BlackListed!
It seems that my comments about the way the Money Blog Network favors each other has gotten me on a partial blacklist. For those not familiar, I made some comments that I didn’t feel it was right that the MBN favors their network sites in carnivals. It was an observation and I asked them to reconsider that part of their agreement. Free Money Finance (who was hosting the carnival in question) replied as follows:
Here are my thoughts on this comment:
1. As carnival host, I can put up the carnival however I like. I can choose which posts to put where, which ones to include, which ones to exclude, etc. That’s what being the host is about. Different people have different ways of doing it (by theme, by date, etc.) and if you’re in a carnival, you have to deal with it. They’re the host and they put in all the work, and they decide ALL the details.
2. I usually go out of my way to include everyone in carnivals. Even the posts that were late, weren’t EXACTLY personal finance (but close enough), and incomplete in their submission were/are included (forcing me to hunt down trackback URLs, etc.). If anything, I think I’m as fair as anyone.
3. I ALWAYS post a link to EVERY carnival I’m in to drive traffic to that site in return for their hosting. I know you didn’t bring up this issue, but it should be stated since you seem to be good at criticizing and not very good at recognizing community participation (which, after all, is your alleged issue).
4. You need to get over it.
5. I’m done talking about this subject.
He then removed me immediately from his blogroll. While I was a bit surprised at this reaction since we have had a number of email conversations in the past and I thought we got along fine (apparently not), it’s his choice, I left a message apologizing if I had offended him, but said that I still felt this particular aspect of the MBN should be reconsidered. While there has been some discussion about it in the comment section of the original post I made, I thought that would pretty much be the end of it. I even defended in the comments that the group wasn’t blacklisting people and it was only FMF who had taken down my link.
Boy, was I surprised to find that my links (one to savingadvice and one to pfadvice) that had been on All Things Financial have also been mysteriously removed. I was all the more surprised because it was only a month ago that I help JLP of All Things Financial get back his old site that had accidentally been taken over by another blogger. I had secured the URL in my name so nobody else could get it and had handed it back to him without a second thought (wow, that’s what I get for being kind).
To be fair, the other three in the group (Consumerism Commentary, Blueprint For Financial Prosperity and Five Cent Nickel) haven’t change any of the links on their sites. Flexo has even been responding in the comment section.
Quite frankly, I’m not sure exactly what to make of all this. Seems pretty harsh that when you give an opinion that differs from theirs, links start to disappear. Although I thought it was a bit childish, I could understand FMF. I have no idea what prompted the removal from All Thing Financial and can only assume that it was in relation to the post.
I guess that people being afraid to talk about the MBN and how they felt about it was correct. All the talk about being for the betterment of the entire Personal Finance community starts to ring a bit shallow when any opposing opinion results in links being removed. It sure has opened my eyes a bit…
LOL - my pfadvice link has mysteriously reappeared at All Things Financial!