WordPress.org removing links to this site — no more free help from me!
EDIT: If you are reading this post, thank MichaelH, rough moderator in the wordpress.org forums. Due to his actions, I will not longer create and publish free WordPress video tutorials.
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I’ve been helping out a lot over at wordpress.org in the support forums for over 18 months. I’ve dedicated untold hours of my time for free posting help in the forums there and creating free video tutorials here for some of the more common problems that WordPress users experience.
Today I see that an anonymous moderator on the forums there removed links to this site from all my posts, at least all I looked at, that were to free video tutorials on this site.
That’s a great way to say thanks, don’t you think?
I will post no more free help on this site or wordpress.org until someone addresses this issue and gives me a good reason why that happened. Moderators there post links to their own sites, and other sites, with tutorials and tips all the time–which is great. I’m not sure what is going on in “moderation land” over in the support forums…maybe it’s a rough moderator or some systemic policy change, but I’ll provide no more free help until it’s sorted. On a side note, all links posted to the wordpress.org forums are no-follow, so this isn’t a question of someone getting precious “Google juice” by posting links there. The only purpose of a link posted there is to provide more detailed help for someone than can be provided in text in those forums…some people learn better when they can “see” how to do something. I’ve posted hundreds upon hundreds of times there with help typed directly in the post as well.
If you are as confused about this as I am, maybe you should post a note in the help forums asking about this as well. Here is just one example of what I’m talking about…a person moving servers and didn’t know what to do. This is not something you can easily type instructions for, but a step-by-step video can help a lot. As you can see, no one else offered assistance, but the link to my video that shows exactly how to do this was removed.
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/315349?replies=3
Pretty cheap shot WP Mods!
Edit: Seems that MichaelH (http://wordpress.org/support/profile/18989) is the power hungry mod that decided to remove all the links. Evidently he doesn’t have enough to do, so he has decided to run off WordPress helpers. My free videos must be impacting his paid support…sad. Only a few hours after he deleted all links to tutorials here, he continues to post links to his own site: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/315495?replies=5
No related posts.
It seemed more as if you were just spamming promotion for your site, I’m sure that’s the way the mods saw it as well. I understand that you’re trying to be helpful but just post your site in the “Your WordPress” section once. You can’t post threads for each different article you have.
@Kevin: I have been posting help for months. “Just post your site in the “Your WordPress” section once”. Does anyone reading this comment even know what that means? When a person is locked out of their site, then need help getting back in…how would you suggest I help them with that? Tell them I have a video, but I can’t tell them where it is…they’ll just have to “look for it” By the way, I removed your website link from the comment here…it’s optional in the comment form and I’m sure you would consider it spam if I left it in place
Lol. Such a horrible attitude you have, and you expect people to want to come back to your site? You are not better than anyone here or on wordpress.org no matter how many videos you have and how much you spam then. You are not god. Maybe I should come to your site and post links in every comment leading to tutorials on my site? Would you not moderate them? You are blowing this whole thing out of proportion. It’s really NOT that serious.
@Kevin
No, if you have good, free tutorials that help people needing help with WP, why would I moderate them? Have any?
He he
I would call good help spam!!
I think posting a link to this site has helped a lot of wordpress users.
@Kjagen
No doubt they will be “moderated”, but I’ll keep him busy…every time he logs in now, he will be looking for my links…let’s see who gets tired first 
There will still be plenty link posted to here, but since he considers it spam, I’ll oblige by making all of them to this post in the future
What a jerk moderator. I hope you change your mind and keep making the tuts man. I found your site months ago on YouTube and have learned more here than anywhere else. Your tuts saved my butt more than once. It sounds like the moderators at WordPress need to pull their heads out. Kevin, what are you 13 man? If you had half the talent Figaro has you would know twice as much about WordPress. XXXXXXXX [Rude, although probably accurate, name edited out by site admin]
I think the first commenter is a jerk, and why wouldn’t he expect you to remove his link if he calls you on “spamming” WordPress, just for helping people. Not a big deal? If I spent countless hours of my time helping other people out and was paid with insults, I’d be pretty peeved too (so would he, I might add).
Just want to let you know that I haven’t been at this blog business for long, but finding your tutorials was more helpful to me than anything I’ve found on the web. I’ve reposted a link to your site map, hoping it might help others like me. If they remove it, I hope others will support me in demanding an explanation.
There is a real need for video tutorials since so many people just will not *read* instructions (like those in the WordPress Codex). Please keep publishing them as I’m sure people will still find them with Google searches and through other links.
@Iridiax
I agree. The WordPress codex is great and helps a lot of people, but video appeals to people who just need to see someone walk them through a problem. Removing these links is all about MichaelH and his power trip…it’s certainly not about helping WordPress users.
@Robin
Thanks Robin.
This all really sucks. I’m sure MichaelH is looking at it as spam, but the fact is, what you’re doing is actually helping people and adding to the overall value of the support forums. And since you’ve helped their forums’ overall value, why not allow you to get something in return (visits to your site).
I might understand if you were in competition with WordPress, but you’re not – you’re trying to help its community.
@John
I do know at least one mod there who contacts people posting to the forums and offers to help them for a small price. I’ve had more than one person whom I’ve helped in the forums there tell me about being emailed by him with offers. I think this may be more about “competition” than is obvious on the surface. Visits to this site will still happen…the only difference is I won’t have to work nearly as hard…the future help will be “cut and paste” text…already have several help articles “scheduled”.
Wow..seems like you run into a storm, somewhat like Katrina, some we can weather others are truly very disturbing…perhaps this MichaelH fellow can go dunk his head into a honey pit somewhere and drown.
I’ve been away for 2 weeks visiting family and I for sure thought you would have your training class ready to go.. must be not.. Listen, storms will pass. You offer great value and I for one have learned much by you..thats why I was willing to join up for your training class..what great value.. WordPress is not an easy venue and just because I managed to get my blogs up and running and hosted I still have issues and I need to learn more to truly feel accomplished..
There is much I still dont know..
So whatever you do, pray and be strong..If you invested so much time it would seem you have let the storm beat you. Is this what you want?
With your intuitive capacity I’m sure you can outfox this circumstance and move on.
I will continue to follow this and I hope you can hang in there..
Thanks for everything..
@thecoffeedude
Thanks thecoffeedude. I’m not being beat by anyone. What MichaelH will never understand is that I truly was making these videos to give back to WordPress for the privileged of using this great software for free. I’m not sure what his problem is, other than his obvious power and ego trip, but I’m not going to volunteer my time and be kicked in the teeth by the very entity I was volunteering my time to help. It takes a lot of time to create, edit, and publish a good 10-15 minute video…I did that for free to help WordPress and I wasn’t looking for any thanks, but I sure wasn’t expecting to be labeled a SPAMMER for doing it either.
There just wasn’t enough interest expressed here for me to create the online training course. When I do something, I like to do it right, so my plan was to create a video based training course with at least 8 hours of short videos covering virtually every aspect of WordPress targeted to non-techie users. It would probably take me 40 or so hours to plan, create, edit, and publish that 8 hours of video — I just can’t justify the time commitment for 4 or 5 participants. However, prior to MichaelH issue, I would have almost done this for free to help the WordPress community–at this point, I’m not interested in helping WordPress for free anymore.
By the way, thanks for the post in the WP forums…it won’t be deleted…it will just be ignored. The hallmark of arrogant and power hungry people is to do something then ignore anyone who takes issue with, or questions it. Makes them feel even more powerful not having to justify their actions to “lessor individuals”.
Yep you got a raw deal, just for helping us who have somewhat of a problem configuring and using wordpress. Too bad the written help wordpress gives, may be a little to technical for some to grasp. Which is where your videos came in, showing us detail what we had problems understanding. Before they removed the links in a rash judgement call, they should have at least investigated further, to see if it was or was not a benifit to wordpress and wordpress users to leave links intact. Instead of removing yours just to monotize theirs. Good luck to you and thanks for what you did to help us.
That’s very tragic!
Only last night I discovered one of your videos on how to import my online blog to my localhost using xampp as I was having some issues with it. I found your videos to be extremely helpful not to mention easy to understand and thorough as well.
I hope you change your mind about not creating any more videos because of one foolish moderator. You will still be doing the WordPress community a great service with these videos on your site eve if you don’t post a link to it on wordpress.org forums as the thousands of WordPress users don’t exist there alone.
Again, thank you for your contributions as I have benefited from them and I hope you continue to post more videos on your site.
Annand
Hi Figaro,
I have had my disagreements with forum mods in the past, but this kind of treatment is uncalled for, when all you do is helping others.
My frustration was mounting over the last couple of days, as I was trying to figure out how to put together a standalone WP template that can be dropped in and used right away with any theme, to be used for landing pages. I went through 20-30 tutorials without finding what I needed, and I got lost in the WP Codex (I do appreciate the Codex, still).
I then found your videos on Youtube, and the way you explain the basics made it much easier for me to comprehend. I am almost 100% there now, and I wanted to thank you for your contributions. I have added a link in my blog roll as a small token of my appreciation. Keep up the good work.
Best regards,
Haavard
Yours is one of the most helpful blogs on WP.
I was on wordpress.com for a year and the staff there did not had a very encouraging attitude to links though helpful links were always liked (but people posted their own links with reservations).
I am surprised the wordpress.org moderators are so bad! You can leave a comment on this on Matt’s blog!
Believe me or not, you are less famous than you should be. Your blog is a goldmine of info!
I have only read the two posts on this topic (did not read the comemnts).
All the best.
@Vikas Gupta: Thanks Vikas, but I’ve moved on to other things. Users can still get some help from me here if they find this blog, but I’m not going to involve Matt in this…as I’ve said before, I enjoyed helping in the WP forums, but I’m not going to volunteer my time and get kicked in the teeth by the mods while doing it.
@figaro
I have sent a mail to Matt on this. You will not but I always can!
I will be glad if he gives his two cents on this! The waiting time is a few minutes to a few months! You will hear from me later (I’ve also given the two links from your blog on the moderation issue).
Sorry for not seeking your consent on this.
BTW, if you want some WP criticism (with a lot of humour) see this site: http://wank.wordpress.com
Figaro, if possible please install a comment reply subscription plugin here (though it may attract spam for your mail). Thanks.
@Vikas Gupta: No problem…I haven’t used this before, so I installed one that was updated for 2.9. Let me know if you know of a better one.
@Vikas Gupta: Thanks for the link…I think some humorous ribbing on issues is a very effective way of making a point.
I’ll be very surprised if you get a response from Matt…we’ll see
Thanks for installing the plug-in!
I am hoping against hope on Matt!
P.S.: Many CEOs including Brent Oxley (Hostgator)reply to mails.
@figaro
The plugin by Mark Jaquith is most recommended one! I also use that. The link is http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/subscribe-to-comments/
@Vikas Gupta: I looked at that one, but it hasn’t been updated in over 2 years, so I opted for the one below. Let me know if you see any problems with it. Thanks,
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/subscribe-to-double-opt-in-comments/