{"id":1022,"date":"2007-02-24T10:40:14","date_gmt":"2007-02-24T15:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/2007\/02\/24\/cleaning-up-the-mess-over-at-mybloglog\/"},"modified":"2007-02-24T10:40:14","modified_gmt":"2007-02-24T15:40:14","slug":"cleaning-up-the-mess-over-at-mybloglog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2007\/02\/24\/cleaning-up-the-mess-over-at-mybloglog\/","title":{"rendered":"Cleaning up the mess over at MyBlogLog"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"left\" id=\"image1001\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-content\/uploads\/mybloglog.JPG?w=525\" alt=\"mybloglog.JPG\" \/>Much has been written about the &#8220;Shoemoney Affair,&#8221; in which the blogger known as Shoemoney <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shoemoney.com\/2007\/02\/21\/mybloglog-trick-how-to-surf-the-web-as-shoemoney\/\">wrote about<\/a> a MyBlogLog hack that allowed unscrupulous types to spoof their identities, and was subsequently <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shoemoney.com\/2007\/02\/22\/banned-from-mybloglog\/\">banned<\/a> from the service, despite the fact that &#8212; as Tony Hung <a href=\"http:\/\/www.deepjiveinterests.com\/2007\/02\/23\/mybloglog-not-playing-by-its-own-rules-if-they-had-any\/\">pointed out<\/a> at Deep Jive Interests &#8212; MyBlogLog didn&#8217;t have a terms of service agreement that said anything about banning people (it has since developed one). The banning also happened despite the fact that, as Eric Marcoullier of MBL admits <a href=\"http:\/\/pascal.vanhecke.info\/2007\/02\/23\/why-you-were-logged-out-of-mybloglog-last-night\/#comment-89924\">here<\/a>, someone else had posted something about the same exploit over a month earlier (although it was on a French blog, and therefore might have been missed).<\/p>\n<p>This all comes in the wake of several other MyBlogLog stumbles involving spam, which I wrote about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mathewingram.com\/work\/2007\/02\/19\/mybloglog-honey-pot-for-spammers\/\">recently<\/a>. And while lots of people seem to enjoy taking shots at MyBlogLog CEO Scott Rafer and Eric Marcoullier and others, as though they were some giant evil corporation, I for one have been impressed with how quickly and honestly the team at MBL have responded to their various missteps and the resulting onslaught of criticism. In his latest post <a href=\"http:\/\/mybloglogb.typepad.com\/my_weblog\/2007\/02\/everybody_hurts.html\">here<\/a>, Eric says:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;A lot of people I respect immensely have written in to tell me that I screwed up, and after a point, it becomes impossible to avoid the truth. We banned Shoemoney originally to keep him from updating his list of User IDs on Wednesday night, which I think was the right thing to do. But after fixing the exploit, I should have unbanned him and thanked him for finding it.  But I didn&#8217;t. I screwed up.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Although there is still debate about whether Shoemoney <a href=\"http:\/\/www.901am.com\/2007\/mybloglog-shots-the-messenger.html\">should have<\/a> been banned in the first place (like Steve Poland over at TechCrunch, I would argue he was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techcrunch.com\/2007\/02\/23\/mybloglog-bans-blogger-backlash-begins\/\">just showing off<\/a>, not being malicious, although Andy Beard <a href=\"http:\/\/andybeard.eu\/2007\/02\/wolfpack-of-lies-hack-baiting-web-20-startups-for-diggs.html\">doesn&#8217;t agree<\/a>), Eric&#8217;s post is the kind of thing I like to see. With a small startup &#8212; albeit one that is now part of the giant Yahoo empire &#8212; it&#8217;s inevitable that mistakes are going to happen, as Caterina Fake points out <a href=\"http:\/\/www.caterina.net\/archive\/001042.html\">in her post<\/a> on the whole affair. <\/p>\n<p>We can&#8217;t applaud startups for their gung-ho attitude and then slam then when they screw up. I think Eric and the rest of the team at MBL deserve a lot of credit for admitting their mistakes openly and clearly. Let&#8217;s move on.<\/p>\n<div class=\"syndication-links\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Much has been written about the &#8220;Shoemoney Affair,&#8221; in which the blogger known as Shoemoney wrote about a MyBlogLog hack that allowed unscrupulous types to spoof their identities, and was subsequently banned from the service, despite the fact that &#8212; as Tony Hung pointed out at Deep Jive Interests &#8212; MyBlogLog didn&#8217;t have a terms &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2007\/02\/24\/cleaning-up-the-mess-over-at-mybloglog\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Cleaning up the mess over at MyBlogLog&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1022\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}