In a nutshell, I was libeled a day ago on the Cow’s boards, by Lindeboom himself.

1 and 1/2 months ago, I posted a notice within my own job available posting, to please not respond unless you are really serious. A number of people had responded to my initial post, applying for the job, then flaked within a couple weeks. (A job that was a 4-figure job, for 20-30 seconds of motion graphics.)

I wasn’t rude in my posting, but was a bit annoyed that so many of the Cow’s responders would be flakes. And in this economy. Given I was on “Moderate” anyway, if Cow didn’t like my post, they wouldn’t let it go through.

But they did. However, someone on the Admin side interspersed surly comments within my post, identified by “Cow’s Admin Response:”

Fine. I hadn’t been back to ever see these. Then, I get notified of a new post to the thread and go look. This is now 45-50 days later. Lo and Behold, Ron Lindeboom posts himself, railing against me and libeling me. I email him privately, asking him what the issue is, and why are you libeling me?

He’s upset, because: a) someone voted on my thread (or post) and give it a “kudos” or a 5 star rating (I don’t even know what these are), so he’s pissed off at that; b) he claims he emailed me privately after my initial post 45 days ago, and that he reprimanded me in that email; and c) I posted his reprimanding email at CC.

What??? I wish “b” were true, I’d love to see his “reprimand” of me for my innocuous posting. And… if he really did send me an email that shows him in a bad light, how could I ever get this posted at CC? I’m on “Moderate,” who there would allow this post to go through?

This man will not reason; all attempts to reason/inquire/clear up by email only result in more anger and personal attacks from him. He will not admit he’s mistaking me or this situation for something else (or maybe he’s just crazy?). And he will not return a phone call (yes, I called his office to try to straighten out this apparent misunderstanding).

Obviously, he’s got a problem. I stand by this post, and have emails to back this up. I actually wished I had cached the post at CC he libeled me on, but he removed it within a couple hours and deleted the entire thread. And then banned me.

Whatever his problem is, be it psychological issues, ego issues, insecurity issues, or a combination of these… it’s a real shame. It’s a disservice to the creative community at CC, but thankfully, there are other places to go to post job opportunities, etc.

JC

He closed my account without so much as a warning (well, AFTER closing it he wrote me a vague e-mail), but I can tell you that the trigger was probably my asking bloggers who own the new XDCam EX about the audio frequency response. CreativeCow must have been given orders from Sony to hush me up because of my exposing the awful audio on the HVR-V1U last year.

You can read MY beef with CreativeCow here:

http://members.tripod.com/JapanRadio/

Good riddance to the Cow. Some of those people (not all) are not only impolite, they are downright technically WRONG and spreading false information.

It will take time. Don’t expect any reversal of policy. The COW has always been an extremely sponsor-friendly environment. That won’t change. There are no professional journalists in the leadership. It’s not about getting it right, it’s about making advertisers happy. Totally legal, and ethical provided policies are clearly stated. (Currently those policies are not.)

The COW’s a good place for a quick answer, but pretty useless for critical evaluations.

Really left a bad taste in my mouth, haven’t been back since.