Friday, May 9, 2008

Kudos to me and Clustrmaps

As you all may know by now, I have been described as direct, blunt, not shy, and in many other ways that indicate how I generally am not afraid to say what I feel and think. (Always in a nice, unoffensive way, of course, I think.) So with that in mind I post the following.
You may or may not have noticed my Clustrmap on my blog before now. It used to hide out under the ticker counter on the bottom of my left column. Recently I was checking things out, I clicked on it to see in better detail where y'all are visiting from. While I was checking all the various places I noticed that there was an ad on it. I am all fine and dandy with ads on my stuff. I mean the Clustrmap is free after all. They have to make money somehow. Well, this particular ad was in direct opposition to my personal religious beliefs and was quite offensive to me. Now, I am not offended by other religious beliefs and as a member of the LDS church I firmly believe that everyone has a right to worship as they will but this ad was directly attacking my personal beliefs and I found that to be insulting. No one should have to advertise, even vicariously, against their own beliefs.
So what did I do?
How did I handle the situation?
I e-mailed Clustrmaps and very politely requested that this particular ad be removed from the Clustermap on my blog. At first I was kind of laughing at myself for even attempting this. I mean, who am I to them? No one. I did indicate that I would remove their map from my blog if the situation could not be rectified within a reasonable time frame. I said 1 week. As much as it amuses me to see where people are visiting from, I wasn't about to advertise against my own beliefs.
What did they do?
How did they respond?
Well, to put it shortly, they were very diplomatic and apologetic that the advertising on my Clustrmap was offensive to me. They responded within 1 day, which really surprised me. Unfortunately they didn't have a way of just blocking that particular ad from my Clustrmap so they took all advertising off my Clustrmap with a polite request that I move the map up higher on my blog to give it a more prominent position. So now, in order to express my appreciation for their prompt resolution of this issue, I have moved them to first position on my left hand column. Respecting me has its benefits.
All in all, I have to say, "Thanks, PB, from the Clustermaps team for respecting my beliefs." That is all.
And I would encourage everyone everywhere, no matter your beliefs, to stick up for them. You never know what response you might get. But whether it is good or bad at least you stuck up for yourself.
Click here to get your own super cool Clustrmap.

6 comments:

Crystal said...

You'll have to tell me what the ad was. Way to go.

Shelley said...

go you for actually going through the trouble to take a stand and good to know that clustrmaps was so kind about the whole matter! after that, i guess i'll have to add one to my blog! :) and i'm with crystal...need more details!

Blacker Blog said...

Good for you! It's amazing what people will listen to. I emailed CW33 within the last month, because they had a story on the Warren Jeffs compound and they aired the story with a picture of the Salt Lake Temple. I emailed (hoping to get on "the rant") saying that it was not the same religion, and you wouldn't do a story about Baptists and show a picture of Buda (or Buddha?). Anyway, I never got a response, and I wasn't willing to see what anyone else posted, because I didn't want to hear the criticism about my own beliefs, but at least I posted it. Good for them for responding.

Anonymous said...

Hey Becky,
Way to go! Also, look at who is in Taiwan viewing your blog! Now you can see that I check your blog when I'm on the other side of the world. Little James looks so cute too. I am totally wanting to come out for a while before you move to Switzerland. love, Wu

Rocketgirl said...

Kudos! That's really cool of you, and of them! I try to stand up for my beliefs, but mostly I just try to not make people hate our church because "I knew this insane mormon once..." :)

Tamara said...

You rock on. It's hard to "swim upstream" like you did and I'm so glad you made enough noise to get something done.

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