those still-collegial days, was not. From very early in the year 2000, if not before, the Experts (as we were called then) and site leaders, the most prolific and the most trusted and the best-regarded writers, came together often to confer, and to urge upon the site changes that would improve its function and stop its bleeding.
The site management was guess what unresponsive.
Unresponsive, did I say? Heavens, if only it were mere unresponsiveness. They reacted then, and since, and consistently, they have always reacted, as if the writers who maintain them ought not dare address them. They responded as if they were the O'Haras of Tara and a delegation of field hands were tracking mud in the parlor and daring to advise them on how to manage the plantation.
And now, by the Lord, they have reaped a little less than two years later what they had sown. A Write-Off has erupted into a riot.
That is something I never thought to see. On 6 January, 2000, Paul Frye (the brilliant sweetpaulie) and Laura Winzeler (the divine Leah) hosted the first 'Cyber Taste-Off' in the Wines category. On 21 March of that year, Chris Conti (the redoubtable caconti) and I extended the concept to Books, and on 29 March, Chris and I came up with the term 'Write-Off.'
Need I say that the vehicle, the gimmick if you must, the whole concept and format swiftly degenerated into a sump of abuse? It even spawned a click- and ratings-circle fraud, a Write-Off on a non-existent CD by a fictional band. (For those not familiar with an all-too-familiar practice around here, a 'click circle' or 'ratings circle' some of the crustier old hard cases amongst us add the suffix 'jerk' is a device whereby members, without using any critical judgment or intellectual honesty, conspire to read and give the highest available ratings to any drivel their co-conspirators post. Whoring is bad enough. Whoring for a copper penny is beneath contempt.) Even the best of ideas, in the environment of this site, are perverted to serve the worst of ends.
The site management say it with me now, brethren an' sister'n! Lemme hear an 'Ayyymen!' was unresponsive.
Let me let y'all in on some hitherto unpublicized information. For almost a year now, many folks have tried with might and main to vindicate the potential of this site, to drive back the barbarians, to restore its purpose and its earlier collegiality. Much of March, 2000, was taken up with our correspondence with Mr Tolia's predecessor. In all that time, even unto this day, the upper tier of management has been unhelpful, positively hostile, and regularly, um, disingenuous.
One quick note, before I go on. In the transcript of the 25 October 'chat' that Eps management has posted in the Member Center, at http://www.epinions.com/member/?show=news&sub=102501transcript, you will find the following exchange:
mshawpyle: Giv[en] the way the site's going, why should any of us stay? What incentive is left?
Nirav Tolia: Hello, mshawpyle.
Nirav Tolia: I am sorry you feel so frustrated, truly I am. Why would anyone here want to have a corp [sic] of their most valuable contributors angry (or in this case, raging)?
Nirav Tolia: Let me answer your questions two ways:
[material deleted]
Nirav Tolia: I know you all are very angry you make that very clear to me personally, and in the personal attacks you send during the chat.
I immediately shot back with a demand (no, you won't see it in the transcript: this was a moderated i.e., censored chat) that Mr Tolia immediately clarify that those remarks about 'personal attacks' were not directed to me. The moderator, Alexis, responded that they clearly were not so directed, and that no confusion should result. No, you won't see that in the transcript either: it was, surprise, a 'private message.' Thank the Lord I too can do screen grabs.
I have sent Mr Tolia an email demanding that he make this publicly clear by end of business on Monday, 29 October. Let's see if he does.
AND BY GOD, THE MAN DID. HE CAME THROUGH, AND GAVE ME FULL LICENSE TO SPREAD THAT WORD. THINGS ARE LOOKING UP.
Because although I have said harsh and deserved things about the organization qua organization (I may hold 'first usage' rights on the term 'trained chimps of Brisbane'), I have no more descended to ad hominem attack on individuals than I have succumbed to the temptations of canine scatological references in the current dust-up. We'll get back to that.
Oh. And a quick word about 'chimps.' Some people seem unable to distinguish between that synecdoche for the organization, when it commits a baserunning rock or overthrows the cutoff man or drops an infield fly, and the individuals. That's akin to believing I have personal animus against any given IRS employee, as a person, just because (like every redblooded American) I refer to the IRS as the 'Infernal Revenue,' and detest its very existence. The origin of the term - I ought not have to point out - is in the old 'infinite number of monkeys with the infinite number of typewriters' gag, and refers, obviously, to the organization's remarkable ability to operate in ways Chaos Theory never contemplated. It further derives of course from the common feeling that such things as auto-responder emails from Abuse and Community Care would be better handled by hiring a 'sketchily trained chimp': one of the great problems the site has is its decision to fire humans (yes, I understand the concept of overhead, thankyouverymuch) and try to replace them with script. But I no more make a personal attack on an Eps staffer or manager by this phrase directed to the company as an entity than I would slander a particular civil servant by referring to the IRS as the genetically-engineered cross between bloodsucking weasels and tax-fattened hyenas.
Back to the background. For right nearly a year now, many of the oldest and many of the objective best of the writers on this site have made reasoned suggestions for improvements, for the better combating of abuse, for the promotion of the site to the benefit of all concerned. Former print and online editors, historians, published journalists, published authors, published academics, lawyers, and computer and 'Net company execs, all volunteered time, resources, and years of accumulated wisdom to management. We yep: we offered to head off the problems that are the published and public raison d'etre site management gives for the site's current difficulties and need to redo its revenue model. We volunteered for no immediate compensation, merely to raise a spring tide of views that would lift everyone's boats, to promote the site, assist in its restructuring, increase its sponsor and advertiser bases. We stood ready to present a comprehensive plan, to work with the VC people, to hustle revenue for the site as a whole....
We were shown the door. The tradesmen's entrance, at that.
Instead, the Lords Proprietors were running the place. It was theirs, after all, and they Knew What They Were Doing.
Well, they have run it. Right into the ground. And they've done it on your nickel.
One question I've seen recur this weekend is, Are they the site management fools, or merely venal? The logician in me pauses to note this is a false dichotomy: folly and dishonesty are far from mutually exclusive, and indeed are often linked.
But the main point is that this is to ask the wrong question. It's not necessary to impute bad motives to bad acts.
The best example here would be the site's vaunted Web-O'-Trust (not to be confused with the Webbo Truss, for the herniated). There are plenty of folks who have lost their place on my WoT, never gained a place on my WoT, or gone straight to the seventh circle of my Distrust list, through venality, and many who have suffered the same fate due to folly. But there are vastly more whom I do not 'trust' in that sense not because I distrust their morals or even their intellect, but because they have demonstrated bad judgment.
It is in that sense that not even the most abject cheerleader for what this site has become (a smoking ruin, to be blunt) can reasonably suggest that Epinions as a website, or the people who run it, are worthy of trust, or have any credibility.
For a year now, although there has remained a hard core of writers who would have adorned the pages even of Harold Ross's New Yorker or today's TLS, the average quality of work on this site has been such that confessing an affiliation with it has been a positive embarrassment.
Yet some of us slogged on, unwilling to give up on its potential despite the grubbiness of its actuality.
I've seen it suggested that no one here had any business writing 'for the money' (I hold, with Dr Johnson, that none but a blockhead ever wrote for anything save money); but certainly we wrote for compensation, not ego. In my case and that of many others, that compensation was that we were licensing one stick in the bundle of rights all authors have, namely the stick of licensing exclusive online rights. In so doing, we did not forfeit ownership of our work, we gave up no other rights, and God help any drooling idiot who thinks this place can be run without the content we all have provided. For most of us, the rates were a pittance, yes, but acceptable for one stick out of the bundle; after all, my book reviews, though they have an 'evangelical' purpose of getting people to read great books, are simply a byproduct of my main work, in a form not particularly saleable elsewhere. And for the serious and professional writers, this site acts as a set of clippings.
It's also been suggested though not by too many people that the writers have no one to blame but themselves for the site's failures, loss of revenue, and other alleged grounds for cutting pay and arbitrarily changing the User Agreement. This minority view is that by writing well and at length the reviewers have created literary jewels that are of no use to the browsing consumer. I merely note, first, that that may apply to toaster reviews a point you wandering would-be shoppers, and would-be members, may want to consider but people who like to read books, say, tend to be (guess what) readers, not put off by a review that exceeds 50 syllables; second, that the truly brief reviews tend to be misspelled, subliterate drivel, so that hardly helps; and thirdly, again in terms of books and to an extent hooch, Amazon has yet to turn a profit, but ad rates for The New York Times Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, Military History Quarterly, PW, Kirkus, and most wine mags are stratospheric
and driven precisely by in-depth, 'literary' reviews.
So what do we know so far about Epinions? That its purpose and plan are so inchoate after two years of operation that no one agrees on what the hell they are; that they consistently engage in 'worsening through improvement,' schlimmerbessering, even though as Bonaparte said it was more important that a commander be lucky than good; that a ponderable portion of its content is inutile dreck; and that its management's judgment is stunningly poor. Do you still want to use it or belong to it?
The latest dust-up that has some of our best and brightest many of them the least likely firebrands imaginable crying havoc and letting slip the, um, dogs of war, is the site's decision, carried out like a thief in the night, with all the guilty furtiveness of the Colts sneaking out of Baltimore, to disable, for an indeterminate period, the authors's right to edit and delete what even the site admits is the authors's own sole property.
I cast no aspersions on the characters of the site's management. Their actions, however, are contemptible. This action, however long it lasts or how swiftly it is reversed - as, of 29 October, it seems (for now) to have been, is an implicit assertion of ownership over the authors's intellectual property. Conversion, in fact. It also utterly contradictory to the mantra in which this site has long taken refuge whenever presented with a complaint of abuse, even if the complaint concerns a pedophile's vile outpourings: that they are 'a platform only, and not a publisher.' That was horse manure all along, but it certainly estops them from the actions they have now taken, in depriving authors who licensed online rights to display their work from any control over it as its owners.
This site has never responded to most, legitimate complaints of the grossest abuse by the most appalling peckerwood mudsills. And what a judgment has befallen them. Management has consistently, whether intentionally or negligently, treated its content providers without whom they would be flogging newspapers on street corners as indentured servants, at best. And what a judgment has befallen them. The people we laughingly refer to as 'in charge' here have invariably made the worst advised of all possible choices in changing this site (remember the book clubs, anyone? They came up like the grass after a rain, and like the grass, they flourished but a day and were then cast into the oven). They may all be honest, sweet, well-intentioned, book-learned, and kind to their mommies but with such abysmal judgment, are they trustworthy?
And what a judgment has befallen them.
Suddenly, the highest revenue categories are - or were for a weekend - filled with reviews by some of the most trusted reviewers on this site, all engaged in, as we say down home, tearing the site a new rectum. Unfortunately, a number of folks neither well-regarded nor widely trusted nor particularly trustworthy seized the moment as well, but such is the nature of popular insurrection. Many of the initial reviews were scatological, off-topic, and (literally) bestial in a certain sense. They were also, for just those reasons, often blindingly funny and written in the most satisfying explosion of superheated vitriol: rib-dislocatingly funny in the way Tom Sharpe and Randy Newman can be funny.
As I have said consistently, I reprove what that Write-Off inevitably became, but I understand it; whereas I reprove without reservation the provocation on the site's part that invoked it.
And the petard on which the engineers who run this site were hoist was that these reviews could not be deleted or edited until as was precisely the demand of the authors of these reviews the site reverses itself - as, on 29 October, it seems to have done - on taking away the edit and delete options.
What you did not see, by the way, is my participation in the canid ranting and, um, dogging the site, profanely. Not that profanity is alien to me: the Law, even more than the Army, has done remarkable things to my vocabulary, and I could out-cuss a mule-skinner. And not because I don't feel as strongly outraged as my colleagues who are engaged in that form of protest-cum-street-theater (God. The Sixties were bad enough when they premiered. I don't need syndicated reruns). Not because I care what management might think: they long since forfeited that sort of consideration, and their acts of the past week have ratified that to hell and gone.
Nope. It's simply that I can do the same thing here in my own way. And that I have (as the site does not) too much regard for my own name to have it associated with saying that the site commits perverse acts upon canines, whether such association be for a day or forever. (And Mr Boo the Lab and Miz Sid the Staffordshire lead a very sheltered existence in my house, thank you.) I understand what the EBD write-off is about, and I support the ends. We must all make our own judgments as to the means, and what I don't say is wrong at all for such friends as Ken, Curtis, and Amy and again, I am on their side here would be wrong for me.
(This piece originally contained errors, typos, lapsi clavi that required errata in the comments: after all, as was the whole point, I could when I first posted it no longer edit my own intellectual property, thanks to These People* in Brisbane. And unlike other folks's contributions on the recent disasters here, this essay will not be coming down after the site has released - as it seems for now to have done - its hostages, i.e., our work.)
When I started here, all was fresh and new. I am now ashamed of what this site has become. Even its usefulness as a bully pulpit is ended. I am embarrassed by what the management has done, and appalled that I ever referred friends to what has become a disgrace and a dump.
Even now, late on the afternoon of 29 October, with the edit and delete buttons at least temporarily on, there is no victory. Not in any meaningful sense.
Without fanfare or notice, the management seems to have restored - at least for now - what they ought never have taken: the effective exercise of ownership over my and your intellectual property. Well and good. Very well and very good. But what they have not restored and may never be able to restore is the warp and woof of the fabric of trust they so rashly tore to shreds.
For one thing, as a critical look at the October 'chat' transcript will reveal, the edit/delete crisis was the merest bagatelle in the whole credibility gap hereabouts, a gap that has widened with gathering rapidity for at least a year.
And leaving aside the site management's credibility vis-a-vis its content providers - a matter many casual shoppers might think (wrongly, but they might) irrelevant to their experience here, profound problems remain.
Item: the database, in wines, in books, in music, is woefully outdated. And nothing is done.
Item: the site is still polluted by the presence of members - 'writers,' God help us, in some dirt-basic sense - whose purpose here is to advocate the rape, torture, and killing of children, or to incite racial hatred and genocide. And nothing is done.
Item: a ponderable quantity - if not a plurality - of the writing at this site is neither a pleasure to read nor of the least use to the consumer. Appreciable numbers of reviews, if you can call them that, are wilfully wrong, hackwork, or are plagiarized, or are painfully evidently written by someone who has never held the reviewed product in her hands for five seconds. And there remain reviewers - if you can call them that - who are intellectually (or just plain common-law) dishonest, dishonorable, and deceitful. And nothing is done.
This is why the restoration of our control over our intellectual property that we licensed - but did NOT sell to this site is so important. Firstly, because it was a simple matter of honor. Secondly, because it involved significant property rights. Thirdly, because only through these functions can any of the faults on the writers's side of the equation be redressed. And fourthly, because it is not enough in itself to cure all the problems on the site's side of the equation, and the ability to remove one's work from an environment that has become an utter swamp is as important as it gets.
So. You were thinking of shopping here? Joining here? Writing here, God help you?
Well. This is an advice site that reviews, inter alia, websites, itself included. So let me give you a word of advice.
Run like hell.
Caveat emptor, caveat lector, et cave canem, folks. Reader or buyer beware
of the dog. And to the dogs, of course, is precisely where this place is headed.
Run faster. Run. Git 'em, Dan!**
________________________
* General R. E. Lee's habitual euphemism for the enemy.
** Randy Newman, Birmingham
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Epinions.com ID:
mshawpyle
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 - Top 500 |
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Member: Markham Shaw Pyle, JD
Location: Houston, Texas
Reviews written: 539
Trusted by: 391 members
About Me:
Historian, baseballing bon vivant, Boll Weevil, W&L man; and the Walter Mitty of field sports
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