Преступление и наказание (and amnesty!)

The networks of Thought Police at ProZ are active again. Those who hold theories about the fondness of the company's management for using resources in countries with a strong tradition of totalitarianism may be on to something. It is seldom possible to have a reasonable discussion on the ProZ forums; where the silly RuleZ made for kindergarten don't stifle discussion from the outset, moderators with cultural or linguistic handicaps that render them incapable of understanding the discussions or the vocabulary used properly make up their own RuleZ. As usual, the interesting discussions are continued in other media, such as Facebook, Stridonium, blogs, etc. ProZ is essentially dead as a forum of exchange for serious colleagues, or at best critically ill.

The latest escapade began with a thread complaining about SDL's latest pathetic "amnesty" program for translators who have committed the crime of not upgrading to SDL Trados Studio 2009. For those who are actually interested in the upgrade, the dollars involved made a lot of sense, but as usual the ham-handed clowns who dream up SDL marketing campaigns under the influence of God-knows-what botched what could have been a nice campaign by using that ugly word "amnesty" again. Some of you may recall the last idiotic amnesty campaign before old Trados licenses of those not taking the bait would be sentenced to upgrade death. This historic blunder comes up frequently in private correspondence with a very decent, competent chap at SDL, who agrees (perhaps not just to placate me) that it was a pretty bone-headed campaign. So he goes on vacation and they do it again. Maybe he just decided to leave town before the turds hit the turbine again.

If anyone wants to see Soviet-style moderation at work, have a look at the thread. Before it was locked by the moderator, there were nine posts hidden or deleted with flimsy excuses. What sort of posts were removed? A few samples are given below. The original post looked like this:

The first response to be censored was this:

The second response was censored while the one above it was not originally. The "warning message" received was as follows:

This message is to inform you that your post "Just another reason not to bother with Trados at all", http://www.proz.com/post/1568902 , is hidden from public view, but is editable and visible to you. You are kindly requested to edit along the lines indicated below, so it can be made visible.

Please edit your post to avoid such terms as \"rubbish\". Thank you.

Thank you in advance for your understanding and future cooperation.

Later, another moderator approved the censored post and censored the one above it. A voice of reason was heard shortly afterward, when Antonin wrote:

indignation

14:22

I received the "amnesty" e-mail as well, and was not really surprised or annoyed so much as some people on this forum. I think it is a clumsy marketing feature, and SDL's campaigns trying to persuade me to buy I have already bought are pathetic, but why should I lose my temper over such trifles? 

On the other hand, what does annoy me a lot is the fact that several contributions from those who felt bad about that e-mail, were hidden by the moderators on very dubious grounds indeed. I can say that because I received them by e-mail so I could read them anyway

I really dislike this approach of the moderators, and it is a matter of principle. No bad language was used and I have seen much stronger stuff on this forum in the past.

This, too, was censored. Thou shalt not question moderators in public. For shame!

Today there were punishments aplenty for criminal violations of RuleZ and criticism of the deep pockets at SDL which H & Co. like to keep their hands in. All of it really silly and unnecessary. There were no personal attacks involved, no over-the-top language or anything of the sort. Once again ProZ has succeeded in making the management and moderators look stupid. Perhaps they felt that the marketing geniuses at SDL needed company.