Comments on: When good sites go bad

By: Steve Lawson

Steve Lawson — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 04:05:50 +0000

I’d say I “half agree with Dorothea,” too. It is true that it is certainly easier to pick up stakes with social software than with an ILS, and many such transitions would be pretty painless.

But if you have built a whole service or approach around a site, or if you have imprinted that URL on staff or patrons’ minds through extensive PR, then switching could be a little less seamless that it would be for an event like Five Weeks.

The Flickr thing was particularly bizarre, and (let’s hope!) unique. Once incident like that won’t deter me from using it, but my library is relatively tolerant of such risks. Many/most others are not.

By: jennimi

jennimi — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 20:04:04 +0000

As someone who has just finally made the move from WP for free to hosting my own, I agree with Walt. The flickr FUBAR this weekend REALLY made me nervous, and as much as they say they weren’t hacked (and I LOVE flickr and want to believe they’ll always be truthful to me) logon “security” messages of late already had me in a OliverStonian state of skepticism. I wonder….

I often use flickr to post photos for jennimi. I pay for my account, I do not use the free version. I like the interface and two point oh boy of it, and am used to my routine. I know what I am doing and that makes me feel good. But after what happened this weekend (I had porn show up in some of my sets thumbnails) I am even more happy I chose to host jennimi’s important photos directly on my server space (header images, for ex.).

What interests me about my own reaction to seeing these random photos show up was how nervous and emotional I got. My heart was racing and I almost had a panic attack! Sure, I have chosen to put myself “out there” through blogging and other sites. I personally have resolved not to be anonymous online. This comes with its own set of introspection emergencies at times.

As a result, I sometimes kick myself for a tone that came off incorrectly, or writing something snarky because I was having a bad day. But it’s always been MY content, MY representation of myself, and I can correct tone, or go back and remove snark I didn’t really mean. But there was NOTHING I could do but wait and see here. And hope my loyal readers know I’d never post those pics (though I don’t want to take away someone ELSE’S right to do their thing….). I had thoughts of deleting sets! Sure, I have my hard copies backed up… but effort (artistic, familial, intellectual, carpal) has gone into the creation of my flickr identity. Do I have any final decision about leaving flickr or not posting so much? Nah… but I will probably phase out my use of linking rather than hosting photos, at least for awhile. Darn, too. I really like that feature….

Excellent post. Bloglines is a whole other issue…. but I’m rambled on far too long already. – jenn graham

By: walt crawford

walt crawford — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 16:55:18 +0000

I half agree with Dorothea–but if a library has used Flickr as part of public relations, there will be significant damage from random porn shots before a switch to something else–and, of course, it’s pretty much impossible to retroactively change. (Right now, there’s twice as much traffic to cites.boisestate.edu as to citesandinsights.info, even though nothing new has appeared at the former in seven months…)

Part of this is “you get what you pay for.” I’d be more confident in a blog using WordPress software that’s hosted at a leased domain/server than I would in a WordPress.com blog, for example–the “free” software’s fine, but doing everything on someone else’s dime leaves you at someone else’s mercy.

Exit strategies sound good. I suspect most of us are less careful about maintaining them than we should be.

By: Dorothea

Dorothea — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 13:16:46 +0000

The difference, I think, is the ease in shifting from one software tool to another. When Bloglines threw a wobbly, it wasn’t a big deal — we told people about Google Reader.

We originally had a lot of our stuff on Odeo. Odeo threw a wobbly. So we moved to blip.tv. As long as the social-softwaresphere keeps from becoming a monopoly, I’m of the opinion we’ll be okay.