The first indication I had that something was wrong with my 43things account was that I couldn't log in. I can't remember now when that first occurred, although it was probably last September or October. I have so many logins for so many sites, I tried a couple of my normal passwords and when none of those worked, I clicked the forgot password button and promptly forgot the site. A few months later, I realized I still had never gotten that password reminder, so I tried again. Hrmph. Something must be wrong with their site, I thought. So I waited another month and tried again. Still no response from the forgot password doodad. Time to send a note to the contact list. I do so, and finally got a response today from the Robot Coop folks who run 43things.

43 Things users administer the site and suspend accounts that they believe violate the terms of service. More reading on that here: http://www.43things.com/city_hall/doc/guidelines

If after reading the community guidelines you believe your account has been suspended in error, please send us your username and an explanation so we can further investigate.

Suspension? Moi? Did I do something against the terms of service? Upload content that wasn't mine? Don't think so, but maybe I uploaded a picture I found on the web...if so, I only did it once. Surely that wouldn't have been enough to garner a suspension? Spam the site? Nope, wasn't trying to sell viagra 43 ways. Be creepy? As if.

I wrote back, stating that I would have been surprised to find myself in violation of their terms of service, and that I thought it was in error. And the response was:

Thanks for replying. In this case people are likely reacting to the repeated URLs pointing to a blog with ads on it. Lots of spammers do this to promote their site, drive up traffic and generate ad income. Users also see this as an issue if an account doesn't have a lot of other activity (other goals, cheering of other users, commenting earnestly on other entries, etc.). I'm basically describing to you how your account was suspended ... hope it helps demystify things.

Well, that flabbergasted me. Sure, my posts that went along with some of my 43things goals pointed back to my own blog, and my blog does have ads on it. I have a small Google Ads account that basically pays back the hosting fees for engel-cox.org. I think the ads are pretty innocuous, though, and take less than 5% of the page space on any given page load. Was I not supposed to link back to my own blog? That seems kind of anti-Web, doesn't it, especially given that one of my 43things goals was "Write 52 album reviews in 2007." I had been posting the links back to my blog for every review written to show my progress on the goal (which hadn't been going very well in 2007, after a good start, but that's the way with most of my 43things goals).

And then I started to get annoyed. Some idiot 43things user had viewed my posts as spam, as opposed to, say, what I get from Trackbacks and Comments that link to sites which scrape their content off Wikipedia or Amazon and repurpose it with a page that is over 50% ads. What crazy draconian moderation is that? I wrote back saying that if that was the issue, then I guess I was better off without 43things. And what the hell was with a suspension that never sent a message saying, "You are in violation, etc."?

So that's the story of why I no longer have a 43things account. You can find me at plenty of other Web 2.0 places that don't mind me pointing you back to this spot.

(And, yes, I didn't link 43things on purpose. Hell if I'm going to give them a link back after this.)