Open Letter to PS Board - Yoni Dvorkis's Blog

<p>To Whom it May Concern,</p> <p>I just wanted to thank you personally for maintaining this fantastic site I have come to love over the past 6 months as a paying contributor for premium membership. This site has helped me connect with countless other poets and has broadened my horizons in ways I would have never imagined possible were it not for such a fantastic forum where I can express my thoughts and receive such reinforcing feedback from your members.</p> <p>Furthermore, &nbsp;I especially want to thank you for your content supervisor that screened all 98 of&nbsp;my poems for any containing profanity and deleted 3 of them from your databases without prior warning or with&nbsp;any respect&nbsp;to the fact that I may not have had time to back them up on my hard drive, effectively destroying my work which I will never be able to bring back. All for the use of the 'S' word.</p> <p>While I understand your guidelines very well for absolutely no profanity, I don't feel you have the right to delete my hard work without notifying me beforehand. It is highly disrespectful to the&nbsp;immense effort&nbsp;I have put into these&nbsp;writings and shows a crassness I&nbsp;did not expect from the board of this fine site.</p> <p>I hope you will reconsider giving me back my work that I value so much and not just deleting it into the ether of&nbsp;poems that don't adhere to your strict&nbsp;guidelines. Furthermore I hope you'll understand if I never recommend this site to anyone and have no intention of returning as a premium member for a group of people who display this many fascist tendencies while trying to put on a friendly all american family facade.</p> <p>Thank you kindly for your attention to this matter.</p> <p>Sincerely,</p> <p>Yoni Dvorkis</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>

Constance La France Date: 8/8/2009 6:29:00 AM Yoni, although I think this is terrible and thoughtless of poetry soup, they could have at least given you a chance to edit. sort of a 24 hour window. But it is very clearly stated in the home page, what is allowed. I hope you learned a lesson in this. To never ever(ever) not backup something you write, at least make a print out of it, so you do not lose it completely. I have printed copies of every single thing I write, not just here but anywhere,of course, you must develop a good filing system, or you will be lost in paper, in time.. anyways, so sorry this happened to you, but this is a good site, so please reconsider and keep submitting poetry(and back it up!) Login to Reply

Carolyn Devonshire Date: 8/6/2009 7:49:00 PM Oh, Yoni, I am so sorry to hear this! Some very offensive poems have been posted by one individual and it seemed no action was taken. This is very distressing news. I'm disheartened to learn your fine work has been lost while far more disturbing content, including personal threats, has been posted. I am still in the process of moving but will catch up with you when I return to Tallahassee. I've pretty much cleared out Dad's house to make room for my furniture. Miss you! Love, Carolyn Login to Reply

Nathaniel Köhp Date: 8/4/2009 5:48:00 PM A very good friend of mine also lost a poem, however thankfully it was backed up elsewhere. Just like you said, no warning, no nice polite messages saying "would you mind editing it?" or at the very least asking whether she would take it down by herself. The annoying thing is that she put a warning at the top, just for the one cuss word; the F word. So for them to notice the slur they would have noticed the warning also. :S All a bit silly! Login to Reply

Danielle White Date: 8/4/2009 4:41:00 AM I also chafe at the boundaries placed on us here. Sometimes a poem needs a correctly placed 4-letter word, but it is an exercise in expressing the same thoughts without profanity that I commend, and without rules, chaos would ensue! Login to Reply

Sajdah Al-Riyami Date: 8/2/2009 3:14:00 AM but they might have done the right thing cause there are kids of non-maturaty(like myself)although im 15 AND know all about it,cause basically this generation is all rugged owt with the "s"word and thats not my fault(although adults:i hve not experienced it-Yuck..-)so yeah yoni im still pissed they deleted your stuff cause i really liked those two poems@.@ Hope you get your stuff back=D cheer up:when a big door worth 98 poems closes another opens.P.s if you ever get the chance to can you email your stuff to mine:x.soji@live.co.uk(PWEEEEEEEEEEEEATY PLEASE!)and p.s.s PLEASE DONT GO.make another account and just censor your poems=) Login to Reply

Sajdah Al-Riyami Date: 8/2/2009 3:13:00 AM wOw.I actually laughed at the sarcasm.I have one or two of your poems in my favourite that wont work now,so if you chose to leave this site im gonna be really pissed.I dont see a right or wrong in this.Poetry is to express yourself,and sometimes when i feel like it i record my stuff into this site so people can learn from my experiences and from other life lessons.This site may have overreacted by deleting your stuff before even giving you a warning that theyre deleting your stuff just cause you mentioned the "s"word(baffled=p) Login to Reply

Vince Suzadail Jr. Date: 8/1/2009 10:50:00 AM That was not right, period. The least that could have been done is Email them back to you before deleting them. We can listen to garbage mouth rap artists and no one does a damn thing. You write quality poetry and it gets deleted. American liberal justice. Keep writing. Vince. Would you believe to authenticate this remark the code is 6969A. Maybe I should complain about the captcha preview. God Bless. Vince Login to Reply

Charmaine Chircop Date: 7/31/2009 3:29:00 PM Yoni,you are a professional great writer and i never seemed to see any offensive write through your poetry,if we write something inappropriate they should at least warn us so we delete that part which is not accepted by the board,i am so grateful for this site,its been great and hope they kindly consider before deleting-keep writing Yoni--charma Login to Reply

Eric Nolan Date: 7/29/2009 9:14:00 PM Yoni, I am truly upset by the actions of this site in regards to their handling of this situation. It deeply saddens me that free speech no longer exists in society. I have read your work many times and have never personally found it offensive. I do understand poetry soups position and their guidelines but completely disagree with their implementation. I would like to think that no serious effort was given to the body of your works but rather was scanned haphazardly by some mindless automaton on the lookout for a dirty word or two. I would hope that they will at the very least provide you with copies of your work, though I am puzzled why you don't have backups. In regard to the latter might I recommend a good recovery program that would revive your lost works, my guess is that there are still are ghosts in your machine. I wish you luck Yoni and hope you choose to stay with the site despite their gestapo tatics. Take care my friend. Login to Reply

Yoni Dvorkis Date: 7/29/2009 8:25:00 PM final update: all poems screened for inappropriate language are permanently deleted and cannot be retrieved. Login to Reply

Sue Mason Date: 7/29/2009 3:57:00 PM Sorry you had this experience, Yoni and I will miss you if you chose to leave. However, rules are rules are rules and whatever word you used it obviously must have been repeated 98 times if that many were removed. I thought we were supposed to get a "warning" first so since you're still on the site how about owning your part in all this? And never, never not keep a hard copy of anything you write on a computer! Lessons learned are character gained ... smile ... Login to Reply

Donald Meikle Date: 7/29/2009 1:01:00 PM I've read a lot of your work because of this letter. It's good. (my opinion) I use two sites in case one crashes One has and I've resurrected it from this one. You might like "F,,, Off" It's on my other site Login to Reply

Yoni Dvorkis Date: 7/29/2009 9:48:00 AM Also I have no intention of leaving, unless they kick me out for this little stunt...I was just going to hold on to my $40 when my membership expires, next February...sorry if I gave the wrong impression, in fact I'm sure I did given how upset I was yesterday. Login to Reply

Vince Suzadail Jr. Date: 7/29/2009 9:42:00 AM I've read some stuff on here that would be considered obscene in some places and the poems stayed. There are times when some words are the only way to describe a situation or a person. I watched "From The Hip" and a courtroom scene where the witness described the plaintiff as an @sshole. It was hillarious. The defensecontende that was the only way to describe him. Hang in there Yoni. Stand your ground but as a favor to us, stay at the Soup. God Bless. Vince Login to Reply

Yoni Dvorkis Date: 7/29/2009 9:17:00 AM Yes, Robert has the right idea. I 've been aware of these regulations since February when I wrote my protest poem (more of joke really). I made an incorrect asumption that someone screens each poem individually the old fashioned way, by reading them. That's not true, they probably run a software that checks for a 4 character string in the text box of our poems and then deletes the whole poem if it finds it. That's the only way all 3 of my poems could have dissappeared simultaneuosly. What really upsets me is that they entrust the livelihoods and creativity of their paying members to a piece of software, not to mention they can add a feature that sends a soup mail with a deadline to remove the curse word. That's all I'm asking for. Login to Reply

Debbie Guzzi Date: 7/28/2009 1:15:00 PM Goodness, I am going to miss you like hell, and sometimes the "bad" words are warented in light of the seriuos subjects poets deal with! Love Ya Login to Reply