ALifePets.info Blog

A disgruntled former player of Showdog.com has created a site on Geocities titled "Drop Dead Jeff," http://www.geocities.com/dropdeadjeff/index.html. I will warn any younger readers that there is some objectionable language.

The reasons for the player's banning are numerous and were briefly discussed on the Alpha Dog forum after several Premium players requested more information. In short, multiple complaints were submitted; the ex-player in question is alleged to have harassed other players and cost the site hundreds of dollars in lost revenue. These allegations are supported by the immature behaviour since being banned from the site.

I don't want to drag dirty laundry out in public. If you are a member of Showdog.com, you can get more information on the forums there. If you aren't, then this post is actually for you. While "Drop Dead Jeff" is circulating in search engines, I want to refute the points mentioned on the page in order to reassure anyone thinking about subscribing to the site.

In the dealings that I have had with him, I have found Jeff to be one of the most honest and involved administrators I have ever met. I can only imagine the enormous number of email messages that he handles, but each time that I have sent him a message through Showdog's message system to report a specific bug, I have gotten a prompt response and the problem has been fixed. Several times the fix has actually appeared in the site news --- presumably several people reported it, as in the case of dogs sold the day of the SDWC losing their entry in the show. I have never known him to dismiss a problem or claim that it was someone else's fault, as the "anti-Jeff" site claims. In fact, the Showdog.com customer experience has been the best that I've had from any artificial life website.

I actually find the site's statement that "He thinks he's all high and mighty because he created his website" to be quite amusing, since as administrator and site creator he is, in fact, high and mighty and god-like in the game. Jeff could tear up the server and make Holly a necklace from its microchips. He could change Showdog.com into the world's leading purple-people-eater game. He could ban all users except for those whose names start with the letter "J." Despite the fact that he could do all of these things, I have never witnessed any exchange with a wayward user where Jeff took the role of anything but a reasonable authority figure; in fact, his professional calm throughout this entire situation has been nothing short of remarkable.

The site's statement that "If he had banned everyone that has argued with him he'd have an empty website" is also false. I personally have never argued with Jeff. The vast majority of the users have never argued with Jeff. And yes, admins and moderators will threaten to ban you if you do decide to argue with them about a warning or one of their decisions: site policy is usually not debated with people who have violated it. That is the way that websites, sports games, and all public places work: moderators, referees, or police will take you out of the game if you can't follow the rules.

If you do have a dispute with Jeff, it is his standard practice to offer a refund (as he gave this user) of your subscription fees. Showdog.com is the only website that I know of that is openly willing to refund all of your money if you are unhappy.

The reason that I have gone to such length in my experiences with Showdog.com is that, if you are researching the site before subscribing (a wise thing to do!) and find the "Anti-Jeff" page, you might interpret the information there as crudely-expressed but legitimate customer complaints. One sub-page, however, clearly demonstrates that the site is intended to hurt instead of inform: it is a fictional narrative by one of Jeff's lost pug puppies, describing how both supposedly died, saying at every step how much better it is than their former home. (Both pugs were lost when they wandered away in December 2003 and, tragically, are probably dead --- but of natural predators or exposure instead of puppy mills and trucks.) This clearly exceeds any standard of good taste and should put the site creator's other comments into perspective.