Www.ProZ.com is the biggest online translators 'community' in the world and for many years I was a proud member. The forums were a valuable source of information, a great place for networking and an excellent instrument for providing support to less experienced colleagues. All this changed in 2009.
As some of you may have noticed, many long-time members are now leaving www.ProZ.com because of the strict censoring of forum posts. Currently German translators that have been here for many years are leaving in droves. The excellent moderators we had until last year were replaced by inexperienced and unqualified people who allowed themselves to be (ab)used as Securitate policemen that censor each and every posting for conformity to a host of ridiculously strict rules, just as in a police state.
The head of this dictatorial regime is officially Henry Dotterer, but have a look at the name of the moderator at nearly every sub-f0rum about Pr0Z: Jared. The arrival of this person meant the end of Pr0Z as we knew it and entered an era of strict control and the end of free speech on Pr0Z.
Be careful what you write, don't mention anyone's name, don't mention external site links, don't write anything that could be perceived to be negative about anyone, especially not about moderators or the management, etc. etc.
Pr0Z is a business and it can do what it want, you say? Maybe, except that it started as a community with the help of a host of volunteers, who must feel quite screwed over, now that this 'community' is starting to look like a totalitarian state. This is 1984 materialized.
It may ultimately mean the bankruptcy of ProZ, but I doubt it. Besides, who is served by that? We want our 'old' ProZ back.
What can you do? Pr0test! Maybe the current leaders can still be prodded toward allowing free speech by the threat of hundreds of paying members leaving the site. Your voice is only one, that's true, but it matters in the chorus.
- Ryan
Just a correction from a very old member: the end of proz started with the arrival of a greedy and authoritarian person named Enrique, who later trained Jared, who now "trains" new moderators. Most of those old moderators were there before these two incompetent guys came along, and I bet they could no longer stay and watch what their beloved site had become. And Henry stood behind his staff all the way. Sad, very sad. By the way, I'm sick of seeing Henry being portrayed as a "former translator". Please, he studied engineering. He did a few translations out of necessity. Even his English sucks. For years we've had a person clueless about the translation world determining the future of our profession. Enough with the blind in power trying to lead the sighted.
ReplyDeleteFYI: translationcommentator@blogspot.com
ReplyDeleteCorrection to former post. It should read:
ReplyDeletewww.translationcommentator.blogspot.com
I do concur with the opinion, although I would see a number of other reasons for ProZ.com to have ceased to be a credible translators community.
ReplyDeleteGreg Palka, MD, former proz moderator
http://bioling.com/whyleaveproz/
Proz.com using quality marks as political instrument
ReplyDeleteYou are receiving this message on this venue because I have been permanently gagged on Proz and have no other way to warn you about Proz.com latest practices.
Proz.com is the de facto network site for translations; a bit like LinkedIn, but then for translators only. To distinguish between good translators and bad translators, Proz uses so-called quality seals: translators whose translations have been peer-reviewed by colleagues can get a special seal of approval, which the site's visitors are told is a seal of quality. This is called the PRO badge, and it's displayed prominently in the translator's profile. Many potential clients filter on this badge when they are looking for quality translators; there's even a special selection box for it in Proz's searching system.
In fact however, the badge is used as a tool to smother all criticism on the site. When you dare say that moderatorship on the forums has become so strict that you can no longer contribute to the forums, the moderators simply remove the badge. Permanently. Just to settle their personal vendetta of course, as future forum contributions, let alone negative contributions, are no longer to be expected. This besides other measures taken, like a temporary forum ban and the fact that all your postings will be vetted by the moderators before publication for the rest of your life, effectively making it impossible to tell anyone on the forums about what was done to you.
Full story on http://www.loekalization.com/prozcom.html