Monthly Archives: August 2015

@WorldofWarships Open Beta! Update! Building A Community A Priority

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Last year when I was blogging about Empire Avenue and their attacks on customers, their support team lied to me and members of their leadership Gareth Davies (@me_gareth), Chris Sandys (@usafa_93), Keith Gill (@digitalkeith) and Team Leader Nance Larson (@nancelarson) not only attacked me in the forums, but spread their putrid behavior to Twitter to further attack myself and other customers.

Their attacks in public on Twitter necessitated a CA DOJ investigation of Twitter’s handling and the San Francisco DA’s office intervened twice to mediate with Twitter on my behalf.

Of course Empire Avenue has no commitment to their own Terms of Service or customer safety as their support team lied to me openly even as their leadership was suspended on Twitter for violent threats, doxing me, and non violent threats.

Keith Gill was moderated by Instagram for using violent imagery to cyber bully.

Strangely enough Empire Avenue had to learn the very hard way that attacking customers is not a way to build a successful community or business and suffered a massive loss of traffic according to Alexa rankings.

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This contrasts sharply with Community Manager for World of Warships who responded in a timely manner after the weekend moderation team was somewhat slow in moderating the horrendous troll in their forums.

The troll has been banned from posting, which again directly contrasts with how Empire Avenue acted, when they let their leadership openly attack other customers both inside the Empire Avenue forums and online on Twitter, G+ and Facebook.

In fact many people have reported that Gareth Davies can hack facebook messanger to act in an intimidating manner.  I have seen that happen myself as well.

Except for this adventure with the troll, World of Warships continues to be a fun game, and I will soon be unlocking tier 5 ships across the 4 classes.

My tier 5 Destroyer is tons of fun, and pursuing battleships in the shallows between islands a fun challenge.

My thanks to the Devs and Community Manager for the quick response and proving that community, safety and customer feedback is important during their open beta.

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@WorldofWarships Open Beta. Recommendation? Don’t Play

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Honestly the game itself is fun if you’re into non historical ship battles.

The game is in open beta, is free to play at baseline with paid in game currency purchasable to gain certain new ships and make progression through the tiers easier if you convert “free” experience with paid for currency.

That’s right.  You can look at your pretty “free” experience on the screen but you can’t USE it until you buy their in game currency.  That’s not my definition of free.

I’m just over one week into the game, and have been seriously trolled by a fanboy with the grand total of 2 weeks experience for daring to post about my experiences in game so far.

Unfortunately abuse on the internet is rampant and that includes the World of Warships forums.

As a result I can’t recommend playing for free to help World of Warships get their game into final playable condition until they stop abusive players from abusing other new players who are simply offering honest feedback about their experiences in good faith.

The game itself is simple and intuitive.  Typical WASD controls, and it’s easy to learn the gunnery to hit small moving targets moving at oblique angles.

Unfortunately the forum denizens ruin it for anyone who wants to have fun and provide honest feedback.

Thumbs down for now.

It’s hard to imagine I get better customer service from Twitter, but I do.  That’s how bad it is.

 

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Twitter’s Continuing Double Standard Allows Abuse by Empowered Accounts

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During the past year Twitter came under tremendous scrutiny for allowing abuse on their social media network.

Indeed, when a company I was a customer of, Empire Avenue, and their leadership threatened me, it took the combined efforts of myself, the San Francisco DA’s office and the California Department of Justice to get Twitter to straighten up and fly right and stop the abuse.

Amazingly Twitter was suspending me for blogging the truth about Empire Avenue and their leaders Gareth Davies, Keith Gill, Chris Sandys and Team Leader Nance Larsons attacks on myself and other customers of Empire Avenue’s openly, on Twittter.

Only after the great civil servants interceded did Twitter stop most of the open abuse.

Of course shortly thereafter then CEO Dick Costolo went on a media “apology” tour, and General Council Vijaya Gadde wrote a Washington Post Op-Ed entitled,

Here’s how we’re trying to stop abuse while preserving free speech.

Unfortunately, I still see a tremendous double standard in how Twitter applies their policy.

The other day I was set upon by a fringe conservative radio host, @thejimmyzshow who, failing to prevail in debate, launched vicious ad hominem attacks and ran off.

Checking his timeline, I see this is his standard mode of operation.  Attack, hurl invective, intimidate, threaten and call names.

Sadly this is a standard tactic, often of both sides of the political aisle.

However it’s not free speech.  It’s abuse.

And Twitter has rules against such abuse and lying in tweets, defining such tweets as spam.

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@thejimmyzshow is little more than spam.  Simply review his twitter timeline to see the cascase of lies, and abuse.

Yet twitter doesn’t act.  Why not?

I have inquired of Twitter.

Why aren’t rules of civility enforced for some?

https://twitter.com/WanderinPoet/status/631922449676763136

Here some child radio host interrupts an adult discussion that has been quite civil.

https://twitter.com/WanderinPoet/status/631947199920779264

 

I’m not even a liberal.  LoL.

Why are some people empowered to be abusive?

https://twitter.com/WanderinPoet/status/631922449676763136

Silicon Valley News Update; Has Kred Reverse Engineered Klout’s Algorithm?

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Several months ago, Kred (PeopleBrowsr) and their founder Jodee Rich purchased Empire Avenue, Inc, the Canadian based social media game that measures your social  presence.

We have learned that Team Leader Robby Ball has posted in the Empire Avenue forums that his Empire Avenue networking score is similar to his Klout score.

Is Kred using Empire Avenue’s scoring algorithm to reverse engineer their comeptitor Klout’s scoring algorithm?

We have enquired of Empire Avenue at this time and await a response.

https://twitter.com/WanderinPoet/status/630150642456264704

 

Klout score - Copy Robby Ball - Copy

 

PeopleBrowsr

 

 

There has been no response yet from Empire Avenue to this question or to why they doxed and attacked their own customers.

https://twitter.com/WanderinPoet/status/630182439357444096

 

 

Why does Yelp protect business interests from legitimate consumer concerns and reviews?

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Yelp has been busy deleting Consumers reviews of Walter Palmer’s business.

I think most consumers would like to know if they are visiting a dentist (or any business) who has pled to a felony, considering that intrinsic to the person and businesses ethical and moral foundation.

Why does Yelp suppress legitimate reviews when character is extremely important?

They say they only allow “personal consumer experiences” yet this simply suppresses legitimate reviews that consumers consider in deciding which business to give their hard earned dollars to.

The net effect is to protect entrenched business interests at the expense of consumers.

 

I urge you to let Yelp know that hunting endangered species in the manner Walter Palmer did is unacceptable.

While I am not against hunting if you eat the meat, killing Cecil in the manner indicated is repugnant.

And consumers have the right to know that such acts are undertaken by a person that they are hiring.

In the meantime, Zimbabwe has requested extradition and the US Fish and Wildlife service has started an investigation into the killing of Cecil the Lion.

https://twitter.com/WanderinPoet/status/627491634897358848

https://twitter.com/WanderinPoet/status/627509060393373696