Answer From CafeMom

Unfortunately, when asked why they aren't allowing any mention of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, this was the response that was received:

CafeMom Team on May. 29, 2007 at 4:34 PM
The posts and these users were deleted because they were trolling, plain and simple. Their primary goal was not to get out awareness about this petition, but to harass other members, cross-post and re-post things and essentially damage the quality of this site.

Whatever they really wanted, it was totally obscured by the fact that they went about things in completely the wrong manner. Users who come here with destructive and malicious intent will be deleted without any warning or notification and all attempts will be made to block them from returning. We have zero tolerance for troublemakers.

- The CafeMom Team"

So, wanting to raise awareness about a law that urgently needs to be funded so that it can be put into effect makes one a troublemaker and a troll. Wow! This coming from a gathering place for moms, too.

You would think that they would support an effort to bring awareness to this need and to want to help. Instead they call names, refuse to reconsider their position, and immediately delete the information and the person who posted it!

Not only were the moms who posted this information not intent on causing chaos and destruction, they really just felt that this was an action that other moms might be interested in learning more about!

So, the clamp down on information sharing continues at CafeMom, and it doesn't look like it will be letting up anytime soon. I'm just amazed at the steadfast disinterest in allowing mention of this act and the lack of willingness to review their policy.

The Magic Screwdriver?

So, I have been going without phone, internet, and cable service for the past week. Mostly. They are all bundled together, and usually only the internet and phone would be out, but then the cable ended up joining the other two missing services.

It wasn't that I had no service completely, because I did have service. I just didn't get it back until about 6:15pm or a bit later. Since the service cut out at 9-ish in the morning, I was obviously not happy. This started on Monday. Now, on Friday, it has (hopefully) been resolved and will no longer be a recurring daily event.

After a week of daily calls to the ungodly craptastic company that is supposed to be providing these services, though frequently is unable to deliver on any sort of (mostly) uninterrupted service to the customer, I was about to give up and just cancel my subscriptions completely. Quite honestly, I don't need that kind of bovine excrement in my life. The problem is that this is the only thing that they are good at providing. Garbage excuses, flat out lies, disgustingly unprofessional "customer service", and supervisors who will refuse any and all requests to speak to anyone higher up the corporate ladder than they are.

Who is this shining beacon of frustration and "How to lose a customer in the fewest number of steps possible" you ask? Well. They are Mediacom. Not only will I not EVER recommend that anyone try their services, but I will go out of my way to ensure that every person in my life knows about the quality of "service" and "customer support" that I have received from this company.

Obviously, I have regained my services. Hopefully this will not be a limited time phenomenon. Regaining service went down like this:

The line tech (I guess that is who it was) showed up this morning, screwed around in the power/wires/whatever box in the alley by my driveway, closed it up, drove all the way across the street to the OTHER box, opened it up and screwed around in there for a few minutes, closed it up and left.

Then, magically, my little green lights began coming back on and blinking to life on my modem. All of them. The line tech must have waved his magic screwdriver or something, because the demon beast from the depths of hell was only here for maybe 6 minutes, total. (Okay, he might not have been a demon beast from anywhere, but he works for mediacom, so it is kind of an automatic guilt by association) Whatever he did in his 6 minutes spent outside my house sitting across the street, it worked, because I now have service again.

Now...tell me why I am hearing a choir of angels singing the Hallelujah Chorus? Oh, I get it...it was that a miracle just occured out at that little green box across the street from me. Really. That is what it was sounding like it would take to get full service restored, since no one at mediacom could tell me what the problem was, when it would be fixed, or how long the wait for that fix might be. It had to have been an act of God to make my service magically reappear. That is why the angels were rejoicing.

Really. Hopefully, this will end any contact between myself and mediacom. I don't think that I can handle another week of conversations like the one that I just had.

A Good Question

I have posted a couple of articles about the mom site that has been deleting posts about the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act and the campaign to encourage people to write to their representatives to demand that immediate funding be put in place to make it operational as outlined in the petition that is located here.

A mom friend of mine asked me a question recently after reading one of the articles, and I'm really glad that she took the time to ask. Her question was: wouldn't it just be more effective to make one post and continue to bump it to the top than to make multiple posts that are all exactly the same?

It is a good question because I didn't clarify that this isn't a standard forum in the familiar sense of a "forum". Here is the answer that I gave to her:

The difference with the posts that are being deleted is a matter of set up. The set up of that site and what makes it different than a forum is that it really isn't a forum in the familiar sense. It is made up of "groups". When one joins, they can join various different groups based on particular interests. There are book club groups, groups for fans of different TV shows, nursing mothers groups, groups for different religious affiliations, and so on. It isn't just set up as a normal forum.

The posts that are being deleted are posted as "journals". These are set up as individual blogs. On the home page of each member, there is an option to post a journal. Once a member posts a journal, it shows up in a list of other journal posts. Any member can leave comments on a journal post, too. So, these aren't able to be bumped to the top like a forum post could. In essence, their posts are all individual blogs, and very different than forum posts.

The site is still remaining silent on this issue and there is currently a huge effort to get the word out to the financial sponsors of this site. People who have blogs are posting about this and MySpace bulletins have been posted, too. Many moms have been writing letters to their local media outlets, such as radio stations and newspapers, and news programs.

Thanks for asking about this! I didn't even think to clarify the difference in set up between the site doing this and a standard forum, so I am glad that you asked!
~~~~~
Hopefully this clears up any confusion that I created when I didn't clarify the difference between the site in question and a standard forum.

Take care,
Cindi