How I Lost 240 Ximmy Reward Points.

I am currently the second person with the most number of reward points at Ximmy.com.

For almost two days, more or less, on the first week of February, I managed to make and hold on to 1,503 Ximmy reward points which placed me at the top of the ranks. However, on February 3, 2008, when I started posting new comments and reviewing web sites, I saw a comment made by one of my friends with whom I was, in a way, competing in the ranks with. She hadn't posted anything the previous day so when she saw my rank she commented that I somehow managed to get a large lead (about 300 points) from her. So I replied to her comment and afterwards I checked my ranking. What I saw shocked me.


My points was somehow decreased by almost a hundred points. So I refreshed my browser to determine whether it was just a problem with the browser or if it really was the case. To my shock again, my points decreased by, what I believe, was almost a hundred points.


I started panicking and I posted several messages stating my situation at the same post where I last made my replies. Then I checked my rank for the third time, and saw that another, more or less at first glance, hundred points was deducted from my reward points. It was driving me nuts. I continued posting messages about what I was experiencing. I checked the ranks again and saw anther 50 points, more or less, deducted from my reward points. I was so angry, I didn't know what to do. I calmed my self down and I sent an inquiry about the incident using the contact form at Ximmy.

I waited for the reply, and after, several hours, I received an explanation of what happened. Sean Wilson, the Admin at Ximmy.com, sent me the following message:

Hi Mark,

There was an error yesterday regarding submissions that were made
"popular" to the home page. It seems that new submitted story with only 1
vote made it to the home page and 15 points were given to the user for
each story. We had to fix the error and move those submission back to the
"upcoming" section. Of course, you have the most submission and you are
the most effected. We are so sorry for the mess up.

--
Sean Wilson
XIMMY


>
> Good day.
>
> I just would like to know what happened to my Reward Points? I just lost
> 240 points, more or less. What happened?
>

So I sent the following reply which I posted through the Contact Form at Ximmy.com:

Hello Sean,

Thanks for the reply.

I would like to get your permission to post all our communications in a blog that I'll be starting about Ximmy and my experience.

People should be informed about what really happened. You can't just delete already rewarded points without at least posting something about what happened or informing all concerned members and telling us what needs to be done. I was very shocked to see almost 240 points, more or less, within minutes, disappear right before my eyes. Some of my friends online even saw it happen. It was very discouraging.

I learned to love Ximmy even if I've only been a member for 10 days. I was so thrilled about the ximmy concept that I poured a lot of my time sharing most of the sites I like and commenting on other's posts and comments. Some of the members who saw what happened were very discouraged and they seem to have lost their enthusiasm in posting new sites and comments.

I think that in order to somehow lessen the impact of that incident, an explanation must be put forward.

I really want Ximmy to succeed so I'll try to explain in my blog what really happened. I'll be telling them about the glitch and inform them that all is fine now provided you agree that next time, if something like this happen, you'll be more considerate of your members and first inform the members about what happened and what needs to be done.

Hoping for the best. Thank you and more power to Ximmy.com.

When I sent this reply, I tried to post some comments and submit some sites. I saw some of my previous comments in the Latest Comment Module so I clicked on it. I was surprised to see that almost all of my post regarding what happened was deleted. And I thought to myself.... wow, their fast at cleaning evidences.



Of course, I agree with what they did, that of deleting things which could, in the long run, ruin Ximmy.com. However, they still failed to notify me, before deleting those comments.

Sean eventually replied:

Hi Mark,

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us. You are right, we should have
made post about. It was an error caused by our programmer and he resolved
the problem once he realized what happened without consulting with us
first.

You're welcome to share your Ximmy experiences on your blog. But it would
not be the "official" channels for Ximmy updates.

Again, thank you very much for your feedback and we value you as a Ximmy
member.

--
Sean Wilson
XIMMY

So, that's it. Just like that, 240 points down the drain.

I'm still hopeful that things will become better in the future. So, I'm still posting and having fun at the same time.

This is my experience. If you have the same experience or if you have some thoughts you want to share, please don't hesitate to comment below.

I'll be posting all my experiences with Ximmy in this blog. If you want to keep up to date with what's really going on at Ximmy, you can always subscribe to my RSS feed.