this is what i found her/them to ACTUALLY say : (excerpted)
- nothing can be posted without proper attribution. this means, among other things, image source credits – which are usually links.
- no outside links permitted for monetary gain, public affiliation, or recognition. in other words, you aren’t permitted to advertise products and services for sale in RL or for any site other than FooPets, or use links to claim/proclaim your association with political parties/campaigns, relegious persuasions, etc, and/or proseletize on their behalf. common sense and common courtesy here, and a normal caveat for any business, virtual or RL.
- “no third party links”. this is the major new add to the TOS, and where i assume the nitties get gritty. as we are given to understand, the term means ANY URL that does not link back to somewhere on FooPets. (why not just say "internal" and "external"? - would make things a bit easier to follow for us dinos...)
Whatever it means, it still leaves the subject of things like the RL pet charity links (KibbleCat, ASPCA, etc), and site-acknowledged star level awards, among other things, as grey areas at best.
What is needed here is for all involved to stop and think this through – COMPLETELY (and there are a LOT of factors involved) – then come to the table with facts, and answers.
(the gist of this was posted in the Forum thread by Canaan - whose original post on the matter was disappeared in a hurry. as the subject matter is similar, insofar as the contradictions go, it will be interesting to see what happens with THIS one, as members can no longer flag away posts)
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we will perforce be sanitizing all profiles, but will leave instructions on how to get our "invisible" info if you need it.
to disable your own links without dumping them (as hopefully the current witch hunt will end eventually, once they realize that there really aren't any witches in the woodpile, and then we can restore them all with a minimum of fuss), either bracket them with "a href=(your link in quotes)" and "/a" or, if they are already linked to a picture, move the "/a" up to the end of the "a href group rather than after the "img ref=(your image code in quotes)" "/img" segment. (this leaves the image, unlinked - not totally ethical, but that's up to the individual...)
to disappear the whole thing, image and all, for the time being, change the "img src= to "a href= . this will leave all the information in your profile - visible in Edit mode, but out of sight to the noseys.
(all the link encoders are enclosed with < >, represented by ", as the page protocol here won't let me put the < 's in place, sorry.)___________________________________________________
WUXTRY! WUXTRY! SPECIAL NEWS FLASH 1/14/11! Kate Clark, alias FooKate, has left the building! Yes, our administrative bete noir has been dropped from the rolls of FooMojo employees, and will no longer be able to make an A of herself around here. if you DO see "her" around the Forums etc, it is someone masquerading under her name, with or without corporate authorization...rumor has it that Corie is also under investigation, and may be next. (interestingly, her member number has already been renamed "OGFoo" - in anticipation of our next mystery Admin?)
1/15/11...Well - taking this with the demotion of DrRon to VP (you HAVE been reading Lifeboat on WordPress, haven't you?...no? for shame, lol. most of the REALLY good dirt is there), we may be about to see the new owners take a major - and visible - hand in FooPet ops. it's our thought that Kate was tagged as scapegoat/sacrificial lamb for some of the recent excesses of bad judgement (for which it's even money she was merely the agent and not the actual cause, but...), and they are hoping to come to us with what we will see as clean hands. if they elect to continue the policy of "hit 'em with double and they'll roll over for what we really want" and to deal with uncomfortable questions by making them go away, we'll know it's just another con, but i suppose it's possible they just got around to taking a close look at day-to-day ops ... or some legal chickens started coming home to roost and caused a panic. in either case, it will be interesting to watch policy changes over the next few weeks.
We note that Kate's personal foopet account has been deleted, which meant that all her Forum posts and Stickies went bye-bye as well - something i do NOT think the PTBs were expecting or prepared for. if some of you would care to keep an eye on the Forums post-Kate, we'd be curious to know what's happening.
(we have obtained a cachepage of Kate's pets - all of whom were individually returned to the fooshelter unless the coding has been changed to do that automatically - and can provide DOB/stat data on request to anyone interested in watching for them to come up as $50 adopts.)
1/14/11...we yesterday received some rather disturbing news from one of our sources, and we just had some concrete information come in on followup. it seems that a number of our younger members, primarily the emo/goth contingent, had made references to self-harm in various forms and degrees (the example we saw wanted to be sick to get out of school), and mentioned contemplating suicide...not unusual for this time of year for anyone, especially moody teens. some of these statements were serious enough for ambassadorial* concern, and were brought to the attention of Admin (in the persons of Kate and Corie), whose response was typical - and in this case inexcusably negligent - THEY SUSPENDED THEM. without warning. without cause. in doing so they were cut off from all contact and support from their friends onsite, which in most of these cases were far closer and more important than their RL relationships. we have reached out to still-on-site friends and are rescuing any pets we can find cached. anyone with any knowledge of this unforgivable breach of trust by Admin please post in our Comments (reasonably secure), and help us address - and redress - this hideous wrong.
* - we have recently been informed that the concerned ambassador was Parrotlady (no surprise), who was removed from her post by Kate and Corie for going over their heads to Scott and Bart with her concerns when they were not addressed.
1/12/11...it was brought to our attention that Flea Meds have gone on "sale". so - half of 20X more is "only" 10X more than the "normal" price...sorry, no. just another variation of "hit 'em with 50% and they'll roll over when we drop it to 25%"...except THIS time they left a back door to jack it back up. do NOT fall for it, dammit. the only way to end this nonsense is to NOT USE THEM. they DON'T pull karma for it, that's a myth, as it does not affect bonding. yes, they'll lock down your pets after a while. so tend in m.foo - you should be anyway, to send a message to the site. we will NOT cave to extortion - and that is all this is, pure and simple.
1/7/11...my, my, my...now that the cat is out of the bag and having kittens in the basement, DrRon (incidentally, neither he nor anyone else i have seen outside of the puppet avatar here on Foo even pretends to use that term anymore) has broken down and admitted - since it's become common knowledge anyway - that the site has moved its physical plant. This happened somewhere between midAugust and midSeptember 2010, roughly the same time he lost his position as CEO to become VP/Business Intelligence. amusingly, they are blaming/crediting this move for the "lack of changes and improvements" we have seen in recent months. seems to us we've seen PLENTY...
(and speaking of kittens, guess who has been turning up as freshly created new adopts, and ultrastats at that? yep, those lowly, primitive little tux and black mix tabbies. we've also seen a Chi - but so far no labs. nor have we been able to find any of the old $50 breeds in the New Adopts tab, though we have issues with making our own pet sit there waiting while we deal with something that has nothing to do with them, so our perusal may not have been that thorough - however, they are appearing in people's profiles - and the fooshelter. sad to say, even with the vast drop in new joins/adopts - for the first time in the history of the site, bred pets are numerically competitive with foocreates - the same percentage are landing in the fooshelter...if anything, faster. for those breeder/collectors with the liver for the new Adopt a Pet/Shelter tab it must be a field day, though, as now the only thing you CAN see about them is their stats...but none of their "personal" data.)
12/30...is it our imagination, or is the current pogrom - supposedly due to the fooglitch which allowed FooMart art submitters to approve their own work and take their own payment - targeting primarily pokey owners? all the ones we've seen (and pulled the pets out of cached pages for tending and protection, nya-ha-ha) have had multiple and vintage pokeys...and enough of their own assets that the artwork nonsense was unnecessary...and in one case, where they could not establish culpability for that (AFTER suspending all the member's accounts), claimed that they had accepted payment for a pokey from someone who had (and they were supposed to know that HOW?), and were charging too much anyway. (if there's a price ceiling, especially on Legacies, it's news to us...) The account in question is STILL being held captive and has (they were told) been banned. i see no substantiation for this action. we have lawyer-members - come forward, folks, it's litigation time!
