David L.

My birth name is David Lowe. I am a UK based independent author, writer and broadcaster by profession. Most of my published work to date has been written under my birth name but, increasingly, I am using my pen-name of Lewis Adler.

In early June, under my Lewis Adler pen-name I began subscribing and contributing to a website called Wikinut.com. That website encourages writers and poets to share their work with the rest of the Wikinut community. For a couple of weeks everything went smoothly; with the seven short stories I'd published to the site attracting an encouraging number of views.

Then, quite suddenly, on June 22, I discovered that I was not only unable to publish new articles to Wikinut.com, but I was also unable to comment on other Wikinut members' articles. However, I was still able to view my profile and articles, and those of the Wikinut members I was following.

Since June 22, I have lost count of the number of times I have sent messages to Wikinut.com alerting them to the bug on my pages. Not only have I attempted to use their "contact us" links to report the problem, but I have also sent several e-mails to *******@wikinut.com. In addition, on June 25, I even set-up a new Wkinut.com account in my birth name of David Lowe, but I experienced exactly the same "view only" bug on that account too. I, therefore, tried alerting Wikinut.com in the same manner as mentioned above.

Suffice it to say, I have had no response whatsoever to any of my messages. In fact, the only direct contact I've received from Wikinut.com came from *******@wikinut.com on June 30. He'd been alerted to the problems on my Lewis Adler pages by another Wikinut.com member. I replied to "samworm" on that very same day; explaining in detail the problems I was experiencing, and also embedding in my e-mail, a link to the Wikinut page I suspected of harbouring the bug. Regrettably, I have heard nothing whatsoever from "samworm" since. Why, I even e-mailed him on July 7 asking him whether he's had any luck tracing the bug on my pages: no reply.

Quite apart from all the above, on June 29, I posted a rather unflattering account about my Wikinut problems to my Lewis Adler MySpace site. However, after receiving the aforementioned e-mail from "samworm" the following day, I decided to give Wikinut.com the benefit of the doubt by removing my MySpace critique immediately and replacing it with a "contact at last message" which is still in place.

In a last-ditch attempt to get some (any!) kind of response from Wikinut, on July 12, I changed my Lewis Adler Wikinut profile page to include in capital letters a request that they delete my Wikinut pages forthwith. 24 hours later, I was still able to access my Wikinut.com profile, so I re-wrote my profile notes again to include a brief resume of the difficulties I've been having. I've still had no response. I do, though, have copies of all e-mails and other messages referred to above.

What troubles me most about this saga is seven of my copyrighted works are sitting on Wikinut.com for all to see. However, I cannot delete or alter them. Neither can I find a way of cancelling my subscription to Wikinut.com. By the way, I have not received any notification from Wikinut.com of any violation of their terms and conditions on my part. Had I done so, I would have been challenging any such notification vigorously.

My advice to any fellow writers and poets who encounter the, otherwise, attractive and convincing Wikinut.com website presence is: please think long and hard before enrolling and sharing your cherished work on Wikinut.com. You might find yourself enduring the same frustrations and indignities I have experienced over the past few weeks. Quite frankly, I wouldn't wish such experiences on my worst enemy.