So Many Members, Yet So Little to Discuss

The latest numbers from the Pink Truth discussion board (as of about 48 hours) are as follows:

28,392 Posts in 1,864 Topics by 1,603 Members

That means on average, each member has posted 17.7 times (let’s just round that to 18).

Only problem is that we know there aren’t really 1,603 members, given the bans that we know are taking place.

With such “a large online presence”, as Tracy put it, surely the discussion board is busy, busy, busy.

Then I looked at the PinkLighthouse board.

As of today, there are 47,309 Posts in 2798 Topics by 729 Members.

That means that, on average, each member on the PinkLighthouse board has posted 64.8 times (let’s round it to 65).

Whoa!

18 versus 65.

That’s some discussion happening on the Pink Truth board (not!)

Even funnier, PBJ has over 1,060 posts just by herself. As I pointed out before, it’s clear that Tracy lured the formerly-banned and disliked PBJ over to the Pink Truth board to get those numbers up.

Pink Un-Truth & Private Messages: Item 4

Let’s look at another statement by Tracy in that post she made on the PinkTruth discussion board.

“… About a dozen people have been banned from the community, and that is to be expected with such a large online presence. Those who have been banned have deliberately violated our guidelines by promoting MLMs, harassing other members, attempting to re-enter the forum after being banned, and generally disrupting the PT community.”

Well, the readers here beat me to this one. (No fair jumping ahead!)

From the emails I have received, it is obvious that there have been far more people banned than just “about a dozen.”

What’s more, the people who are banned from the Pink Truth board are not only people who are promoting MLMs, harassing and such.

Some of the people that have been banned have NEVER EVEN POSTED THERE.

Tracy is banning people she suspects of various things by banning their IP address.

For you non-technical people, an IP address is the numerical address that is assigned to a computer on the Internet.

A few readers here have tried using anonymous proxies to get to the board. This routes them through the servers of another computer, thus their IP address is different. However, Tracy has apparently blocked the IPs of many of such anonymous proxies.

Which is funny, when you think about it, because Tracy has been a enthusiastic user of these “anonymizers” for years.

I wonder how she gets on her own board?!

Pink Un-Truth & Private Messages: Item 3

Let’s take a look at another assertion by Tracy in her post, this time pertaining to the Pink Truth chat room.

“The PT chat room does create a transcript of all communications on the chat room. It is one large text document that logs the date and time of each message, and what was typed. All messages sent, whether in a room or a message box, are mixed together and sorted by time. I do not actively monitor those transcripts. Transcripts are only reviewed when a complaint about a member is received, and only the section related to that member is reviewed.”

The chat room software that Pink Truth is using is addonchat. They provide four editions of their software: free, professional, professional plus, and enterprise. If you pay for the professional plus edition (which is $125.00 per year), then an additional feature you receive is the ability to record the activity in your chat room at any time via a transcript.

Here’s this feature’s description from their site (addonchat.com):

Detailed Transcripts (logs) Professional PLUS and Enterprise customers may view, eMail, and download a detailed record of the activity in their chat room at any time. Your chat room’s transcripts store all public and (optionally) private messages entered in your chat room.

There’s no way to know whether Tracy “actively monitors” these logs. But given the fact that she is apparently monitoring every incoming IP on the discussion board (obvious from the numerous banning of visitors) then I would think she would also be paying attention to the chat as closely.

If you notice, the transcript also records ALL PRIVATE MESSAGES.

I might also add that the administrator of the chat room has the option to be INVISIBLE to all the other members. So if you’ve ever felt as if Tracy knew what you said in chat even though she wasn’t there, that’s probably your answer. If she’s invisible, then obviously there’s no way to tell if she is there or not.

NEXT: Questionable/False statement #4.

Pink Un-Truth & Private Messages: Item 2

2. “I can’t even see who you’ve sent a private message to, much less read that message. You can see confirmation of this on a help board for the discussion board software we use.”

As I stated in the previous post it simply isn’t true that the private messages on the Pink Truth discussion board cannot be read.

As confirmation of her statement to the contrary, Tracy offers up a link to a discussion on another board. This is the discussion board run by simplemachines.org, the group of software developers who created and maintain the SMF discussion board software.

But the link Tracy sites to prove her point is not only old (September 2005) it is also pathetically WRONG.

I wonder why she didn’t provide a link to THIS information:

Discussion on The Admin Zone “Reading private messages”

Or this one:

SMF Hacks: “AdminCP Member PM Viewer”

Or this one:

SMF Hacks: “List Private Messages From The Database With PHP“

Incidentally, SMF is the same software that is used on the pinklighthouse.com forum. I contacted the owner there, Laura J. about all this and here is her response:

[Laura J.] “Yes, private messages of members can be accessed via the database. Pretty much anyone using a database software like SMF knows this.

The board rules on pinklighthouse.com make it clear to users that, although no one attempts to read these PMs, that they are part of the database and thus a part of the site. Anyone who claims otherwise is either misinformed or lying.

By the way…a site owner and/or forum administrator would be a fool to read private messages. It doesn’t exactly look so good. Plus I’m sure there are some privacy issues there. You’d have to be dumb to do it.

In case any of your readers are wondering, no I absolutely, positively don’t read members’ private messages. I’m not stupid, and I consider their messages COMPLETELY off limits to me. But let your readers know that if they are ever in doubt, use email. I suppose it is always wise to consider anything you do online to be open to prying eyes somewhere, unfortunately. “

Thanks Laura J.

NEXT: Questionable/False statement #3.

Pink Un-Truth About Private Messages (continued)

Now I’d like to point out some things about Tracy’s post “On community expectations for behavior, privacy, and harassment” that I just showed you. Excerpts from that post are in red, our comments following.

1. “Private messages on the PT discussion board are exactly that – private. No one, not even me, can read private messages other than the sender and the recipient.”

This is 100% FALSE.

The discussion board on PinkTruth.com uses the SMF software. It is what organizes and manages the discussion board. This software requires a database in order to function. (I know I’m about to get a little technical, but you can handle it.)

A database is simply a structured collection of data. When data is stored this way, you can perform functions on that data, such as searches. The database is what collects and stores all the information about the discussion board: member’s names and passwords, private messages, all the topics and where they belong…everything.

Nothing can exist on the discussion board unless is is in the database. Understand?

The private messages are stored in the database. Anyone who has access to that database has the ability to access and read those messages. Period.

Every private message is coded with recipient name, sender name, date, the content of the message, and whether the recipient deleted the private message or still has it in their inbox.

Maybe Tracy doesn’t know how to access them.

Maybe she doesn’t want members to know that it is possible.

NEXT: Questionable/False statement #2.

Pink Un-Truth About Private Messages

An alert and savvy reader emailed ptlies because they were upset about a post by Tracy on the Pink Truth board. On May 25th at 8:14 a.m., Tracy started a post entitled “On community expectations for behavior, privacy, and harassment.”

(Side note…I noticed that Tracy calls herself “The Queen.” Whoa)

Here is the text of that post:

“In the last several weeks, our community has been hit by a handful of troublemakers who don’t want our voices to be heard. It’s time that some issues regarding this are addressed.

Certain privileges on Pink Truth must now be earned. If you’re a newer member, you’ll see that you don’t have access to all the features of the board. Unfortunately, that change was made because some people were abusing the features of the board and using them to harass members. For now, those features are given to those who have been positive contributors on the board.

Private messages on the PT discussion board are exactly that – private. No one, not even me, can read private messages other than the sender and the recipient. I can’t even see who you’ve sent a private message to, much less read that message. You can see confirmation of this on a help board for the discussion board software we use.

The PT chat room does create a transcript of all communications on the chat room. It is one large text document that logs the date and time of each message, and what was typed. All messages sent, whether in a room or a message box, are mixed together and sorted by time. I do not actively monitor those transcripts. Transcripts are only reviewed when a complaint about a member is received, and only the section related to that member is reviewed.

The PT discussion board has almost 1,600 members. About a dozen people have been banned from the community, and that is to be expected with such a large online presence. Those who have been banned have deliberately violated our guidelines by promoting MLMs, harassing other members, attempting to re-enter the forum after being banned, and generally disrupting the PT community.

We’ve had a record week at PT in terms of number of visitors, number of NEW visitors, page views, and posts on the discussion board. We are bound to have some growing pains, but I am excited because of the amount of particpation on the site.I have said from the beginning that we are here to have fun, first and foremost. We are also committed to an honest exchange of information, as well as moral support to those who have had similar experiences in MLM. I will do my best to make sure that we achieve these goals, and that means I won’t tolerate people making trouble in our community. “

I don’t want this post to be too long, so in the next post I will point out the false statements and other problems with some of the statements Tracy makes in this post.

Speaking of Hate Mail…

One of the “registered members only” boards on PinkTruth.com is for Tracy to share all the hate mail she receives. That’s supposed to be a fun benefit of being a member there.

I suspect that many people sign up just to read it then never come back again.

But I digress…

I thought it would be fun to share the hate mail that we have received from Tracy.

If you have any you’d like to share, feel free to forward it along. The email address is to the right.

Your identity won’t be revealed. That isn’t our style. Remember…ptlies is about exposing and stopping online harassment and bad behavior, not continuing it.

If you want to share, you must have the header showing that it came from one of the two email addresses she frequently uses–the Yahoo address or the pinktruth Gmail address.

The Serial Bully: Signs & Symptoms

A reader expressed to me the fact that they felt that their treatment on Pink Truth and some communications they received from Tracy Coenen were akin to cyber bullying.

If you aren’t familiar with cyber bullying, you need to educate yourself so that in case you are a victim you know what the signs are and how to deal with these personalities.

There is a great site that outlines some of the characteristics of bullying.

Behaviour of the Serial Bully

In the list describing the serial bully, I found that a few of the characteristics described some of the things I’ve seen on Pink Truth:

• is a control freak and has a compulsive need to control everyone and everything you say, do, think and believe;
• displays a compulsive need to criticise whilst simultaneously refusing to value, praise and acknowledge others, their achievements, or their existence
• undermines and destroys anyone who the bully perceives to be an adversary, a potential threat, or who can see through the bully’s mask
• is adept at creating conflict between those who would otherwise collate incriminating information about them

There are four types of serial bullies described on the site. I’ll take a look at one in particular in my next post.

Tracy Hangs Out A Shingle

Many former readers of Pink Truth were bothered by a blog entry there on January 26, 2007, encouraging visitors to sign up for a new 0% Discover Card account. Tracy Coenen apparently thought this was a good opportunity to transfer some of that Mary Kay debt to a new card and save some money on interest.

There was a little more to this story, however.

Anyone who followed the link in that post were also making money for Tracy Coenen. The link that took you to the Discover Card deal was an affiliate link, meaning when someone followed that link and then signed up, Tracy made some money off the deal for referring you.

I suppose that’s fine and dandy to some, and the affiliate link is clearly identified as such. It left a bad taste in some people’s mouth, such as the person who wrote me, whose comments are below:

“At that point, reading that Discover Card post, I felt sick to my stomach. Here was someone I thought was operating with the interests of women who had been burned by MK in mind. I felt like I was being used as a way for her to make a few quick buck and it was a turn off. I wrote her off that day.”

A similar post appeared on the Pink Truth site a week earlier, this time encouraging readers to take out a savings account. Again, Tracy made money if you followed the link. Here’s a link to that post:

Pink Truth post: “Start saving money now”

Hey! Maybe with all the interest you make on that savings account, you’ll have some extra money to spend on some self-serving Pink Truth merchandise!

mypinktruth.com & thefuschiablog.com: Part 2

A few days ago I explained that the domain names mypinktruth.com and thefuschiablog.com were taking visitors to the main WordPress.com site. I showed you how to identify this by looking at the page title in that your browser displayed.

I just wanted to educate you a little further about what is happening with these domain names.

As an owner of a domain on the Internet, you can create what is called a redirect for any of the pages on your website. Let’s say that you created a page and later decided you didn’t need the content on this page anymore for whatever reason. Or maybe what you named the page is not what you like anymore. If you simply delete this page from your website then those visitors who may have bookmarked the page will wind up on an error page if they try to visit in the future. Also the search engines that have indexed this page will still list it in searches, even though it is no longer there.

 In this case, you can enter code on your domain telling it to redirect visitors to the a new page. This is called a 302 redirect. You can do a search on 302 redirects and learn all about them.

Today, using a program that verifies such redirects and other website information, I positively identified that there is a 302 redirect on both of the domains, mypinktruth.com  and thefuschiablog.com. The 302 redirect is a temporary redirection and it can be changed at any time in the future. That means that somewhere down the line, whoever owns those domains can have them point to actual content on their server…not just the WordPress site.

Maybe they will keep those redirects in place, however, just to throw people off the trail.

We’ll keep you posted. What happens with these domains will be very informative I think.