Kelly Abbott pointed out a review of me at Honestly.com.
In case you’re new to Honestly.com:
"Honestly.com is an online resource for building, managing, and researching professional reputation, using community-contributed, professional reviews."
Kelly had to show me the review because I don’t have access to this service. Early on—when it was still called unvarnished.com—I provided reviews of people I know in industry along with tongue-in-cheek quips like: "he smells like unicorn farts…at least, what I imagine they would smell like, which is to say delicious". All my reviews were overwhelmingly positive. Alas, the founder and CEO of Honestly.com, Peter Kazanjy, banned me as a result.
This was our email correspondence:
On Aug 27, 2010, at 11:33 PM, Peter Kazanjy <pete@getunvarnished.com> wrote:
Hey Aaron,
Saw your experiments on the site ; ) Testing the countermeasures, eh?
So, I banned your account, and marked all your reviews as abusive (they’re gone off the site), but am happy to unban if you’re cool with adhering to Community Guidelines. I assume that you were doing this from a standpoint of critical inquiry rather than actual abuse.
Let me know how you’d prefer to proceed!
Best wishes,
Pete
—
Peter Kazanjy
My responses:
From: Aaron Fulkerson Date: Sat, Aug 28, 2010 at 6:48 AM
Subject: Re: Hi from Unvarnished
To: Peter Kazanjy
Abuse? How do you figure? Those were my actual opinions.
Then I realized he deleted my posts and banned me. Incredulously:
———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Aaron Fulkerson
Date: Sat, Aug 28, 2010 at 6:52 AM
Subject: Re: Hi from Unvarnished
To: Peter KazanjyI’m shocked you deleted my reviews and banned me. What was abusive about my reviews? How do you justify this?
Again, all my reviews were 100% positive. Me being banned for expressing myself honestly I think this is an interesting service. Yelp for people? I think it’s a great idea. Also, integrating with Facebook is a smart move. I will however advise that you refrain from injecting your reviews with personality lest you be banned by Pete Kazanjy. Autocrat that he is. LOL
By the way, my overall rating is 4/5 with only one negative rating (shown above), which I presume is from the Founder and CEO of Honestly.com, Pete Kazanjy. Pete, I think you’ve got a fine service there, but you should be less autocratic.
Aaron Fulkerson 