Alternative source of money to clear the queue - SEO Attack

[lbrabbit]

Alternative source of money to clear the queue - CC to Donation the Rest

------Updated version to avoid suggestions of near illegal activities-----

I would like to suggest something different to clear the preorder queue. As a community, we worked very hard and we have a donation system to cover what the community is not responsible for but still people put their money in. I would suggest to make a petition to CC to donate the rest of the money so that the goal will be reached.

1. ED, Craig and the community need to agree to launch this petiton.

2. Produce a succinct and defensible summary of the events.

3. Draft an Open petition in the forum, post our intention it in Slashdot, etc. to generate some traffic.

4. Sent CC the petition and wait a bit.

5. If nothing happens, ask everyone and everyone's friend to sign and warn other kickstarters/crowdsourcing people not to use CC.

P.S. Can anyone help to change the title -> Alternative source of money to clear the queue - CC to Donation the Rest
 

 

[DaMummy]

*facepalm*

can we close this thread?

 

[Wally]

How about no?

 

[sporkbox]

Business deals fail all the time, and given that it's been so long and OP has so few staff that are already in over their heads (to a degree), it's better for them to focus on fixing the (pre)order queue and work on getting into the black. Suing has never turned something around for the better, in my eyes. Not only that, but attacking their site's ranking in search engines could be seen as attempted sabotage of their business and probably punishable by law. If not by law, then if the attack gets enough press, search engines will simply skirt around the attack or give CC preferential placement on the listing until the drama blows over. In your instance, search engines control the outcome more than anything else. And they've proven that they're not above skewing results to fit what they see is right.

(All the reason to not use them, sometimes, since you only see what they want you to, but that's another discussion)

 

[vcoleiro1]

I thought this thread was locked?

 

[lbrabbit]

Business deals fail all the time, and given that it's been so long and OP has so few staff that are already in over their heads (to a degree), it's better for them to focus on fixing the (pre)order queue and work on getting into the black. Suing has never turned something around for the better, in my eyes. Not only that, but attacking their site's ranking in search engines could be seen as attempted sabotage of their business and probably punishable by law. If not by law, then if the attack gets enough press, search engines will simply skirt around the attack or give CC preferential placement on the listing until the drama blows over. In your instance, search engines control the outcome more than anything else. And they've proven that they're not above skewing results to fit what they see is right.

(All the reason to not use them, sometimes, since you only see what they want you to, but that's another discussion)

First, I admit, for the wiki+forum+etc. part, it is wrong, and the search engine may override that. But for stage 2, there is something call freedom of speech. Everyone can just post what they believe to be right on their social network. A lot of social movements nowadays work in this way. As for press, why do you think that they will be totally against us? Some may be sympathetic to us and understand that it is a last resort.

Punishable by law - I think the closest is defamation, probably not criminal, just civil, and they have to come to Europe to sue. This put them in the same position as what Craig has to do to sue, and that will urge them to negotiate. Moreover, I believe that CC really owe them money. CC has to make the judge believe that the complaint is groundless.

As for workload, it is not for me to judge. I am not forcing OP to take it up either. I am just typing an idea.

 

[lbrabbit]

I think again, and changed the first post. Here is the old version as a record.

I had this idea for some months, but Craig already disappeared, so I did not post it. Now Ed & Craig's email and survey is out and I can see that it is just the same methods to solve the problem of the order queue. I would like to suggest something different.

I believe that CC should pay, but it is too expensive and risky to sue. In order to get them back to the table and negotiate, we can do the following:

CC is not so good in SEO (ie, Search Engine Optimization, to get the company web site to rank higher in search results of related keyword), basically relying on internal wiki links. With our community, we can occupy the top results with complaints of the company.

1. ED and Craig need to agree to launch this attack.

2. Produce a succinct and defensible summary of the events.

3. Draft an Open letter in the forum, post our intention it in Slashdot, etc. to generate some traffic.

4. Sent CC the open letter and wait 14 days.

5. If all else failed, SEO attack.

6. Stage 1, Setup a dedicated web site with the open letter and summary of events, use wiki+forum+friendly web sites to host links pointing to the web site. This web site will probably become the first search result when people search for CC or related keywords. This should send some good warnings to the company. The stage is also controllable. If CC pays, then we can delete the web site and all the links in wiki+forum+etc.

7. Stage 2 is to ask everyone to use their online resources and possibly kick CC out of the first page of search result. Stage 2 is something that cannot be totally erase and we will enter into a lose-lose situation.

One thing that make me doubt to post is that the process has to be handled with care. I do not want to scare other suppliers to do business with kickstarter/crowdsouring intiatives.

I am afraid that if it was successful, someone would start a kickstarter project with this in mind as a ploy from the very beginning and take advantages of both the supporters and the supplier. So We have setup a high standard by making our case very clear and giving more than enough warns.

On the other hand, we do not want others to go through what we are still going through. It is right to have this problem exposed to more audiences.

Also, the SEO attack may work but we may still not get the money because CC may not be health financially. So we also need someone in the industry to estimate their financial status before we start.
 

 

[Wally]

I thought this thread was locked?

Decided to let it run its course. Exophase likes debates apparently.

 

[vcoleiro1]

I thought this thread was locked?

Decided to let it run its course. Exophase likes debates apparently.

I see, I thought the forum software had gone bung or something.

 

[elwing]

hehe, please bear with us we don't have our pandora yet (well I assume Exophase does...) we need some fun too!

 

[Godmil]

Hmm, so you went from blackmail to asking a company really nicely to hand over hundreds of thousands of dollars....

it's not going to happen. Sorry.

 

[DaMummy]

i believe it was once said that "Exophase is bad. Nothing good will ever come from him" or something along those lines, i cant remember the exact wording

 

[ExquisiteCorpse]

 

[lbrabbit]

mm, so you went from blackmail to asking a company really nicely to hand over hundreds of thousands of dollars....

it's not going to happen. Sorry.

Yes, blackmailing nicely and legally that is.

So for the donation amount, the total for the 2 goals are €3700.00. How about asking for €5000.00 so that we may get €4000.00 after negotiation.

When I produce the 2nd version, I still had some legal thing in it. If I remove it totaly, then ED, Craig and OP do not have to get involve:

1. Someone have some free time (like elwing) can survey the forum produce a summary of the events with reference links to different posts.

2. Someone have some free time (like elwing) can draft an Open Petition in the forum in an encouraging rather than condemning tone.

3. Host the petition on a web server not in the US. To signing, link to a topic here.

4. Sent CC the petition and wait a bit. 

5. If nothing happens, post it on Slashdot, etc. Ask everyone and everyone's friend to spread it around.

6. (Optional) If CC donates,  ED, Craig and OP come out and say thank you.

Before, I was thinking about CC paying compensation to Craig. This is difficult, as most companies do not have budget for compensation. This version, however, targets the marketing department. €5000.00 should be well within the annual marketing budget of a sizable company. This also solve the worry that I had in the 1st version about a lose-lose situation.

 

[moxie]

No. No, no, no, no, no. No.

 

[Exophase]

Decided to let it run its course. Exophase likes debates apparently.

I just felt like locking it without explaining why would give a bad impression, and it's especially important to not give new posters a bad impression. He didn't do anything against the rules and I think deserves an explanation for why this would be seen as inappropriate.
I'll keep this pretty short though - Craig has basically said something along the lines "that's business, it happens." So they're not looking to start a big thing with CC. The big issue is that we really don't have good details of what happened between the two parties along the way.. we only have one side of the story. Even if ED and Craig did agree to get behind this and present their view of what happened it'd still be one sided. They could have the best intentions in the world but they still won't be able to cover everything objectively. That really isn't fair to CC.

As for anything criminal, I don't think the problem is expressing free speech but deliberate sabotage or blackmail; you don't want to simply make your opinion known but you want to drown out any opposing opinions. You also want to get other people to promote your opinion en masse on the basis of their trust of you and not because they have any knowledge of the situation. Could you imagine if something like a DDoS was protected as freedom of speech?

 

[lbrabbit]

Understand now. I will let this topic sink to the bottom.

 

[gotwake424]

i believe it was once said that "Exophase is bad. Nothing good will ever come from him" or something along those lines, i cant remember the exact wording

hahaha it was in his profile on gp32x

 

[DaMummy]

yay someone got it!