White Terror generally refers to the suppression of dissidents and at times refers to acts of violence carried out by groups in power against their opponents. In which case, such actions have been carried out in ping.sg recently which includes attacks on ‘un-named serious bloggers’ , user banning, silencing of queries and discussions on the forum, and the rallying of support via Plurk and Twitter (and possibly even on instant messenger [im] and sms) against alleged opponents.

Several posts ago when I touched on ping.sg I have shown evidence on an attack (in fact, two attacks) being made on ‘un-named serious bloggers’ to silence those who object to the hijacking and manipulating the Top 10 to drive their own frivolous ‘community discussion’ . We have also experienced recently the banning of a user for voicing out against actions that can be viewed as divisive. As for whatever goes on in Plurk, Twitter, im and sms, that will be difficult to prove. After all, one will not have sms or im messages unless he is a designated recipient, and Twitter either doesn’t keep messages over a certain number of days, or above a certain number. Above which, private timelines on Plurk is not accessible to all though you would be able to glimpse what goes on there from the public Plurks of some of the ‘loyalists’ .

So, the only element that remained of the recent White Terror would be the silencing of discussion and queries on the forum, as you can see from the following screen capture that these thread were locked. In the case of the queries posted, the thread was locked without even so much of an official reply. (The screen capture was made instead of link to the forum itself as threads can be removed during regular purges.)

And these were the queries Endoh and I made in the topic titled Queries. Again, I am reproducing screen captures instead of linking directly to the forum.

What we get for our queries was a deafening silence, and then without even the courtesy of a polite ‘I thank you for your feedback’ reply, or even an answer in private emails, the thread on the forum was unceremoniously locked. If you asked me what message is in there, I would say that’s simply ping.sg’s management’s very own and special ‘just fxxk off and die’ reply. In fact, I seem to recall but was unable to find the muffled cry of another blogger who had mentioned something about an email reply which gist is ‘just shut up and enjoy your free service’ . In other words, no dissent is tolerated, there is no definitely guidelines as to what you can do or cannot do, and that leaves room for further abuse by elements on ping.sg to further their own personal agenda. Not to mention slanderous and libellious comments were left as they were as if they are being endorsed.

Quite a public relations disaster, if you asked me. But there’s nothing more that the users of ping.sg’s service can really do about it. After all, there is no alternative to ping.sg with the same amount of social interaction – and I don’t mean just the exchange of messages on an individual’s shoutbox like that on mybloglog or blogcatalog. I have considered emailing uzyn, but I doubt that will take me anywhere except to enter the records of his bad books.

But for those who have chosen to be out or are already out, just think on the bright side. Being outside the ping.sg community does not make you any lesser a blogger. The ping.sg community is but a part of the bloggers community, and not necessarily even representative of Singaporean blogger community at all. In it, it comes with people blogging out of Malaysia, or foreigners blogging in Singapore, not to mention that the founder and community manager are both Malaysians just working in Singapore.

In short, if the community manager of ping.sg wants to make their community in such a way that only actions or activities endorsed are considered a part of the community, she is free to do whatever she liked. It is of no loss nor impact to the real Singaporean bloggers community as a whole to be outside ping.sg itself because the ‘elites’ of ping.sg is but just a small part of it. In fact, some commercial entities which might be aware of such activities, may even view them negatively and shun the bloggers involved instead of using them.

To emphasise my point, I have noticed that prominent Singaporean blogger Mr. Miyagi also pings his blog on ping.sg but I have never seen his entries making into the ping.sg Top 10 or getting very much attention from the community there. On top of which, the others like Dawn Yang Yawn Dang, Mr. Brown and Xiaxue Xiasuay didn’t even have a presence there. But none of these bloggers are any less popular.

ping.sg’s true success relied somewhat on the willingness of bloggers to make it a community of their own. Many bloggers have over the past spent their time putting in effort to help newbies set up their accounts so their blogs are published, chat with newbies on the shoutbox to welcome them etc out of their goodwill and free time. Simply put, in response to daphnemaia’s list that those bloggers were the most popular and active in the community, the bloggers community at large should just let them now take up the roles which the bloggers not in the list of daphnemaia’s post have assumed without even a single nuance of gratitude or mention.

In fact, just let the decision makers in ping.sg shoulder all those other responsibilities which were formerly assumed by the un-named bloggers alone… and that appears to be what is going on the past week when one looks at the history on the shoutbox anyway.

So, to end my post, be true to yourself and your readers. And you will find sooner or later find a group of loyal readers to your blog. And if no one reads what you write, just don’t take it too hard unless you are trying to make a living out of it.