~By Shasta~: OMG, the DRAMA......!

...In MY life!! Suprised are you?? ME TOO! Anyone who knows me knows that I am practially drama-free, and I like that way, thank-you-very-much :)

So let me tell ya'll a story...

You know I like to create scrapbooking sketches, right?? I love to make them, find new ones, even share them. Duh, that is why they are posted on my blog!! And if you are sketch fan at all, you will notice that just about EVERYONE of them out there has a signature on it, including mine... It says http://www.byshasta.blogspot.com/ 2008 or 2009, depending on when I made them.

Ok, back to my story...!

My friend Mallory called me last night and asked if I was interested in some drama, which of course I am, as long as it doesn't involve me! Well, she says, it is ABOUT you! Huh???

Apparently, some ladies I know from Canada on another messageboard I go to found a sketch of mine (the top one) on another board they joined (Iam not posting the site name, sinceI do not want to generate traffic to their site, but will refer to them as HOS).

Great, I like to share, right?? Well there was just one problem, my name had been removed. As in someone found my sketch on the great world wide web, saved it and then cut off my name. It was a sketch gallery for inspiration, and my sketch was posted for others to use. A number of ladies had posted saying how nice the sketch was, and their accompanying LO's. So I politely posted on there that it iwas indeed a nice sketch, however the original looked like this (I inserted the original) and if they want to post other peoples' work, pease give them proper credit. I also a link to my blog so anyone else reading the post could see I was genuine, since all my sketches use the same colors, shading, fonts, etc. I also sent pm's to the lady that made the post, and to the boards' owner letting them know what was going on.

Then it got ugly.

Dang it, I gotta go pick up Adrian from pre-school, I will finish up this post as soon as I get home!

*********TO BE CONTINUED***********

Ok, on with the story...!

I checked the post that I made a few times last night, but since it was probably about 9PM when I made it, there was no new activity. I got a phone call from Mallory this morning at about 7:30AM saying that my entire post and the sketch without my name had been deleted, and a new sketch that looked a lot like mine had been posted instead. No "Ooops, sorry", no credit for it being my original work, nada. I did however have a pm from the HOS board owner, and she was a wee bit mad. Mad because I had posted publicly rather than let her handle it on her own, and therefore made her look bad for something that was beyond her control. The original poster told her that she had found a sketch on http://www.photobucket.com/ without a name on it.

Ummmm, no!?

So I again, politely, pm'ed her back saying that I thought the original poster owed me an apology. I also told her that inspite of the fact that she was unaware of what happened, as the owner of HOS she was also responsible for it's content.

One of the ladies that found the sketch in the first place forwarded an email a little later that was sent to all HOS members about the situation. It basically said that a HOS member found a random sketch, and somehow the said owner found it and complained, and it has escalated to all kinds of inappropriate pm's and postings, and she had received multiple emails about this whole mess. Since she was the HOS owner, she was banning all offending members, and this was having a huge effect on her in spite of her lack of knowledge of the situation and was being unfairly blamed for a simple mistake. She went on to say that she felt this was unneccessary harassment and if it didn't stop, she would contact the proper authoritues. This wasn't a schoolyard and she wouldn't tolerate bullies, blah, blah, blah...

Since I had been trying to be polite to her, I was shocked at this seriously hostile attitude!! However, since this was a forwarded email, I didn't have her address to reply, and I was banned so couldn't reach her that way, so I was just going to drop it, because I didn't want anymore to do with this, my point had been made, right?

A little while after that, I was going through my junk email folder, and there was a direct reply from the HOS owner! She stated again that the sketch had been removed, and that I should have contacted her first, because she would have dealt with this, and can't allow people to trash her board, etc. Also, I had violated her Terms of Service by posting my blog, and such advertising wasn't allowed. If I wanted to remain a member, which she wasn't sure I did, I had to follow the rules. Okaaaaaaaaay......

I waited a few to check and see if she if she was going to respond right away, because the site showed her as being online. I had registered on HOS to reply to the original thread, so I went to the pm floder, and it asked me to log in again... So I put in my user name and pw, and up comes a message that I have been banned from HOS and to contact the site administrators for further details. WTH??? I was banned??

So I emailed her directly and told her again that I posted my blog so anyone reading could see that these were indeed my sketches. I said I was sorry that this was such a mess, however I was not the cause. The person who posted with my altered sketch was! I wanted the members reading to see that it was my work, and where it came from, and that was all.

I received a reply from her that said, well of course you should defend you rwork, but I should have contacted her first... She had received over 50 emails about this incident and that as the owner she felt she was being attacked, and that this was her job since HOS was connected to her online store... That she had been sick and couldn't work outside the home.... Lastly she told me that she had lifted my ban and that I was welcome to return, and that she was sorry she reacted that way.

Phew!

Glad THAT'S over! But if you look closely you will see that now my sketches look like this....