I've had much more experiece with Digital Grin since my review of the site.

I had a very favorable impression. I regret, I now have a much less favorable impression. Part of it is the forum moderator being overactive in the Photo-Finish Forum and very arbitrary. Part of it was the reaction by the COO of SmugMug to an anoymous report about the forum moderator. Part of it was the dismissive reaction of that same COO to private discussion of the matter.

I'm on record for a long time about hyper-active forum moderators. I won't repeat all that here.

Forums change. Moderators come and go. I'm watching Photozo struggle for visitors now, and I believe it is because one of their moderators is rather surly and reminds everyone he's on the job.

My recent experience with the Photo-Finishing forum on DGrin is a combination of the following:

(1) A moderator who feels the need to be omnipresent.
(2) A moderator who is arbitrary.
(3) A moderator who chastises people in public.
(3) A COO who does not respect anonymity and issues public threats.

I posted a brief message to the help system at SmugMug about the forum moderator. DGrin is owned by SmugMug and it has no mechanism for reporting issues. SmugMug does, but it requires an e-mail address. I was completely uncomfortable with that.

No troll or flame bait. No name calling. I simply offered negative site feedback about the moderator's conduct. This should ave resulted in no retalaition at all. But read on . . .

Let's consider this for a moment. I'm a visitor who feels that the forum moderator is arbitrary and exercises his moderation in a partial manner. If I leave my e-mail or my user name, do I expect abuse from this forum moderator. You bet!

So I left an anonymous message by entering visitor@smugmug.com as my e-mail.

I was going to quote the reply by the COO of DGrin because it is very interesting. Regrettably, that's already been pulled. It was very brief and I believe my paraphrase is accurate. "Who posted an anonymous message beginning . . ." This was followed by the threat to ignore it and consider it a troll unless the person came forward.

My message was private. I was being discreet. The COO responded with a petulant public demand that the person come forward.

This sort of response does not create an environment where users can feel free to offer critical feedback. So, I sent the COO a private message. I expressed all this to him.

I get back a snotty e-mail telling me to calm down. Within five minutes, my account is inactive.

And this COO wondered why I didn't want to leave my e-mail?!

This goes well beyond heavy-handed censorship. This COO abused the trust of every forum member by taking retaliation against someone for posting feedback about the forum -- totally in private.

This is important. There was no public bruhaha or anything like that. I simply made an anonymous complaint, came forward in private when demanded, and then suffered immediate relataliation. Not even 5 minutes elapsed between the snotty reply and my account being inactivated.

There are some knowledgable discussions on DGrin, but given this sort of conduct by the executive in charge of DGrin, it's simply not possible to recommend this site any longer.

Not Recommended

No, I really don't understand, Andy.

You needed to authenticate nothing re. the identity of the person giving you critical feedback about your site. I was mildly suspicious when Dgrin provided no feedback system and the feedback system on SmugMug required an e-mail address. I was completely suspicious when you demanded the identity.

Sites that encourage feedback make it easy and they allow people to leave anonymous feedback, especially when forum moderators can disable passwords with just a moment's effort.

Everything you are now doing, you could have done without my e-mail or my login.

I was specific in my help message about your moderator being omnipresent and arbitrary. That is not a troll-type message.

I find it curious that my password somehow expired after many months on Dgrin? And in less than 5 minutes after my PM with you this morning!?

Moreover, when I tried to reply to your PM, the message was blocked, stating that your account was rejecting messages from my account. (Probably because of the password issue.)

The 5000+ e-mails a week is no defense. How many of those 5000+ e-mails are feedback about forum moderators? How many are negative feedback about forum moderators? How many are anonymous?

If it's more than a few, then you have a serious moderator abuse pattern at Dgrin. If not, then this 5000+ help messages is why we insist on the identity of feedback argument is bull crap.

I'll bet that if you get 5000+ feedback messages a week on SmugMug, at least 4998 are about anything but negative moderator feedback.

As I told you in my PM, you could have phrased your message with language that was non-threatening. You posted a message which demanded to know the identity of an anonymous feedback message and threatened to treat it as a troll if the author did not come forward.

You could have simply said you take feedback seriously and you would welcome the opportunity to speak with this person, discreetly (if preferred). That was definitely not the tone of your public message. ;)

None of this encourages me to believe that Dgrin is a tolerant set of forums. People should be able to send you a PM, people should be able to give you feedback anonymously, etc.

It sure looks like you insist on knowing who is complaining. I hope you understand how suspicious this password expiration looks, too. ;)

I will continue to monitor Dgrin. Cultures change. I'll also continue to converse with you. When I'm convvinced that Dgrin is a tolerant environment where the moderation is minimal and limited to things like sweeping away spam, I'll change my recommendation.

I have had several e-mails with the COO of Digital Grin.

He assures me that the deletion of my password was just the result of normal password expiration. Talk about coincidental timing.

I was able to log in and establish a new password.

I am not comfortable with the lack of anonymity in the feedback process and the moderation has become a little more active and arbitrary than I prefer, but the moderation is not nearly so oppressive as it is in some other forums that I have fled over the years. For that reason, I have changed the rating from Highly Recommended to Recommended.