Automattic: We Change the Rules When We Get Caught
In short, guy has wp.com account, new employee joins with the same name and wants that account name. Automattic takes it (supposedly without notifying current account holder). Guy gets mad and shouts at Automattic. Automattic points to their FAQ’s which they changed overnight to show what they were doing was ok. There’s probably more to the story. I could care less. I just find the whole thing funny. Another example of questionable practices on behalf of Automattic and WordPress leader, Matt.
Read Wank’s take on it and the original thread where the complaint arose.
Even if the whole thing isn’t true (which it seems to be true), their handling of it was a complete joke.
Sounds about right.
Our only binding policy is that in the Terms of Service. On the FAQ I just added a section to clarify what some people saw as a conflict.
The addition was basically a pointer to the TOS, which hasn’t changed since we launched it over a year ago.
Well, there you have it. Does that excuse how the username issue was handled? Absolutely not, but at least it was in the TOS that they could take your name whenever they felt like it with no warning.
Nice cover up move, Matt… if the audience was at the kindergarten level! “Our FAQ is not a binding policy” – your level of legal knowledge is as low as your morals! And what’s your TOS – “all your blogs are belong to us” – we can do anything we want with your blogs without giving an explanation. This is just great!
Most Terms of Service are similar: the site can do whatever they want, whenever they want. Most specifically include statements that they can update the TOS without notifying you. I haven’t bothered to read the WP TOS, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it said the same. Such things have a long tradition, and they’re written the way they are because that specific construction has been found to hold up well in courts of law. The TOS is to protect the company, not the users.
As for what happened, it’s “he said, she said” at this point. It’s my opinion that automattic has handled it poorly, but who knows how I might have handled it were I in the driver’s seat.
Yes, the ToS is pretty standard for the industry. Their server, their rules, and they can change the rules or kick you off whenever they feel like it. Anyone who doesn’t keep an up-to-date backup of anything they post on wordpress.com is a fool.
Guys, I know the ToS is standard. If I had such service, I would have similar ToS, too.
This is not the issue though. The issue is that Matt doesn’t have the morals that would stop him from doing crazy things abusing the standard ToS as an excuse. Yahoo, Microsoft, Google and Movable Type probably have similar clauses, which is understandable – nobody wants to get sued. But I can never imaging Sergey Brin, Jerry Yang, even the young Kevin Rose, for example, giving my account to an employee!
This is such a farse, but unfortunatly, Matt does not have the value system to recognize it as such! To him, all they did is 120% right! Even if he knows Nikolay Bachiyski did wrong, Matt’s not clever enough to find a diplomatic solution. He made things a lot worse than they ever were, failed several attempts to cover up, lied that I was offered free upgrades, tried scare tactics by calling “racist” and failed in many other pritimive ways to make me shut up. No, I will not shut up. I strongly believe I was treated unfairly, most people think I am right and Matt should grow up and learn to confess.
Shep, it hurts that you see it that way, because I have much respect for both you and, of course, Matt, or I wouldn’t work for him.
I feel bad for Nikolay Kolev being so hostile about an account that he never once logged into, but maybe I’ve also been there when I wanted to have all the ‘foolswisdom’ on the web.
I’m sure Matt is an okay guy. Heck, he likes jazz, so that gives him at least one point in my book. It’s nothing personal with him, just the way he does things in the WP community.
The way he does things in the WP communty? The way that he has led it to be the most installed popular blogging software? Accessible to everyone else at WordPress.com?
We all make lots of mistakes. Here it was probably actually my own, but Matt takes responsibility for his team. The best we can do is learn from our mistakes. I don’t think it helps trying to answer for them in a hostile discussion.
WordPress wouldn’t be used by millions without Matt or any of many contributors — if not for you! You selfless helping on IRC and elsewhere is a huge part of why WordPress is great. I’m so happy to be part of it!
WordPress didn’t get where it is by Matt and Matt alone. It was by the passionate community that surrounded it. That community, the ones that built WordPress to what it is now, is starting to abandon it because of things like Browse Happy, Links, the Default Theme, WP Database Backup, and a lot more from what I’ve seen in the past. My primary place for working with the community is the #wordpress IRC channel, but I know there were lots of discussions on the mailing lists about these types of things and bottom line is, it comes down to what Matt wants, not what the community wants. Owen says it better in this comment
It’s not true that I haven’t logged into my account since I opened it. I logged in a few months ago, but I’ve never posted any article since I opened the account.
Yes, Matt is an okay guy. He’s not okay as a leader of an open-source social software. He’s tactics are more appropriate to other areas.
Why I still don’t have my account back? – Because Matt does not want to admit fault. He’s always right, he does not apologize.
He lied about my situation (several times), he tried to twist the truth (but using as reason for suspension something that happened after the suspension), he called me racist, etc. I’ve never seen any leader of a major open-source project to use such means just to avoid saying “sorry, we messed up!”
BTW, the hijacker also is not using the stolen account to post anything. He just wanted to put his face on the “nikolay” name, that’s it! He got tired of me following up faster on Web 2.0 developments and securing the “nikolay” username everywhere. He tried to hijack both my Twitter and FeedBurner accounts and I have a proof of it. When he didn’t succeed with Twitter, he sent me an email saying – “Will you please give me your Twitter account?” I can understand that. What I can’t understand why Matt is backing up such act twisting arms. Actually, I can now understand – he’s just the same kid as Nikolay Bachiyski. When a kid likes a toy and manages to gets in his/her arms – just try to get it back and watch the scene after that! It’s the same situation here!
I was busy with some developments in my life last couple of weeks and didn’t have time to pay much attention to this, but I am not giving up. Now, there are a lot more materials backing my cause.
About the hostility – no, I wasn’t the one who started the hostility. Nikolay Bachiyski in his last email (in Bulgarian) started it, especially when he wrote – “You think that by emailing and phoning Matt you created problems for me – no, Matt is on my side”. This is when I realized the ugliness of the situation. Until that point I thought Matt was not getting the calls/emails from me.
WordPress.org != Matt
The endless number of plugins/themes is what pushed WP so far, of course, also the endless contributors to the core platform, too, which I hear are getting very frustrated with Matt and his childish and behavior.
Having other open-source projects supporting the same themes/plugins and having migration scripts will very quickly be the end of WP. Even of WP.com when people realized that what’s happened to me can happen with them, too.
shep, I don’t think Matt or anyone else acts like it was/is all Matt.
Sure, he has made mistakes, everyone does.
Blogging is much better for having Matt around, and I’m extremely biased as I get to work full time on open source software.
@Skippy it does say that basically they can do what they want.
Matt seems to make a lot of mistakes and trying to cover that with a great number of lies. Maybe that’s because he doesn’t pay attention to what is occuring around him. Seems to be running off a lot of folks who used to help out.
Yes, the FAQ said that a blog couldn’t be reused and yes the ToS overrides that. Matt and Lloyd forget to mention that the ToS is fairly new and probably wasn’t around when Nikolay created his account. And, yes, the FAQ now says that they won’t take a way a blog that has content. Why does it trouble me though to believe that when what was there originally was ignored?
The bit about the FAQ not being a binding policy: Actually it is used by the Automattic staff as a binding policy. How do I know? Because of all those times folks asked about Adsense in the forums. There is nothing in the ToS that prohibits adverts on a wp.com blog. This has been pointed out many times to staff and their response has been to point folks to the FAQ on the subject and not the ToS.
Sorry Matt. Can’t have it both ways. It either is or is not a binding policy.
I’d await a response from Matt but we all know he has little respect for those trying to cover his ass all the time.