HD For Indies

First, the easy fun stuff:

Got my latest Creative Cow print magazine in the mail the other day, some good articles:

-the role passion plays in success- I just skimmed it at the time, but I keep thinking about it - it is really true
-cross platform workflows using the Sheer codec (which I've written about in the past as well)
-five tips for film festival success
-tips for a good color key
-pros and cons of self-employment
-Adobe Illustrator for use in video and film

There are others, but these were the ones that caught my interest.

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Turmoil and Accusations of Censorship at the Cow

This whole thing started with an email I got from a reader talking about a thread on fxphd where it seemed that certain words, particularly those mentioning some sites that the Cow thought might be competitors, were being censored - posts mentioning them were being withheld and note posted to the forums.

I then was directed to this article:

General Specialist - Tips, Tricks and Tinkerings: Censorship at CreativeCow.net

which made it seem like they were DEFINITELY screening content.

So I thought about it - the Cow is a privately held business, and has the right to do anything they want that is legal (and being nice or being a jerk is still legal). On the one hand, they can set any policy they want to restrict discussions.

But on the other hand, the Cow is largely a bowl, a vessel, and most of the content, and most of the value derived from the Cow, comes from the stuff the users put into it - the bazillion forum posts (way over a million posts now I hear). So while not legally true, there is some SENSE of community ownership or rights going on there, since the Cow wouldn't be much without all of their users (pushing towards a half a million a month I found out).

So I wrote a big long thing and was getting ready to hit post...then decided to ask the parties involved what's up. I emailed somebody I knew at the Cow and asked about it and talked to Tim Wilson, and he said hang on, let me send you a link:

Updating Creative COW Policies

...which within the first couple of lines says this:

some have made their feelings crystal clear that you think we've failed to keep up.

We agree.

Sounds like a mea culpa right there. Tim goes on to explain what happened from their side, and his explanation sounds reasonable. He says their intent has always been to create a civil place to discuss, and to maintain a high value, good signal to noise ratio on the site (what I frequently refer to as wheat vs chaff). He explained to me over the phone what had happened, as he discusses in the above article, and it sounded fair enough - often both sides just need to talk to avoid the different misunderstandings both have - I think both sides misinterpreted some of the others' actions. Tim was completely polite and patient answering my questions - nice guy on the phone.

I don't have the time or energy or interest to dive into what might or might not have been blocked legitimately or furtively or whatever in the past. When people email me with a question, and I don't have the time/interest to answer for free, or they don't have budget to hire me, one of my stock answers is "Go ask it on the Cow." There's lots of good help in there (and from time to time not so great help - it is an open community forum - is that a genius or a yahoo answering my question?). If they've censored mention of sites they consider competitors...that's an edge case in my mind, see the two arguments above.

And it could also be contextual - was it a helpful suggestion or a blatant plug to blow off the Cow and go surf QPSKFJDKF.com? I don't know the details of the past, don't want to get into it. In short, if they did do sucky things, then poo on them.

I think what IS important is that they are shifting base and opening the doors wider now - sounds like that won't be their policy going forward. Talking to Tim about what was and wasn't kosher, he made the case that policies came about only in response to uncool behavior in the past by companies or individuals - blatantly lame behavior that didn't further the level of discourse.

Anyway, Tim then goes on to announce a bunch of new policies of the Cow, such as solicitation of outside content, promotion of same on the Cow, etc. I'll deal with that in a minute.

In case you have any questions or doubts, here's their new terms of service/code of expected conduct:

Creative COW's Policies and Code of Conduct

OK. Some thoughts on their new stuff, quoting some of their policies in italics, my comments in plain:

We actively solicit material that you create for your own purposes to be reposted at Creative COW, including tutorials, articles and reviews, whether presented in static or dynamic form. We strongly believe that our dramatically higher traffic and wider variety of promotional tools will result in far greater exposure for your information, and your company, website or online community.

That all sounds well and good - they have huge reach.

We reserve the right to decline any such submission for any reason. We reserve the right to edit any accepted material, offering the opportunity for your review and approval before posting at Creative COW.

Again, generally reasonable, but their right to edit makes me a touch nervous - but authors can review and approve (and presumably offer alternatives), so that seems somewhat OK. You couldn't expect them to run anything and everything from anybody as submitted - publications need to maintain standards and practices etc. I'll let anybody comment so long as they aren't blatantly rude on HD4NDs, but I'm very picky and selective and careful about what I'll run as an article (although I too welcome well considered reviews, articles, etc. - feel free to send stuff in!).

But the devil is always in the details - if they were to routinely not reproduce high quality material submitted from a perceived/potential competitor, that'd be lame from the community benefit/"we're here for you"/group hug mentality of an online community for the benefit of the users. We'll have to wait and see how this shakes out.

Any accepted material posted at Creative COW remains the sole property of the originating copyright holder. Creative COW explicitly makes no claims of ownership, exclusivity, or reprint rights except where specific agreements have been entered into.

GOOD. Not everybody does that - some sites claim ownership on your words you post on their site - that never quite sat well with me since you wrote it in the first place.

After acceptance, we will remove any material provided to us whenever requested by its owner, with no reason or explanation requested or required. We ask for a 30 day notice to facilitate their removal from our system.

Again, good that authors maintain control, although 30 days seems excessively long - a week should be more than enough AFAIK - I'd like to hear why 30 days - that is a full and thorough news cycle - the vast majority of the benefit would have been derived by that time. If there isn't some big good reason for it, that feels not cool to me - "Sure man, we'll be happy to take it down....in a month." I'd like to see changes made there - should be days. Could be 24 hours from somebody checking their mail.

We will publicize all the material we accept in the same manner we use for publicizing material created directly by Creative COW and its members, including featuring in our newsletter and inclusion in our library.

Fair treatment, same as in-house, good.

We will also explicitly identify the source of this material, and provide links back to the originating website as well as any other included links that meet the standards described in these Terms.

That all sounds good - no link co-opting.

A little further down, though, it says this:

Any post made in The Creative COW is fully public, without restriction. Posters are free to publish the same information anywhere else they choose to. At the same time, The Creative COW reserves the right to include any public post in advertising, publicity, or other commercial or non-commercial material, without compensation to the author.

I like the first part - again, no claiming your words as theirs - very good. However, the second sentence gives me pause - not only would I want to be asked first if somebody wants to quote me wide, esp. in an ad, but I'm also not to be compensated for it? No likey. No likey at ALL. Not only am I (or you) giving up control/ownership of our words/thoughts/expression for them to do what they want, but they also specifically reserve the right to not compensate the author. This seems to fly in the face of normal business practices about things said. If Bob Smith is filmed in public saying "I like Cheetos, they're yummy." and the six o'clock news wants to run it, fine. But if Cheetos wants to run it as an ad, wouldn't you expect they'd need to get Bob's permission to do so, and probably compensate him for it?

EDIT - I brought up this point and Tim agreed, they're going to address that situation. Asking permission makes sense. So that's fixed already.


They also require folks to identify their affiliations - that seems entirely valid too - if John Smith says Product B is a POS, and John Smith works for Competitor Company A, as a reader we really should know that to be able to evaluate the credibility and allegiances of the source (so I should note I've worked Red's booth when I comment on Red over there, for instance).
EDIT - new policy fixes my quibbles on that count - quick response on their part.

In another section, when discussing "companies, websites, and online communities" in particular, they say:

Rather than provide links to external websites, we require the option of hosting the intended material at Creative COW, following the guidelines above. We will expedite posting it to provide timely access to its information.

If I were a company making a product, I probably wouldn't have a problem with that - a tutorial or whatever directly in their site? GREAT!

If I were a website or online forum, however, that feels a little grabby to me - I understand their business desire to be the Grand Hub, but that feels like it is stepping a foot over the line to me. Because to host the content themselves, unless there is some kind of a revenue share, that is basically them saying "We want the ad dollars." from my perspective. As a company/website, I (and probably others in a similar boat) would welcome the added reach of getting our content out to a wider audience, but the "for free" side can rankle if your business model depends on ad revenue from readers. I'd like to see them offer or discuss revenue share from those particular pages that somebody else's content is on.

They continue with:

Where hosting this material at Creative COW is not possible or declined in favor of allowing an outside link, we require a reciprocal link pointing back to Creative COW.

Again, that strikes me as a bit grabby and presumptive to demand it. I've long been in the habit of posting links here (duh) and posting links on other forums, blogs, etc. If somebody said to me "Yeah I'll link to you! ....but only if you'll link to me!" that feels too much like Conditional Link Luv, as it were. It feels a little too conditional, and a little dirty - so if someone doesn't want to give up their content and ad dollars, you won't link to it? Without me cross linking? Feh - doesn't feel friendly.

If you're going to run an informational site, and say you're here for the community, requiring links from the other feels grabby. It would be one thing to request a "this information is also posted over on this page at Creative Cow." - I'm not too averse to that if I (or whoever) were to cross post an article on both - that strikes me as fair and balanced...but a touch commercial. But that's OK. But for ANY link to "snarfed" and rolled in? That's too much. And what are the terms of these links?

I'm friendly with Jarred at Reduser.net, Chris at dvinfo.net, Matt at FreshDV.com, Shane at Little Frog in High Def, etc. - we link back and forth and are pretty casual but definitely respectful about quoting content from the others' sites. While the Cow has a business, and don't want their Town Common to be abused, a little casual friendly reciprocity goes a long way. We'll have to see how that plays out in practice and in details.

To require full posting rights WAY oversteps the bounds of normal reciprocity for a content creation site in my opinion. The option to cross link? Can be fair, depends on how they want it implemented. Double checking, I already have a link to the Cow on my front page in the "Great HD Links" and it has been there for years, because it is truly a good resource. But what are the terms otherwise? On your page as posted originally?

All that said, my very strong independent hackles rise over this....yet if you ask me about having a link to the Cow on my site I'll calm down and say "Oh yeah! I have a link to them, they have tons of good stuff!" Yes, I am inconsistent. Or medicate-able. Or something.

But the above are all fair questions I think.

I'm encouraged that they do seem to listen, and their attitude seems to be one of learning as they go. So hopefully they'll start thinking about revenue share for higher end original content (and how to determine higher content from "the usual" - ugh, THAT'S a meeting I don't want to have to sit through). If it is a company providing a demo or tutorial for their otherwise for sale product, revenue share wouldn't make sense - content creation isn't those folks' primary endeavor. But for qualified featured reviews, analysis, articles, etc. - I feel some kind of revenue cut for those specific pages makes sense for content above a certain level if they want the right to reproduce it in full. But that's just me. *

OK, enough on that, moving on.

The thing that catches my eye is actively seeking solicitations for written stuff - they get HUGE traffic, so if anybody wants to write and get stuff out there and get known for it, Game On. It'll be interesting to see how they pick and choose and how good the submissions are. The only downside to that plan is that the Cow catches all the advertising income from said posts there.

I think with some tweaking, I could be cool with everything they are doing. And ongoing tweaking is necessary to figure this kind of stuff out.

If you have further information, insight, or comments on this matter, feel free to Comment below or email me. If you are staff at the Cow and would like to respond to anything I've said, I'd be happy to post that as an addendum to this article. If you are another content site that feels you've been slighted by past policies, or are another content site that wants to comment on these policies, again feel free to comment or email, I'll fold in as an addendum as I judge appropriate.

-mike

* - I obviously have a horse somewhat in this game as a writer trying to make a living in part by writing. Reach is great, finding new readers is great, driving new traffic is great, but being expected to hand over content rather than link, or at least link reciprocally as a mandate.....doesn't feel so great.

Update later that evening - a friend and industry veteran emailed me asking if this was the end of the Cow, the beginning of a downward spiral - I said if they stick to their monetizing guns, maybe so. If they adjust their course, open up to revenue sharing, I think everybody could be happy with it. "I think they started with a good idea - opening up - then went a bit awry in the execution, getting a little too hungry." I said. But that's fixable.

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