GENEALOGY NOT SO WISE

Okay, I never joined Genealogy Wise to begin with and didn't see all the posts on this
issue, so bear with me, folks. And feel free to correct me on something I might have
missed on this affair:

Recently Genealogy Wise announced a contest with cash prizes of $100 each in
eight different categories. I gather these included prizes for the person who started
the most groups or invited the most new members. This rightly raised some concerns
among some members, including Terry Thornton who wrote a post critical of the
contest. Apparently Genealogy Wise felt this post and comments by other members
was "disrespectful" and removed it from the site.

I became aware of this when Bruce Buzbee posted on his Facebook status that his
comment had been deleted by GW. I went over and checked it out (you can read the
GW site content if you aren't a member but must register to comment) and found
Terry's post on censorship. I wish I'd had the foresight to save it now because I
can't recall the exact content but do remember in an exchange between Terry and
the GW spokesman, the reason given for the removal of Terry's original post was
that it was "disrespectful or rude".

I've "known" Terry now for nearly two years through correspondence and reading his
blog and the last thing Terry Thornton would ever be is "rude or disrespectful". Frankly,
if anyone was disrespectful it was IMHO the GW in his or her replies to Terry.

Just before I started this post I went back to GW to check on that exchange and found
thatTerry's second post was gone now as well. There's a revision of the contest rules that changes the criteria now from quantity to quality: "highest quality blog posts, highest quality videos, etc."and also a discussion asking for members' opinions on the contest.


There's also a discussion entitled "Help us determine the level of censorship at Genealogy
Wise" which asks members' opinions about censorship on three categories: Adult content
or porno, posts promoting non-genealogy products, and posts that are "rude" or "
disrespectful." I'm not going to give a full critique. Go read it for yourself at Genealogy Wise.
But I do have one thought that is making me do a slow burn. The original post from Terry is gone, deleted by GW. (The second one is gone as well, I suspect because Terry left GW in
protest to being labeled "rude and disrespectful".) So no one can see the post that started it
all, and now readers cannot read it and judge for themselves, and Terry is left with that
"rude and disrespectful" label."

GW is tap-dancing as fast as they can on the issue. The GW spokesperson says that in the
future they won't remove posts "disrespectful to GW."

You know, I might have eventually come around and joined GW. I originally resisted joining
FB but I finally gave in and jumped aboard. But this whole incident has left a bad taste in
my mouth and I can now safely say I'll never join Genealogy Wise.