I joined Sitemodel.net just after Halloween. I am a roleplayer, and have been one for over 5 years. Upon first joining their site, it felt as if someone hugged me. Someone really cared enough to make a new site that was similar to Myspace before it was sold out.
Roleplayers joined this website due to the fact we had no where else to go. MySpace slowly destroyed all of our creativity with their constant new useless features. The site was featured through bulletins on Myspace, where they tried to get new members to join, advertising it as a version of the "old myspace". Safe and sound everyone jumped aboard and found a place to go.
There were many great things about Sitemodel when first joining, but all of these great things slowly faded away. One must know before Myspace lost many of it's members to 3.0, this site had been around before. Mostly occupying is kids by the age of 12-18. I also include the owners and administrations as teenagers. From most of the dates I have read, the site had been in existence through out the summer of 2010. It didn't hit a massive popularity burst until the winter of 2010, which made the site "slower" since so many people were joining. The problem their owners have with a large majority of people is 80% of them is roleplayers. They told us we could join their site (even had a blog on the owner's page, wanting us to register as rpers) and I guess after the thousands of profiles were made, they grew tired of us.
Poor customer service, and management is a big issue with Sitemodel. The Terms of Use page is loaded with grammer and spelling errors. It becomes very obvious that the teenagers who controlled the majority of the population before Roleplayers joined, obviously meant the site is ran by kids. It includes in the Terms of Use, you must be over the age of 12 to join. 12? Really? Parents that really monitor their children are going to let them join a social networking site that young? I don't believe so.
About 2 months after joining Sitemodel, the changes I waited for to improve the site went into the opposite direction. The use of censoring words was introduced before Christmas, making it a struggle to write stories in fear that if you say words they dislike (Not just cuss words, they also censor words they don't like) you will be deleted. What I can't understand is why wait until 5 or 6 months of having a website to finally do something like this. A real organized website that wants to take away freedom of speech would have done this their first week of running.
As customer service follows, the owners of the site show no respect what so ever to complaints. Many people I know, including myself tried to message them and get a word about the censorship, and we didn't get anything. There was never an update or post that said "Hey, we're censoring you now" they just did it without saying anything. There is a blog on the owners page for suggestions. Even in their blog, they never respond to anything.
After the censoring, they began pushing their religious boundaries to the extreme. Just as the terms of use page, we start seeing posts and bulletins about God, and the Bible, and praying which are all loaded with several grammer errors. There is nothing wrong with religion at all, but religion should not focus and force you to run a website. Pushing the beliefs on others, is wrong. We have freedom in the United States of America. We are free to say as we wish (Freedom of Speech) and we are free to believe what ever we want. Sitemodel attempts to take both of this away. In recent weeks, people have been deleted for speaking out against their religious views, people are deleted for questioning their actions, and sadly you can be deleted if you tell them what they are doing is wrong. The funniest thing to me is; they censor the words facebook (one of many words they censor that is not a curse word) yet the owner of the site runs and hides on facebook where she posts all the real stuff and exposes her true thoughts of how we roleplayers "ruined" their site. On Facebook, they also delete and block who ever argues them or brings up a valid point concerning any of their motions.
I can't understand how they wanted us here in the start, and then after we do so much for them, it's as if we are hurting them. They claim their site was never for roleplayers to begin with, then why did they tell us to join and get others to join? I came to their site with a group of roleplayers. All twelve of us felt welcomed in the start, and now we feel as if we're the bad guys. I can't take it anymore. In February they declared on their facebook account (Since they cannot post updates on their official site) that they were indeed creating a new website for "real people". This was scraped going into March and now they are making "two sites" one for roleplayers, and the other for real people, while Sitemodel is going to be used for "sitemodels". This is how their management of teenagers treat the customers that build their website into a success. As a roleplayer, I blame some of it on myself for not finding a better place for my ground, but I expected more from this site. Instead of not listening to us, and running off to the site they censor to complain and talk about us before deleting the posts (Numerous people screenshot their statements on facebook for proof, since Sitemodel also deletes their own rants about us). I believe at the end of the day, we deserved to have some kind of respect besides them letting us join, then turning around and denying it.
Hypocrisy exposed
The entire objective for Sitemodel is to bring users an experience that is similar to Myspace back in 2006. Their site using a very similar coding that is much alike the original MySpace, before Tom sold it to Mediacom in late 2007. That was the original subject conclusion members were given if joining the site near the end of last year.
Overtime, after I became a member I expected this site to improve. Poor loading is often disputed, but this poor loading is also poor management. Overtime Roleplayers went from Myspace to Sitemodel, just to have a place to write stories and do their hobbies, these roleplayers built the website into a large networking base. Now keep in mind, that before roleplayers joined the site, their owner
One must know, that Sitemodel had little to no members before Myspace was introducing 3.0 and forcing people to leave. They had less than a thousand members. After the roleplayers came, their owner welcomed them with open arms, and gave us the attention to know they were "HAPPY" that Roleplayers were there. Slowly over time, they took this away. Before going into 2011, they rolled out censorship. Most users, including the very small amount of real people (mostly teenagers) even complained about this. Words with "curse words" in them also get censored (Analysis, Assort, Analogy - which is funny since Anal is not even a curse word). Words from the bible also are censored (Hell, Devil, Demon) and to top off the censorship they enforce; they have censored Facebook (when they use the website to update their site, instead of sending real updates on their own site!)
The management of Sitemodel does not have much experience running a site, as they can't seem to make up their mind. They went from being happy to being angry with roleplayers joining their site. One could say, it's because the teenagers complained about them. The owner is very quick to jump down someone's throat who disagrees with her or them, but she will listen to you if you're not a roleplayer. Other than the bad attitude as if they know it all, they think everything is alright to them because they use the Bible as an example, and make it clear to us every now and then how truly wonderful and perfect they are because they are Christians. I'm not a very religious person, and I believe Christians can be very nice people, but these kids obviously are the ones that put a bad name on Christians all together. At the end of the day, people can agree it is ran by teenagers. The Terms of Use page (which they love to throw in our faces) has such poor grammer it would make any school teacher scream.
In final conclusion, avoid this site if you don't want kids telling you how to live your life. If you are a roleplayer check out One World RolePlay or invest in having a site built with the original MySpace codecs and work. Sitemodel is not the place to roleplay, since they will like you one day, and turn their backs on you tomorrow. Hypocrites at their finest.
I give Sitemodel a rating of "meh" because it's brand new and the owner(s) of the site is clearly an amateur with running a network site.
The pros about Sitemodel run thin at the moment. It was created in hopes that people would join to recreate what Myspace.com had for several years before turning all profiles into 3.0... which is "user creativeness". Sitemodel allows [most] of the same layout coding that was allowed on Myspace. Who wouldn't want that old vibe we got back? I know I want it back, so I signed up to Sitemodel to check it out.
Overall the site began as a good experience. My first week there with two profiles; a role playing profile and a 'real-life' profile. During this first week there was a bulletin/journal posted from someone on my real-life account stating that the role players that kept signing up should leave Sitemodel all together. Since I am a role player, I felt a bit upset by this bulletin. However, the owner of Sitemodel posted a bulletin/journal as well stating that role players were welcomed to their site and that if other users didn't like it to simply not befriend them to their friend list. This was awesome, a social network similar to myspace was welcoming role players with open arms.
This awesomeness was soon ruined though. As more people discovered and signed up for Sitemodel - majority of them being role players - the site itself began to slow down. Obviously this was the server becoming "full" of its bandwidth.
But this wasn't the only problem fellow users noticed, Sitemodel began to censor. Most users who don't being censored as they feel their "freedom of speech" is being taken away from them, though most of us 'bit our tongues' and accepted the censorship. Then the censorship became ridiculous as words like "analyze" and "assumptions" (and etc), and abbreviations like "OMG" and "WTF" were being censored... looking like this "****yze", ***umptions", and "***". Even places like IMDb don't take their censorship that extreme.
The major cons of Sitemodel - at least for me - are the following:
- Extreme censorship; (see above)
- Lack of frequent updates; Don't get me wrong, the person(s) who runs Sitemodel does in fact post updates. However, they are not that often and when a decision has been changed the update for that change comes too late and not very descriptive. This leads to most users becoming confused and wanting quick answers.
There was an incident recently concerning role players becoming very confused about an update Sitemodel posted stating to "click LIKE for updates on Role Player" for their new Role Player facebook page. When I arrived on their Role Player facebook page it was filled with users confused, bitter, upset, concerned, and/or flat out angry because Sitemodel did not explain why this facebook was made. Speculations that the role players were being deleted from Sitemodel rose and this lead to users saying what was on their mind - both harsh comments and genuine concerned comments were posted. It wasn't until many hours later that the owner deleted all the user comments from Sitemodel's Role Player facebook page and posted that the speculations of role players being deleted from Sitemodel were indeed false. This could have been easily avoided if the owner had simply added a couple more sentences explaining what they were doing and why the Role Player facebook page was created in the first place.
- Unprofessional administration and moderators; As I stated in the first sentence of this long review, the person(s) who runs Sitemodel is clearly a beginner in running a social network similar to Myspace. The owner appears to ignore user comments when the user complains about something. This is a rookie mistake as most companies encourage complaints to better their product.
Now with that said, it is unknown to me if the owner just chooses to use a private message to the user who had complained. This is simply how it appears.
***
There is a minor con about Sitemodel dealing with religion displayed in the user menu bar. If you are highly offended by religion, then I don't suggest going to Sitemodel at all. For those who can turn face to it, then it is alright because it isn't exactly "shoved in your face" and you have the option to click what they have posted about their God.
At the moment, the owner of Sitemodel is creating two more social networks; one designed for role players and the other designed for real people. I have no comment on this at the moment as the sites are not up yet.
I hope this long review is helpful to those who take the time to read it. Thank you.