I'm a fairly frequent poster on Nigella Lawsons website, and get alot of recipes either from her collection, or from other users who post their recipes on there. However I often have problems with the website. After posting I get redirected so the posts get lost (luckily I just press "back" and the post is still there - I just have to resubmit 4 or 5 times before it goes through), and I have to keep on logging in ALL the time, the option of "remember me" doesnt seem to work. When telling the moderators about the problems you get the same response that they are working "tirelessly" or "around the clock" on the problems, however the problems have been there as long as I can remember, at least 6 months. They don't seem to do doing anything at all to fix it. However them working around the clock also means moderating EVERY post that gets submitted. If they dont like what you've written, you get an email and you have to change it or it just doesn't go through. You dont have to have said anything especially controversial, but anything thats not sugar sweet and lovely wont make it through the censor. If you say that you dont like a certain celebrity chef for whatever reason, when the thread is about celeb chefs, you get an email, saying the thread is going off topic etc... With all the problems this website has in terms of user friendliness, you'd think they'd have better things to be doing with their time rather than just sitting there making sure everything thats being said is to their liking. However, today I sent them an email asking where half my posts had gone, and I got a reply saying that my posts had recently started to cause them a great deal of work because of my... *sigh*... lack of apostrophes and capital letters. This is what "Webmistress" had to say...
"We have noticed with your recent posts that it has been necessary to edit them quite heavily for punctuation, in particular capital letters and apostrophes. We are happy to capitalise the odd oversight but extensive edits such as thoserequired for your contributions are time consuming and slow the publicationof all other submissions. Could you please double-check future submissions before pressing 'send'.
Please see below for an example of a recent submission and Webmistress's edited version. Thank you for your cooperation on this.
Best wishes,
Webmistress
(This is what I wrote in response to someone else starting a post about a plug in muffin maker, as opposed to an oven - and the person who started the thread was bagging it out)
"yeah whats so hard about the oven? whats even different about the oven, aside from you can fit MORE muffins in there? who makes enough batter for 6 muffins!?"
(and this is what Webmistress "had" to change it to... This is what she gets paid to do all day...)
"Yes what's so hard about the oven? What's even different about the oven, aside from you can fit MORE muffins in there? Who makes enough batter for 6 muffins!?"
Ummmm...... WHO CARES?! Does a lack of capital letters really matter? lol its really pretty ridiculous... It makes me wonder if they're just trying to get me off the site. Because really... Writing "dont" instead of "don't" on an internet forum is the least of their worries when you see how the things runs...
Pretty lame if you ask me!
Ciaooooooo, Ops did I write something wrog? In Italy we say ciao without a lot of oooooooo so Webmistress could become uspet :)) BTW I can understand your point of view, it happens to me a lot of time not because of my English (maybe I'm forgotten just because I don't speak English)but because I write something that is not so stricly about cooking as they want; so I have to write it or add just few words and it's ok. I hate this behavior, or better this kind of censorship. I have also to copy and paste my thread because sometimes the site doesn't work (I prefer to copy it than to re write it). We are lucky, we have our blog where we can write all that we want, no metter if my English is not so perfect (ahhh you're a teacher).
ReplyDeleteBaci! (means kiss)
Do you think W. could say somethin because I wrote in Italain? Yes, of course once it happened
oooomg manu i hate it too! its SO stupid, the things they worry about are ridiculous. The site loses my posts all the time... the only thing that keeps me there are the ppl on it! grrrrr i hate it that the website doesnt work half the time but they have time to censor every post that gets put up AND check the punctuation... really annoying.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure we're not alone.Like you I'm there because I love people on it! BTW I love your way to write some words this is a good way to learn and impreve English for me! Good night (is it right, should you go to sleep?)
ReplyDeleteI'm going to spend my evening at the gym . . . I'm in late.
LOL
I suspect it depends to some extent which Webmistress you get - stands to reason there must be more than one of them. Sometimes I have posts rejected, or requests to alter what I want to put, when other times something almost the same gets through. One of them doesn't let you put links to blogs, yet as we know there are loads of links to blogs on the site so the others obviously don't mind. Some don't seem too strict about straying off topic to some extent while others jump on anything the slightest bit removed from cooking or Nigella.
ReplyDeletewell i think theres a webbie that certainly doesnt like me!!
ReplyDeletelol... what makes ME laugh is that my punctuation and grammar are almost impeccable (sorry, I'm just that way naturally !) give or take the odd typo... yet sometimes a Webmiss will take it upon her officious self to correct me, usually by re-paragraphing it, or occasionally by moving a word or phrase to a place where it no longer has the effect I intended !
ReplyDeleteyeah mine get paraphrased too! i dont understand WHY they bother to do that? its so anal and controlling, and, yeah i really dont see why they spend so much time messing about with ppls little typos, correcting grammer, capital letters, apostrophes and rephrasing things that sound better to THEM... when their website is rooted over 50% of the time?
ReplyDelete