NowPublic nominated for World Technology Award 2009

i think the IDEA and the IDEALS of NowPublic are BRILLIANT. that's why i joined. however, the actual technology (the web interface, most of its parts) are HORRIBLY implemented. Worse, i am finding that there are a lot of "editors" who think it is their holy crusade to assault authors of original stories, or even stories that are OPINIONS with unhelpful copy/paste tagging of "needs improvement", "spam" and "fishy."

NowPublic could be a real winner. Right now, i'm torn about leaving it. Am i sensitive and vulnerable to criticism? Yeah. But i'm autistic. Is that a crime? My whole point in BEING here is to publish stories about humanitarian issues. Sexism, slavery, sociopathy, psychopathy, autism, BPD, behavior, rights, justice, etc... Yet, i'm finding that this "social networking news site" is just as filled with egocentric jerks as flickr (and look at my biased flickr articles).

When tools like the widget broke, i was consoled by Jordan in an honest manner. i appreciated that, especially since i got off on the wrong foot with Jordan originally. We've come to see each other as real people and i see him as a very valuable and personable human being.

When i responded to the founder's message about trying to make money off of stories, i was politely paranoid but was reassured that things would be ok and all the core values would be respected.

but...

When i posted issues about the tool not working well, i was marked as spam by a man i wont name. When i posted for help in the forums about same issues, i was ignored (or flamed by same unnamed dude, i cannot remmember which). When a piece of mine was marked as "needs improvement" and i tried to rationally discuss it with the editor, i was flamed as if *i* was the one being rude to her.

When i wrote an article, an opinion piece, as many of mine are, about the potential of considering yourself as potentially dangerous to those around you, depending on your behavior, i had ONE comment: "This story is disgusting." No response from my polite request as to understand WHY the comment was made.

WTH, people??

i have severe doubts about this site's integrity at this point, with all the knee-jerk tagging by "editors" and anonymous jerks. i don't see NP as being any better than any other social networking site, based on my OWN PERSONAL experiences so far. Jordan and a couple other editors have been nice, but i can't rely on bending their ears every time someone is rude, abusive as an editor or whatever. There needs to be more accountability. Like flickr, it seems there are a lot more liberties being taken by these "regular people with more responsibilities" than there should be.