Account warnings

Robert W wrote on 9/23/2008, 4:41 AM
Dear Sony,

I have been in bed for the last few of days. Unfortunately Vegas went mental on me and I spent a few days working far too many hours to resolve an issue for a client. I did not really need that.

I had an appointment for an eye test on Saturday. When I got there they refused to carry out the test as I they quite rightly said I was incapable of completing it as my eyes were so bloodshot I could hardly see and I could not keep them open for more than half a second. I subsequently had a massive migraine and was violently ill.

So I just got myself out of bed and get across to my computer and check my business emails. Hey what do I find, an email from Sony. Is it them writing to me asking me if they can help me with any of the problems I have been having? Are they offering to let me have Betas or feed directly back to the development team. No it isn't:

"This email is to inform you that the Sony Creative Software forum administrator has placed a warning on your forum account. The details and reasons are listed below:

A number of members have taken objection to one of your posts. Using a medical condition (cretinism) to describe deletion of a simple forum thread is little much. Should this beavior continue, you will be banned from posting on this forum.

In the future, let's stick to the spirit of these forums: sharing workflow ideas with others and pointing out potential product issues.

Remember, many different people read these posts. While something may not come across as bad to you, it just might be highly offensive to others. Please find ways to use netural langauge to show passion about your posts."

First of all, I do not recall using the term "cretinism". I used the term "cretinous" which is an adjective that means "very stupid". It does not have a medical implication.

Secondly, if you do a search for the much less ambiguous "retard" you will find a number of posts that use the phrase in an offensive context, yet these appear to be acceptable.

So in short, if you are actually reading these posts to make your pathetic little jibes at your own userbase who are actually working their domes off to bring the coins in, why not try and actually address some of the problems? Very simple. Then all the things you don't like wont appear there, and you will not have to try and in shoehorn complaints about totally average everyday adjectives in order to remove salient observations.

I shall be expecting a phone call from your team today to explain to me exactly what the issue is here and why precisely your developers are finding it so difficult to produce software that is not riddled with stability issues.

Kind Regards

Comments

blink3times wrote on 9/23/2008, 5:35 AM
You see... it's this kind of stuff that gets you into trouble. This isn't a blog where you can enter your personal feelings (crude or otherwise) at will. It's a Vegas forum where we discuss editing, video successes, and failures, various problem issues, work-arounds... etc.

Calling the SCS boys, and/or Vegas stupid (or inferring it) is not in anybodies best interest. We all get frustrated at times... myself included, but as I learned... and as you SHOULD.... tone it down a little. Phrases like "pathetic little jibes" need not exist.

I KNEW sooner or later Sony would receive complaints against you.... not that I did (it's not my style).... but then I can't exactly say it wasn't deserved.

Tone it down.... more logic, and less feeling.... otherwise they'll ban you completely.
Robert W wrote on 9/23/2008, 7:13 AM
No blink, this is blatant. How contrived can you get to call "cretinism" a medical insult, when i never said it, and it's derivatives are commonly phrases used more often in a context which has no medical connotative whatsoever.

How come they picked on my posts in particular, yet let all unquestionably tasteless insults such as "retard" float about on this board? How come they could make the effort to supposedly moderate their own board, but never actually respond to anything I said? What kind of effort would they need to make to find my posts yet ignore any of the points I had made?

What is more I never used the phrase to describe the thread being deleted, i used it to describe your backwards unquestioning support of Sony's neglect of it's users. So if you did not have a problem with it as you said, then who did?

It is flannel mongery. And just for clarity, that is mongery as in the iron working kind, but with flannels, not and insult on any kind of medical condition.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 9/23/2008, 8:23 AM
You see... it's this kind of stuff that gets you into trouble. This isn't a blog where you can enter your personal feelings (crude or otherwise) at will.

Others do it, why can't he? he's right, how many people come here to nothing but piss & moan about vegas & sony but don't care about getting results, they just want to piss & moan. I'd use the 3rd word in that phrase but from the sounds of it the forum is full of easily offended 7 year olds.
PeterWright wrote on 9/23/2008, 8:23 AM
Robert, as you said yourself, you are sick and seemingly not in a good position to make sound judgements.

I don't remember your using the word "cretinous", but if you did it is certainly offensive - it doesn't simply mean stupid, it refers to unfortunate people who are mentally retarded and deformed as a result of thyroid deficiency.

If you can't see this, please do yourself a favour and rest up till you feel better. You sometimes sound like you could be a valuable member of this forum, but you seem determined to sabotage this possibility.
Robert W wrote on 9/23/2008, 8:48 AM
Peter, I may be unwell but my judgment is not affected. The phrase "cretinous" quite clearly in colloquial use has no relation to any medical condition, and the way 99% of people use it has no relation to it either. "Cretinous" is clearly defined in any dictionary as being slang for "an idiot".

It must have taken them a long long time to go picking through my posts and finding the most obtuse thing they could contrive to be an insult while at the same time amnaging to avoid any kind of response to any of the myriad of salient points myself and others made about the frailties of this software on this board.

So if they want to be the itty bitty picky choosy people, then hang on a minute, why don't they actually come here and explain to us why so many of the problems we are having have not been addressed?

Apparently I should "...stick to the spirit of these forums: sharing workflow ideas with others and pointing out potential product issues." Ok everybody we shall all come here in the land of the bunnies where we complain about things and bound off to our little holes and never let it bother us that much because we have to share our magical workflows and discuss the "potential" issues. Ohhhhh maybe my Vegas has potentially crashed when rendering a .mov once again. No, not a "blast". No not a "sugar". Just a carrot in your gob while the magical Sony people prance around and slap themselves on their back for what a great job they have done containing your complaints rather that addressing them. Don't worries about your 18,000 offspring not being fed, you need to make sure the nice people down at Sony get all the leeway they need.

I insist that Sony make a statement of some kind addressing these issues and they stop hiding behind pathetic little contrived transgressions that I have supposedly made. If anyone should be insulted it is me.
Coursedesign wrote on 9/23/2008, 9:22 AM
Robert,

This is their forum, they get to do whatever they want with it.

I get the sense that you are letting your physical pain speak.

That is something I'm familiar with, having done it myself occasionally.

We all do it when stubbing a toe or hammering a thumb or whatever it may be, but when our pain is longer lasting we have to watch out for ourselves lest we don't communicate meaningfully.

There are whiners in every forum, but I see much less of it in the purely professional forums (Grammar Police: this is English, not Latin, so we don't need to say "fora"), probably because there is more at stake there.

If making-a-living pros don't get the answers they need, they may not be able to pay the rent. This greatly dampens the enthusiasm for outbursts compared to academic discussions, where the only thing at stake is personal pride.
blink3times wrote on 9/23/2008, 9:41 AM
"but from the sounds of it the forum is full of easily offended 7 year olds."

Hey.... no argument there. I'm not, and have never really been in favor of this tattle-tail business... Personally I think it's a wee bit more adult if those who feel offended just come forth and state it, but then that's not really the issue. The forum rules are clear and if you even bend them just a hair, then you must be prepared for what is to come.

And no.... others have NOT gotten away with it. I've had a warning..... even suspended for 7 days... COONASS has been banned.... and others.

Bottom line... if you carry on too much in an unprofessional manor, it will eventually bite you in the butt.... and rightfully so.
Robert W wrote on 9/23/2008, 9:41 AM
No, no, no.

This is not "their forum and they can do what they want with it". This is not like the majority of benevolent third party forums out on the web. This is part of the commercial support package that Sony offer as part of the Sony Creative software packages. That is why it is listed under the "Support" on the menu bar for the site.

What they have done here is not a little warning to a guest to their site. It is finding an finicky little way to bite back at a paying customer. They should never have raised this issue with me if they were not prepared to address the vast range of issues that have come to a head in the wake of this sub-par excuse for a release they have put out.

We are professionals not idiots, and we should not feel chided for challenging our software providers when they perform below par.

Look at the Sony Creative site? What does it say? Use us, choose us, we are the people who you want to partner with to take your business and your work forward. We are the organisation that can work with your organisation, we shall integrate.

So here am I doing my bit, working my chollipers off, and here is Sony not doing their bit. Failing over and over again. Yet they don't want to answer for it? You think it is wrong that I am challenging them? You think it is wrong that after a year or no comment and vague promises I am calling the to account in no uncertain terms?

Sony are totally out of order in this situation and they have to take responsibility for that. Perhaps that is supported by the fact that I still have not received a call from them.

I do not know when those who seem they need to defend Sony will get it: These guys are resting on their laurels!!!

Make no mistake, if this was a market contract for a logistical technical provider for a major company then the client would be going berserk at this level of service and quality of product. What Sony are turning out now is quite simply terrible. If you took all the purchases of the software and added them up you would probably find you had something around the amount of a small technical contract. It is important. If people want to stick on what is fundamentally a good platform that has been driven into the ground, they have top continually complaining and refusing to settle for a product with such serious quality issues.

And if you don't have problems with the software, well that is fine, but don't begrudge us that do have problems. And I can tell you, if it goes on this way, most users are going to be finding show stopping problems in their software. Something is rotten with Vegas at present and it can not be accepted. Don't settle for this! Ram it down their throats! Or you will only get what you deserve!
blink3times wrote on 9/23/2008, 9:46 AM
"No blink, this is blatant. How contrived can you get to call "cretinism" a medical insult, when i never said it, and it's derivatives are commonly phrases used more often in a context which has no medical connotative whatsoever."

Robert....

forget it. Sony is not going to come out and explain itself.... it doesn't have to. This is their board. You have been warned and that's that. There is no such thing as a "reversal" that I'm aware of anyway.

Learn from it and go on.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 9/23/2008, 9:49 AM
here
here
here
here
here
here

all on the front page, nothing to do with vegas or vegas related. I'm sure you could say they're vegas related, but I could wax my car & say it's vegas related because I used that to pick up my mail.
let's not forget this: Post topics unrelated to the specific subject of the forum including but not limited to rumors or speculations about existing or unreleased Sony products, discussions of Sony policy and procedures, and non-constructive complaints or petitions.

that eliminated about 1/2 the other types of threads on the board.

and this: Harass, threaten, embarrass or cause distress or discomfort upon another Services participant, user or other individual or entity;

does anyone piss off robert? Yes? They've violated the forum rules & should be warned. I'd say ~5 or 6 people posting fall under those two rules & should be banned.

ps: sorry course but apparently sony speaks latin: http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/corporate/terms#forum
:D
blink3times wrote on 9/23/2008, 10:28 AM
"all on the front page, nothing to do with vegas or vegas related. I'm sure you could say they're vegas related,"

It's not about stray topics (which Sony is very good at allowing BTW) It's about pissing other people off. EVERYBODY has the "report abuse" button in front of them to use at any time. Some use it and some don't. I don't like it when people use it and I would probably feel a bit hypocritical if I used it myself.... but to each their own.... the button is there for anybody to use.... and yes, that includes Robert as well. And you can count on Sony swinging into action if it does get used.

If you don't want to risk the trouble.... then don't put yourself in the position. It's as simple as that.
tumbleweed2 wrote on 9/23/2008, 10:35 AM

well, here's another one to add to your list....

Yes, as we say out west, it does sound like RobertW has a burr under his saddle...

"We are professionals not idiots"... you don't speak for all of us RobertW.. as I'm an idiot(not the medical kind of course), as many here can vouch for this...but I'm not offended...

& yes, he does come off sounding arrogent, pretentious, a legend in his own mind, & various other adjectives...but wait just a minute...

but he's doing it for us.. he's doing it for us 7 year olds... although I'm almost 8, i'm not offended...

Although I do suffer from a condition known as Chronic Sarcasm, please fell free to make fun of my state of mind, as I don't know what it means....

& as RobertW said, we all get what we deserve...
Robert W wrote on 9/23/2008, 10:52 AM
Blink how are you supposed to judge what is acceptable? There is a bunch on people on here having genuine problems wit h the software and they have come to conclusion that after all the reinstalling of Vegas, reinstalling of Windows, reinstalling of everything else, maybe, just maybe Sony have been sending them on a merry jig.

There is another group that can not seem to grasp that the first group is having problems and start to criticise them for making completely justified complaints. What is the acceptable way to respond? If you look you will see I have time and again tried explained why we are complaining and why we are justified to do it. But we still get met with what can only be classed as abuse. I post long eloquent critiques of problem and I get people suggesting I was being irrational and abusive when I quite clearly was not. I get people trying to stop me using the forum for it's intended use and I also get accused of making slurs against disabled people by the Sony support team. Which by the way is ridiculous. I would never use the word cretin in that context and even in it is a largely an outmoded and defunct word.

Not that it should matter, but I am particularly offended that they should try to mangle my words this way because I went to a one of the very few schools in the UK that was totally inclusive of people of people with disabilities, I work happily alongside such people, I have a disabled person in my family and I genuinely do not view such people any different to anybody else. I would never use a phrase like "retard or "spastic". On top of that quite clearly did not use the word "cretinism" so to suggest it was used in a medical context is just simply wrong. It must have taken a real effort to apply that wayward interpretation to my words. I really expect an apology from them very soon.
Robert W wrote on 9/23/2008, 10:55 AM
"& yes, he does come off sounding arrogent, pretentious, a legend in his own mind, & various other adjectives...but wait just a minute..."

Now what is the deal here? Should I be reporting this as abuse? I don't know any more!
tumbleweed2 wrote on 9/23/2008, 5:53 PM

You would be well within your right to report this...

...but I'm merely providing comic relief, to keep things from over heating...
GlennChan wrote on 9/23/2008, 11:55 PM
Robert,

1- RELAX!!!!!!!!!!! Some people take the Internet too seriously. Oftentimes, there is miscommunication and whatnot... and some people are just trolls... I wouldn't get too worked up over what other people say over the Internet.

2- Understand that other people might misinterpret what you say. / Other people can't read your mind. e.g. I wouldn't expect Sony Creative Software to know that you had a bad day.

Now you may not intend it, but you should try and make sure that your posts don't offend other people. Now you know. Just tone it down and keep the signal to noise ratio of this forum high. And then we can all get back to, y'know, editing. :)
Spot|DSE wrote on 9/24/2008, 12:27 AM
Robert,
I respectfully suggest you go use another software package. Be unhappy with it. In the Canopus, Avid, Adobe, or Final Cut forums, you'll get exactly *one* shot at this sort of post, and then you're banned on the second offense.
You don't have the right to "demand" anything. You're in someone else' house. If they choose to make it a term of service that you not call names nor degrade, then that's their right, and not yours to question. It ain't free speech, it's not alt.rec.freespeech, and it's not Robert's forums. Says "Sony" up there.
Go ahead, stop by the second floor of 550 Madison Avenue and ask to speak to Sir Howard. That, after all....*is* your right.
craftech wrote on 9/24/2008, 3:16 AM
I suggested this in the post in question and I still don't think I am wrong.

Attacking other forum members is not permitted on most forums. Forum moderaters are sometimes tolerant of it to a degree, but at some point they put a stop to it. Blink, for example was the victim of it from the Blu-Ray obsessed not long ago.

Sometimes it has a cumulative effect. If a forum moderator is tolerant of it for awhile, someone may post the insult that finally "broke the camel's back".

Moreover, over the years I lost count of the attacks and criticism of the software that were posted here without any backlash from either Sonic Foundry or SCS. I am certain SCS doesn't have the attitude "love it or leave it" as some suggest. That is their own personal opinion.

I really think you got the warning because of the attacks on other forum members. Whether someone else should have been warned who did the same thing is irrelevant. I can remember some really outrageously offensive posters over the years who they finally banned.

And no, I have never written to them regarding another forum member. This is just an observation from having been here long enough to see the pattern.

John
apit34356 wrote on 9/24/2008, 5:47 AM
I think craftech has summed up the issue fairly well! The fact is, most of the previous posters have tried to help or explained the issue but Robert logical focus doesn't appear to be in the realistic realm of this forum. As DSE suggested, stop whining here and go see the Sony's top dog if it's so critical to you, Sony's top dog is far more accessible than previous CEO's( they were more engineers than marketing people). Of course, getting to the elevators will be interesting if your jumping up and down... '-)

Small note, don't take him up on a small air trip over northern Canada ;-) polar bears do have bad breath and very sharp teeth! ;-)
mark2929 wrote on 9/24/2008, 1:32 PM
Speaking for myself only here.. I'd like to thank Sony for the amazing vegas 8. I use this with my Sony EX-1 and boy do we have fun! I recently imported about 30 EX-1 files in one hit thinking this'l break ya ya bugger. But noooo.. Anyway thanks to all those who work long hard and tirelessly to bring me for little money the amazing abilty to get out there and compete with the pro's

Thanks Sony people... All...