A couple of points.
My browsers (I use Firefox AND Chrome to give me the best read on what forum members are seeing and experiencing) are set up to clear all caches each time they are closed. Everything. No automatic sign ins, no stored passwords, no remembered history or cookies. All gone. I do this for security, for stability of the programs, and to ensure that each time I open a link or a page it is not disrupted by something from past sessions.
On the machine used for moderation I have activated standard plug-ins and standard free protections because this is the most likely common setup used by the majority. I have not gone hunting for anything special. Just used the most popular for each browser. Again, this will show me what, if any, problems are being experienced by forum users.
It's not EVERY page. It has, historically, been a sufficient number of pages for me to begin to take action when it became clear that no one from Imagetwist would respond to my messages. Opening one page now wouldn't particularly make any difference if the history is anything to go by. This is why I proposed a hiatus on decisions so that your changes could be evaluated over time and in total, and not just on one page or one browsing session. We must be sure that the changes are consistent and long term and not just enough to shut us up for now.
As for Larry, he has been involved in these discussions for weeks and has never once mentioned you. To my knowledge none of the other image moderators are aware you are even a member here. Had they been then I'm sure they would have spoken to you directly. Interstingly I and other moderators for some time carried images in our post signatures similar to this
Given how prolific we are on the board, it's a little surprising you were unaware.
Beyond that I cannot comment except to say I tried on my own to start a dialogue with your company on several occasions and got nowhere.
I was not looking for instantaneous fixes then. I'm not looking for instantaneous fixes now. The removal of Imagetwist as a host here has been a point of discussion for months. I began swapping out your intrusive links on 2nd September 2015 when Spybot alerted me to yet another trojan buried in one of the bundled ads and my patience snapped.
I don't think you're evil. I think you set up a business model to make you money. I think you make agreements with ad companies who add scripts and code to your pages and you never properly examined what those scripts and codes were. I think that you arrogantly thought that no forum would ever stop you since the posters were getting their fractions of a penny per click. It never occurred to you that moderators on a forum would be sufficiently angry to remove you as a host, and now you see that as a very real possibility and you recognise that where one forum goes others usually follow.
Now here is something for you to think about. All this time I spend on getting things right for this forum. I am not paid a penny for any of it. I didn't even take up the offer of file host memberships. Nothing. I am one of the more prolific posters. I have never, ever, stored a single image on your host despite your "pay incentive" And why? Because the negatives outweigh that one positive and I will not put members at risk to make a few pennies for myself.
I have no stake in this game beyond the best possible forum as risk free as I can make it for all our members to enjoy. That is my responsibility and I take it seriously.
I try to be a resonable, sensible person, and look for compromise where I can. This is why I have suggested to moderators and administrators that we postpone action to evaluate your changes over a period and discuss it between us before taking that final step. In the meantime I am perfectly happy to discuss the matter with you to explore solutions, though I should in the interest of full disclosure make it clear that I am making our discussion available to all moderators.
That remains my best possible compromise position on this matter for now.
BOC
hp_imagetwist said:
Okay your experience has been bad with us i accept. I want you to please click a url of our right now. With both adblock OFF and ON.
I want you to share your experience on what you see right now. Please clean cookiee.
I accept i had 1 popup which was visible to adblock users from past 3 months cause adblock number was huge and it was affecting revenue since i was paying my affiliates for every visitor. BUT we removed that code 3-4 days ago before talking to you.
So i think your whole experience of forcing ad even with blocker is based on that which is removed and it won't go up. I removed it cause i came to know by a friend in ad network who make me understand that showing ad to a user who already uses adblock is worth nothing. They will not buy anything cause they already using adblock and it will make more harm then profit. So i removed it.
So 2 changes i made are: Removed ads for users running adblockers
Removed network popup. i hope removing "full page" ad will make things lot better.
About contacting us, I know you will not believe me but i never saw any msg from you or anyone regarding this. When i came to know 2-3 days ago that some mod is deleting links, I contacted you. I did not knew that there was a plan to remove us but i contacted you at very moment that user contacted me through live chat.
I know you think i am some evil or something but trust me i have always tried to be friendly with everyone, Help webmasters out, listen to their complaints, I even listen to a small blog owner if he wants me to ban someone. I have kept larry and many other webmaster on my skype, why ? To video chat with them ?
No, so that i can insta listen to their problem and insta fix it. That's the reason i asked yours. I have told larry many times in past that if you need me to ban any spammer or anyone he can tell me. He even contacted me in past just once and i fixed it in minutes. I always though if a mod have any problem, he will contact me through larry or here on boards ,Thats why i am registered here from years.
Anyway that's all from my side. I know you will think i made up most of this, but i am exactly you want me to. you will find me on every board, most of the popular image host won't even care to do that.
Regards.
