"This site has been disabled for violations of our Program Policies.
If you feel this disabling was in error, please visit our contact page
to let us know. Contact Us "
... but this is where it gets interesting. Guess what I had on those
sites when they were locked for alleged TOS violations? NOTHING!
Literally, absolutely nothing. I was in the middle of setting the
little guys up when BAM! I found that I had been TOSed. Surely, I
thought, this must be some kind of record.
I was truly amazed. Just how thin skinned would somebody have to be to
be offended by the site of a blank page? But as a search quickly
reveals
this has been happening A LOT, in large part because Google has sent
software out to do an admin's job. Again. A similiar fiasco occurred
when this was tried with Blogger, with a lot of the work personally
done by users ending up being deleted by some computer program when
they were on vacation, or something like that. One had to report the
problem within 5 days to avoid deletion, so some people were most
unpleasantly surprised when they got back.
Yes, I have filled out the required problem report and not heard back,
but I will also add my voice to the multitude of those already here,
and say that this is not an isolated problem and that not only has the
program misfired, it has misfired absurdly. I find myself left with
two questions:
1. Google and its fan club - guys, can you handle reasonable criticism
maturely, or are we going to see a lot of attitude on this one? Let's
find out.
2. Seriously, would you please lose the bot? People put real time and
effort into writing their pages, and it's a slap in the face when you
tell them that their work is going to be endangered, because you don't
feel that it's worth your time to manually inspect what they took the
time to manually create.
You're not going to seriously inconvenience the spammers this way -
they're used to creating throwaway sites, and have been doing so for
years. But somebody who has put his heart and soul into creating a new
site - a legitimate site - and finds that it's gone for keeps because
he was visiting the Adirondacks the week a program bug acted up will
be presented with a real hardship. Which user would you rather retain?
I was laughing, myself, over the absurdity of my own situation and
still am, but if these had been established sites instead of new ones
that I was right in the middle of creating, I don't believe that I
would have been quite as amused.
We've heard yours and everyone else's complaints about the disabled
pages. Please understand we are doing everything we can to find a
solution to the issue. I will personally get both of your sites up and
running by end of day tomorrow at the latest.
My apologies to you and everyone who has had their pages disabled by
mistake. Just send in a request through the form and we will get to
it.
> "This site has been disabled for violations of our Program Policies.
> If you feel this disabling was in error, please visit our contact page
> to let us know. Contact Us "
> ... but this is where it gets interesting. Guess what I had on those
> sites when they were locked for alleged TOS violations? NOTHING!
> Literally, absolutely nothing. I was in the middle of setting the
> little guys up when BAM! I found that I had been TOSed. Surely, I
> thought, this must be some kind of record.
> I was truly amazed. Just how thin skinned would somebody have to be to
> be offended by the site of a blank page? But as a search quickly
> reveals
> this has been happening A LOT, in large part because Google has sent
> software out to do an admin's job. Again. A similiar fiasco occurred
> when this was tried with Blogger, with a lot of the work personally
> done by users ending up being deleted by some computer program when
> they were on vacation, or something like that. One had to report the
> problem within 5 days to avoid deletion, so some people were most
> unpleasantly surprised when they got back.
> Yes, I have filled out the required problem report and not heard back,
> but I will also add my voice to the multitude of those already here,
> and say that this is not an isolated problem and that not only has the
> program misfired, it has misfired absurdly. I find myself left with
> two questions:
> 1. Google and its fan club - guys, can you handle reasonable criticism
> maturely, or are we going to see a lot of attitude on this one? Let's
> find out.
> 2. Seriously, would you please lose the bot? People put real time and
> effort into writing their pages, and it's a slap in the face when you
> tell them that their work is going to be endangered, because you don't
> feel that it's worth your time to manually inspect what they took the
> time to manually create.
> You're not going to seriously inconvenience the spammers this way -
> they're used to creating throwaway sites, and have been doing so for
> years. But somebody who has put his heart and soul into creating a new
> site - a legitimate site - and finds that it's gone for keeps because
> he was visiting the Adirondacks the week a program bug acted up will
> be presented with a real hardship. Which user would you rather retain?
> I was laughing, myself, over the absurdity of my own situation and
> still am, but if these had been established sites instead of new ones
> that I was right in the middle of creating, I don't believe that I
> would have been quite as amused.
On Jul 24, 8:41 pm, Official Google Page Creator Guide wrote:
> I will personally get both of your sites up and
> running by end of day tomorrow at the latest.
Maybe not the absolute latest. It is now 2:08 am on Sunday, and both
sites are still down, so resolution wasn't as quick as all that. Just
thought I'd bring up the subject before this discussion scrolls off
the page and the subject is forgotten. I'm hoping that the problem
will be fixed, sometime soon, but so far I'm seeing nothing but
promises, and the first promise was broken.
> On Jul 24, 8:41 pm, Official Google Page Creator Guide wrote:
> > I will personally get both of your sites up and
> > running by end of day tomorrow at the latest.
> Maybe not the absolute latest. It is now 2:08 am on Sunday, and both
> sites are still down, so resolution wasn't as quick as all that. Just
> thought I'd bring up the subject before this discussion scrolls off
> the page and the subject is forgotten. I'm hoping that the problem
> will be fixed, sometime soon, but so far I'm seeing nothing but
> promises, and the first promise was broken.
As a "point of information," this "Program Policies" violation problem
(read "fiasco") has been lingering since the beginning of the year
(yes, that's over six months ago!)...
Please feel free to read (and weep at) some of the original writings
(including mine) on this serious matter here, dating from January
2008:
I now see that the "Official Google Page Creator Guide" (who has
appeared in the GPC forum a total of 4 times in July, 0 times in June,
and 1 time in May), who "promised" your fix by the 26th but it's still
not fixed as of the 28th, also wrote above on the 25th: "Please
understand we are doing everything we can to find a solution to the
issue."
Well, given that the problem hasn't been solved by Google for over six
months and timely (not to mention promised) fixes clearly cannot be
done to the "mistakes," here's my constructive suggestion -- as this
situation could be extremely damaging to the people, businesses,
reputations, etc. of the affected sites past, present and future:
Simply STOP the flagging of ANY sites with "disabled for violations
of our Program Policies" unless and until Google finds a way to do it
accurately and responsibly.
In addition, given the potentially defamatory nature of Google
mistakenly publishing to the world that a site has
"violations" (perhaps implying that a site contains child pornography
or some other grossly offensive content) when there are in fact none,
I think it would be reasonable in the interests of all parties
(including Google) that Google first communicate a "warning" to the
offending site by way of an e-mail to the site owner (as registered
with GPC from the outset), PRIOR to publicly flagging the site as
violating anything (without any notice as is now the case), in order
to give the site owner an opportunity to either (1) communicate back
to Google that a "mistake" appears to have been made, so then a human
manually can confirm the situation before any drastic action is taken;
or (2) fix the problem immediately (e.g., within 24-48 hours).
Does anyone have any problem with these very simple solutions in the
short term?
Alternatively, does anyone else have any other suggestions?
I eagerly await feedback on this -- especially if/when our "Official
Guide" comes back on the job...
> I see your sites are still disabled. A lot of broken promises, huh?
> On Jul 27, 2:14 am, Joe Dunphy II wrote:
> > On Jul 24, 8:41 pm, Official Google Page Creator Guide wrote:
> > > I will personally get both of your sites up and
> > > running by end of day tomorrow at the latest.
> > Maybe not the absolute latest. It is now 2:08 am on Sunday, and both
> > sites are still down, so resolution wasn't as quick as all that. Just
> > thought I'd bring up the subject before this discussion scrolls off
> > the page and the subject is forgotten. I'm hoping that the problem
> > will be fixed, sometime soon, but so far I'm seeing nothing but
> > promises, and the first promise was broken.- Hide quoted text -
Thank you for your opinion on how to handle this, as well as for your
chronologically correct time line. We will be making an update soon
that will hopefully allow you to see the future and direction we have
decided to take with Page Creator. I'd like to thank everyone for
their patience during this time and would also like to thank everyone
who has been helpful in this Help Group during this time.
> As a "point of information," this "Program Policies" violation problem
> (read "fiasco") has been lingering since the beginning of the year
> (yes, that's over six months ago!)...
> Please feel free to read (and weep at) some of the original writings
> (including mine) on this serious matter here, dating from January
> 2008:
> I now see that the "Official Google Page Creator Guide" (who has
> appeared in the GPC forum a total of 4 times in July, 0 times in June,
> and 1 time in May), who "promised" your fix by the 26th but it's still
> not fixed as of the 28th, also wrote above on the 25th: "Please
> understand we are doing everything we can to find a solution to the
> issue."
> Well, given that the problem hasn't been solved by Google for over six
> months and timely (not to mention promised) fixes clearly cannot be
> done to the "mistakes," here's my constructive suggestion -- as this
> situation could be extremely damaging to the people, businesses,
> reputations, etc. of the affected sites past, present and future:
> Simply STOP the flagging of ANY sites with "disabled for violations
> of our Program Policies" unless and until Google finds a way to do it
> accurately and responsibly.
> In addition, given the potentially defamatory nature of Google
> mistakenly publishing to the world that a site has
> "violations" (perhaps implying that a site contains child pornography
> or some other grossly offensive content) when there are in fact none,
> I think it would be reasonable in the interests of all parties
> (including Google) that Google first communicate a "warning" to the
> offending site by way of an e-mail to the site owner (as registered
> with GPC from the outset), PRIOR to publicly flagging the site as
> violating anything (without any notice as is now the case), in order
> to give the site owner an opportunity to either (1) communicate back
> to Google that a "mistake" appears to have been made, so then a human
> manually can confirm the situation before any drastic action is taken;
> or (2) fix the problem immediately (e.g., within 24-48 hours).
> Does anyone have any problem with these very simple solutions in the
> short term?
> Alternatively, does anyone else have any other suggestions?
> I eagerly await feedback on this -- especially if/when our "Official
> Guide" comes back on the job...
> Cheers!
> On Jul 28, 11:14 am, Ol'Hippie wrote:
> > I see your sites are still disabled. A lot of broken promises, huh?
> > On Jul 27, 2:14 am, Joe Dunphy II wrote:
> > > On Jul 24, 8:41 pm, Official Google Page Creator Guide wrote:
> > > > I will personally get both of your sites up and
> > > > running by end of day tomorrow at the latest.
> > > Maybe not the absolute latest. It is now 2:08 am on Sunday, and both
> > > sites are still down, so resolution wasn't as quick as all that. Just
> > > thought I'd bring up the subject before this discussion scrolls off
> > > the page and the subject is forgotten. I'm hoping that the problem
> > > will be fixed, sometime soon, but so far I'm seeing nothing but
> > > promises, and the first promise was broken.- Hide quoted text -
Since we've got you on the line, so to speak, may I offer a suggestion
of my own? One thing that I've noticed about Googlepages is that one
seems to be forced to use templates on one's main page. I can
understand offering templates to the user - some people have trouble
with html. What I'm not so clear on is why the use of said templates
should be mandatory for all users, whether they want or need them or
not.
Clicking on "site settings" in the Googlepages editor in the third box
from the top, I come across an option entitled "Homepage", described
as follows: "The homepage is the default page for your site." How
about allowing, as an option, the selection of one of the files one
uploads as a homepage. So, say, if I uploaded a file named
"index.html" to
This would allow those who don't want to use templates to simply
bypass them, while those who love them would be free to continue using
them. After all, to have an option is not to be forced to use the
option, and wouldn't you agree that for the adult user, Googlepages
should be about giving the user more choices, not fewer?
