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Where has Philippe gone?


Steve Hyde

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5 minutes ago, Steve Hyde said:

I've been away for the weekend so I've not been checking out the forum.

 

I've read several messages this morning referring to Philippe in the past tense. Where has he gone and why have his posts been deleted?

 

It is a bit scattered around the forum and perhaps doesn't give/paint the complete picture. He's sorely missed though, that's for sure. Below are two of Alamy's posts on the matter. Hope it helps.

 

"Hi everyone, 

Posted in another thread but in case you don't see it:

 

The 'agree' and 'disagree' buttons have helped keep the forum an easier place to moderate. Those of you who may remember the old forum may recall how 'heated' it used to get, regularly, what with people being anonymous and having no mechanism for feedback like this.

 

We can of course appreciate the pros and cons of the system, but having experience of a community without these features, we're confident they do have a purpose. 

 

Philippe requested to remove his account and we actioned it. We did respond to say that although he assumed he was getting 'disagree' arrows from the same person constantly, there were actually a wide variety of users who didn't agree with many of his posts and they are entitled to hit that red arrow if they wish. There were other factors at play too, but we won't be going into detail here.

 

We limit the red arrows to five per day with unlimited green arrows being allowed. We can monitor who gives what and we do step in (behind the scenes) if we feel people are being unfair.

 

We always monitor the effectiveness of what we do, and if we feel there is a better solution for the forum then we will implement it. 

 

Thanks for all your feedback.

 

Alamy"

 

AND 

 

"Just a final post from us on this and a comment from me (James A) who dealt with the complaint.

 

Philippe's suspicion was that the same person(s) were hitting the red disagree button across all his posts. This had happened in the past and we dealt with it by contacting the person responsible and the issue had stopped.

 

In this case I looked at all the reputation flags people had given Philippe over the last 48 hour period and it was not any one person(s). It was a variety of different users, all using the red arrow to express their disagreement, much in the same way that many of his posts also had received lots of green 'agree' clicks too. In many cases the same people had clicked red on one post and green on another - we could find no evidence of conspiracy or rule breaking. 

 

Over the last few months, we had received a few complaints from different users who were concerned about Philippe's sometimes perceived confrontational tone. We took no action on these other than to let Philippe know that we had received this feedback, and we asked him to be mindful of it - particularly with new users.

 

My response in this case was to confirm to Philippe we had seen no rule breaking in this case (we would take action if we had seen any, as before) and asked again for him to just be mindful of his conduct with others.

 

Unfortunatey this had lead to him asking for his forum content to be removed and that's where we are now. 

 

We've given reasons previously about why the system we have is in place so I won't repeat it but we do monitor the effectiveness of it and we will make changes if we feel it's required.

 

I hope this clears up any confusion around the issue.

 

Best wishes,

 

James Allsworth

Contributor Relations Manager"

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I know it had to be tough for the new people to see their keywords criticized so comprehensively but what a help it could be to them and to Alamy. No one else was taking the time and trouble to go through images and keywords as thoroughly as Philippe did. I remember in a teaching course I took once we were asked to think of our favorite teacher and describe him/her. Almost to a person we described someone who was hard on us and expected the best. We appreciated the fact that we actually learned something rather than just receiving careless praise. Of course, we miss him personally too with his wonderful sense of humor. His hatred of microstock could sound extreme sometimes but I bet I would sound extreme also if I thought something was taking the food from my mouth.

 

Paulette

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Like the OP I have been away for some days and only read some snippets.

(Having to log in on a phone 10 times a day does not help. Also the log in doesn't always work.)

 

So how many red arrows are we talking about? 5? 10?

Any greens arrows as well?

Who gave them? And why?

 

Not a fan of FB.

Did pop over and still no fan.

(I'm with Geoff here.)

 

wim

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Facebook has the possibility to have a much wider reach than a personal web based forum.
I see groups with over 100,000 FB members who (on the back of that 'success') started web based forums and have less than a hundred members and only 2 or 3 active posters despite linking constantly on the FB page.

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9 minutes ago, spacecadet said:

I'd say beware, I've been warned privately for referring to the group, but I won't because that would be referring to the group.

 

First rule of Fight Club?

I thought that was a different forum. ;-)

For me it's more about Facebook in general: I don't like the platform, but I do acknowledge the reach it has.

 

wim

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I too don't like social media and am wary of having too great an "online presence". I therefore set up a FB account under a pseudonym, with minimal profile information and a different email address, and I joined only that group. This was prompted by the removal of the PM facility and to have a way of staying in touch with members who are no longer active here.

 

Mark

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As probably most in here I am flabbergasted by the developments over the weekend. 

This seems to be coming back to cultural background (albeit I do not know the "offending post").

Some cultures  do prefer directness over politeness (in my experience specially true for the Dutch, Belgians and Germans).

Some overly polite people may interpret that directness as rudeness, while it really is not meant that way.  

Being German myself and having dealt with polite cultures a great deal, I still struggle to understand why the heck "You may want to consider ....." is to be taken as an order. 

 

From the Alamy posts I understand that this happened at Philippe own decision.

Respecting this, but am really sad he took such a harsh step, feeling he was an integral very valuable member of the forum. 

Hope he will come back once things have cooled down.

 

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With one exception Philippe was (in my opinion) being misinterpreted by non- native speakers of English as "rude".

His English is easily good enough for us British to be able to gauge his intention, but to a non- native speaker, I can't say of course. It was illustrative when he was being referred to by an Italian using what we would see as the wrong words.

The irony is that the main reason for his departure appears to be the perceived grief he got from a (non-English) native English speaker.

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There are and will always be people that should better be ignored rather than empowered to drive valuable people away (or ..crazy, or ..insane or... enter most applicable word instead of away).  

 

When I was younger I was always complaining (some call it shouting ;) )about other drivers style while driving myself .... 

A wise friend then told me that if I allow myself to become agitated, I really empower those people I complain about over me. 

Since then I learned to be ignorant to those and have extended this ignorance to forums as well - I tend to ignore what I do not want to see or that potentially agitates me.  

(At least I try hard,  it does not always work  :wacko: )

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2 hours ago, hdh said:

There are and will always be people that should better be ignored rather than empowered to drive valuable people away (or ..crazy, or ..insane or... enter most applicable word instead of away).  

 

When I was younger I was always complaining (some call it shouting ;) )about other drivers style while driving myself .... 

A wise friend then told me that if I allow myself to become agitated, I really empower those people I complain about over me. 

Since then I learned to be ignorant to those and have extended this ignorance to forums as well - I tend to ignore what I do not want to see or that potentially agitates me.  

(At least I try hard,  it does not always work  :wacko: )

 

I have a neighbor who has shouted things at me that go way beyond rude. I think she is someone who thrives on conflict. It gets her blood going. She provokes it and enjoys it. My method of dealing with her is to not to give her a response so she doesn't get the battle she would enjoy and I would hate. I still am disturbed by her though. Our emotions are what they are and we can generally only control our actions. Some people on the internet, here and elsewhere, are best ignored in my opinion, lest we give them what they want.

 

Paulette

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5 hours ago, NYCat said:

 

I have a neighbor who has shouted things at me that go way beyond rude. I think she is someone who thrives on conflict. It gets her blood going. She provokes it and enjoys it. My method of dealing with her is to not to give her a response so she doesn't get the battle she would enjoy and I would hate. I still am disturbed by her though. Our emotions are what they are and we can generally only control our actions. Some people on the internet, here and elsewhere, are best ignored in my opinion, lest we give them what they want.

 

Paulette

 

Good example. A certain very dangerous North Korean dictator comes to mind. Unfortunately, he's currently getting all the reaction that he craves. Ignore him (as much as possible), and he might just quieten down and become more reasonable.

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6 minutes ago, John Mitchell said:

 

Good example. A certain very dangerous North Korean dictator comes to mind. Unfortunately, he's currently getting all the reaction that he craves. Ignore him (as much as possible), and he might just quieten down and become more reasonable.

 

+1 But with T in charge over there and all his stupid tweeting it will not be possible. Now P is poking his nose in too.

 

Sorry did not mean to be political.

 

I'll get my coat.

 

Allan

 

 

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13 hours ago, hdh said:

Being German myself and having dealt with polite cultures a great deal, I still struggle to understand why the heck "You may want to consider ....." is to be taken as an order. 

 

There's polite ways of saying rude things in English. 

Being German myself (and having just moved back to the fatherland),  I was taken aback the other day at an overly polite German shop assistant. The reply I would've expected was: "didn't you see it on your way in, impossible to miss. But now that you've asked, it's two aisles down on the left." Had another argument in a German supermarket today because they willfully display wrong prices. Yeah. Getting back into the German spirit. 

 

"You may want to consider" would've had the German equivalent of "Und Sie haben diese Möglichkeit überhaupt nicht in Betracht gezogen, oder? Wie blöd kann man denn sein?"

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24 minutes ago, vpics said:

 

 

 

"You may want to consider" would've had the German equivalent of "Und Sie haben diese Möglichkeit überhaupt nicht in Betracht gezogen, oder? Wie blöd kann man denn sein?"

:lol: We never really encounter this and we have got drunk travelled in half-a-dozen Länder. Perhaps Germans are just unfailingly polite if your German is bad enough.

I'm going to miss needling Philippe in jest. He always got the jest. It was usually about the Belgians or their beer.

He gives as good as he gets- when I posted a pic of a pint of English beer at 4% he said that their tapwater was stronger.

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20 minutes ago, spacecadet said:

 

:lol: We never really encounter this and we have got drunk travelled in half-a-dozen Länder. Perhaps Germans are just unfailingly polite if your German is bad enough.

I'm going to miss needling Philippe in jest. He always got the jest. It was usually about the Belgians or their beer.

He gives as good as he gets- when I posted a pic of a pint of English beer at 4% he said that their tapwater was stronger.

 

I'm sure we can find a beer lover or two.

I can do the rudeness bit. If someone else could step in for the encyclopedic knowledge on all things nature please?

;-)

 

wim

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54 minutes ago, vpics said:

 

There's polite ways of saying rude things in English. 

Being German myself (and having just moved back to the fatherland),  I was taken aback the other day at an overly polite German shop assistant. The reply I would've expected was: "didn't you see it on your way in, impossible to miss. But now that you've asked, it's two aisles down on the left." Had another argument in a German supermarket today because they willfully display wrong prices. Yeah. Getting back into the German spirit. 

 

"You may want to consider" would've had the German equivalent of "Und Sie haben diese Möglichkeit überhaupt nicht in Betracht gezogen, oder? Wie blöd kann man denn sein?"

 

Yep, whereas that German equivalent would sort of translate to exactly what German politeness is all about;
 

My Translation from German back to English would be somewhere along the lines of:

"(Why the heck)  Didn't you think of ..... (you stupid piece of <insert your favourite insult>)"

 

The brackets denote sublimes between the lines ( Also note that I am not a chartered translator) 

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3 hours ago, vpics said:

 

There's polite ways of saying rude things in English. 

Being German myself (and having just moved back to the fatherland),  I was taken aback the other day at an overly polite German shop assistant. The reply I would've expected was: "didn't you see it on your way in, impossible to miss. But now that you've asked, it's two aisles down on the left." Had another argument in a German supermarket today because they willfully display wrong prices. Yeah. Getting back into the German spirit. 

 

"You may want to consider" would've had the German equivalent of "Und Sie haben diese Möglichkeit überhaupt nicht in Betracht gezogen, oder? Wie blöd kann man denn sein?"

 

Haha. Every time I go back home, I still apologise to every man, woman and pet terrier I accidentally bump into in the street. Only to get a blank stare in return of course, rather than the polite return of apology and general exchange of embarrassed giggles I'd get in London. I dread that reverse culture shock, after 25 years in the UK, it's going to be a tough one as and when I decide to ever move back. The polite shop assistant sounds like things are slowly changing, though, hopefully.

 

It's great to see that alamy has so many contributors from different parts of the world, a very cosmopolitan little stock pic community. Here's to Philippe and his encyclopedic nature knowledge!

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