My New Best Pickup Line for AC Writers

I'm a happily married man with two beautiful children but pickup lines fascinate me. The idea that you can say something so unbelievably cheesy and have that act as the gateway to a witty conversation has always intrigued me.

So for the benefit of my single friends, I am going to pass along a sure-fire line guaranteed to work on your favorite AC writer.

How many page views did you lose?

Mine was pretty tame, only lost a little over 7,000. But I've heard tales of people losing six-digits worth of page views while others did not lose that much, but ended up going down a ranking in clout.

When it first happened, I went to the forums to see if I could find any information on what happened and was instead reminded why I rarely go to the forums.

There was no shortage of threads related to the crisis. But they provided little in the way of clarification and lots in the realm of baseless speculation. There were also countless claims of people vowing to never trust or write for Associated Content again.

Finally, we got an email from the site explaining their version of what happened and their version of an apology. Neither was very satisfying.

I have not checked the forums since the crisis happened. Perhaps all the people who threatened to leave did. Perhaps some Content Managers or higher ups at Associated Content gave a more detailed response or apology for what happened. I have neither the time nor the inclination to wade through the cesspool to find out.

I just want to say that the site made a mistake and I accept that. I don't expect Associated Content to discover a mistake and then allow us to keep the bogus page views they assigned us in the time in question.

What I do expect is for Associated Content to handle itself in a more dignified manner. I have very little information about how the process played out. As a contributing member of the site, I think I deserve more than the poorly written four paragraph snow job email that I received.

It is my firm belief that Associated Content should have alerted its members of a problem with the Page View system as soon as it found out itself. I for one would have felt much better if I received a note alerting me to a problem and telling me to expect a correction soon rather than looking at My Dashboard and finding fewer Page Views than the previous day.

I would have preferred Associated Content to give a detailed account of what happened and what steps they took to prevent it from ever happening again. And I would have really liked to have received a sincere apology from the site.

Instead, this was Associated Content's apology:

"We apologize for this inconsistency and any confusion it may have caused."

My preference would have been for Associated Content to assume responsibility for its screw-up in the apology. This is supposed to be a site for and about writers and the above is the best apology they could muster? That is just pathetic. In addition to sincerity, it lacked remorse, passion and any level of believability.

If they had come out and said,

"We made a mistake and credited Page Views and bonus payments to individuals that they did not earn. We recognize how excited everyone was with the previous Page View updates but regret to inform you that it was due in large part to an error with how we tabulate the Page Views. We have corrected the erroneous code and restored the actual Page View and bonus totals to each person's account. We regret the error and humbly apologize for our mistake."

I believe everyone would have been more or less satisfied. Instead they came out with an apology that would make Pete Rose blush.

Confusion it may have caused? How far removed from reality do you have to be to write this sentence in this case? The error did not cause any confusion it was Associated Content's complete mismanagement of the case after it discovered the screw-up that caused the confusion.

And it did cause confusion, as the dozen or more threads in the forums clearly indicated.

I do not expect perfection from any person or institution. As evidence of this claim, I have remained an MLB fan through the entire Bud Selig era. But I expect to be treated honestly and there is no way that the powers that be at Associated Content can look at themselves in the mirror with the way they handled this situation. In fact, I would suggest that it is almost the textbook illustration of how NOT to handle a crisis.

So, now all we as Content Producers can hope for is growth. Hopefully the next time something goes wrong at Associated Content, they will tell us immediately, outline both the problem and solution in greater detail and offer us an apology that does not feel like a slap to the face.

Although I am curious as to how if the problem was double-counting Page Views, how one of my articles lost over 60% of its count.