Spock Deletes Me (finally)

Back in December I wrote about my recent experiences with Spock. Full Circle Associates » Dislikeing Spock Even More (Oh jeeze, I love that I made a type on the title. I’ll have to go back and fix that.

I have not gone back to see what people wrote about me. I asked to be unsubscribed from their emails. And look what I get. Oi vey! Here is the email from Spock telling me I have been deleted. But look at the REASON! I am a VIOLATOR of their guidelines (but no specificity of what exactly)!! This is interesting because I’ve done nothing on the site. And I wonder who the “Spock users” are who “flagged” me. Sigh. This is a complicated world and we try and do interesting things (including Spock) and look what it gets us.

From: Spock Team
To: nancyw@fullcirc.com
Subject: Your user account has been removed

Hi Nancy,

Spock users have flagged and deleted your account. This could occur for a number of reasons including:

  • Impersonating another person
  • Using a fake name or identity
  • Inappropriate behavior
  • Presenting private information

For more information please visit our community guidelines.

If you believe that an error has occurred please contact us at info@corp.spock.com.

–

Unsubscribe: (link deleted)

Hm, considering I asked them in December to delete my account, I find this strange. Here is the email I sent them December 17th:

1. Please do not send me any more requests from “trusted contacts wanting to invite me to spock.” As it turns out, many of them did not understand your invite process and were embarrassed that mail was sent on their behalf. Your invite process leads a person to believe that if they found a friend in search, that meant they were members. In fact it only means you have indexed them.

2. Please delete my account – you seemed to have created one and sent me a password despite the fact that I did not request one. I do not want an account. I do not want to appear as if I am a member.

3. No, I do not want to log in to change my email settings because I do not want an account. Please, allow me to opt out without having to join your service.

Thank you

Uh, I continued to get requests from “trusted associates. I never heard from Spock. Here is my latest response to them:
To: info@corp.spock.com
Subject: Fwd: Your user account has been removed

Dear Spockites

1. I asked for my account to be removed in an email to you on Dec 17th, 2007. Happy to forward it to you if you lost your copy.
2. I have not been on the site since then, so whomever is violating your community guidelines, it is not me. I’d appreciate it if you would look into your system that sends emails to people who don’t use your system accusing them of misusing your system. I know you are working out the bugs.

Good luck

Nancy

Will that be the end of it? I hope so.

One thought on “Spock Deletes Me (finally)”

  1. Nancy,

    I figured I would help clarify a few things about some of the great points you brought up about Spock.

    1) The e-mail you received was because you had requested to be removed which was then put in our flaggings queue. Normally a user who requests to be deleted via flaggings does not receive an e-mail (this was a mistake on our part- sorry). We’ve also fixed the copy on the e-mail to reflect your observation.

    2) You had mentioned in your last Spock post (http://fullcirc.com/wp/2007/12/17/dislikeing-spock-even-more/#comment-302) that it’s not clear to see who is a user and who is not. Our Address Book Import has a red star next to every person who is a Spock member (this may not have been around at the time you used the importer). Also the site has the phrase “claim” next to any user who does not have a Spock account. In addition because Spock is a search application where you can add info, just because a friend isn’t on Spock doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t or can’t add info or vote down incorrect information.

    3) You mentioned that a person should not have to unsubscribe from anything they are not a user from. Since all our invitations are user generated it’s not all that different from receiving an invitation from any other site, or even an e-mail for that matter (since all invites are from an address book import, they would have gotten the address from somewhere other than Spock). You mentioned that you had received invitations from people whom you had no connection to. In this case we have an unsubscribe or opt out e-mail for people who would prefer to not go through the process of claiming and then either deleting or setting their e-mail settings. While this seems like a large hassle, this process is done to ensure that people are who they claim to be, and that they’ve also gone through the process of being informed of how they ended up on Spock and how they can ensure they won’t be reindexed in the future.

    -It’s important to remember that Spock is a search application and not a true social network. So, even if you choose to not stay a Spock member, you can still use us for search.

    Anyway I hope this helps

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