Robert Mizerek has left the building...

Hi y'all,

I'm sure you have noticed by now that all posts by Robert Mizerek have been deleted by Mr. Mizerek, himself (I am assuming). Mr. Mizerek took it upon himself to email me personally to ask, "Do we have a problem?" Now, I am not going to post the personal email exchange verbatim, however, I will summarize the exchange.

Mr. M...Do we have a problem?

Me...I believe so. Fifty three posts and only 2 replies to his own posts. This is not good community behavior, IMO. Interest seems only to exploit NPN members

Mr. M...You a**hole. When I give something away I expect something in return. I'm outta here.

This exchange leads me to believe that Mr. Mizerek's only concern was to use our forums and galleries to drive members to his own forums and to drive our members to four microstock agencies who sell his photos. NPN guidelines specifically state that the forums/galleries are not to be used for commercial purposes or personal financial gain, however, Mr. Mizerek chose to ignore those rules.

NPN is this great nature photography community it has become through the selflessness, dedication, and hard work of nature photographers helping other nature photographers. NPN has not become this great community through commercial and personal exploitation of the membership. Mr. Mizerek viewed NPN as a community to exploit for personal and financial gain.

Mr. Mizerek, I bid you farewell, good riddance, Godspeed wherever you may land.

Those of you who enjoyed his "Photoshop Tutorials" may find them by "Googling" "Robert Mizerek" as well as you may find other interesting information regarding Mr. Mizerek.

Best regards to all, as always

Ha, yeah well, didn;t take to long to find out the real motives he had.

Nice to see the forum looking normal again

Thanks Tom. so the truth comes out. Gold-digger. he expects something in return? How about a foot in the rear end.

To quote a certain NY icon "What a shame"

Oh Tom, you're so mean.

I believe RM stands for ReMove!

Shhh! Steve! You'll ruin my public image!

Tom, Thanks.

When Robert first appeared on the scene, I did a search on him and rapidly discovered that he was promoting his own business. Next, I watch one video he "a-haed" and "a-hemmed" his way through.

I've spent a lifetime working as a course developer and technical trainer. I'm sure there were some gems of truth is his various "courses," however, I quickly decided the best course of action was to simply ignore him.

Thanks for taking the actions you took.

I'm not sure about others, but I felt that if he truly had some to offer, he would have taken up Guy on his request for articles.

Thanks, again.

Carol

Amen. Thanks, Tom.

Thanks for the update Tom. I did watch one of his first tutorials. It was adequate as far as content went, but I fear the presentation was poor; obviously he is not a polished speaker, nor did he have a very engaging personality. Nonetheless, I'm sure there were plenty of people who probably benefited from his tutorials. I guess I have mixed feelings on this. For me, I'm glad the forums are back to "normal", but I think havng a tutorial forum would still be a good idea.

For those interested in "better" tutorials there are many available on the internet. Of course, "Russell Brown" comes to mind, as does "The Radiant Vista".

From an "official administrative" persepctive, it's often difficult to deal with such scenarios. I had emailed Mr. Mizerek a week or two ago asking him to curtail his "photoshop tutorials" to 3 or 4 a month. I was respectful in my email and explained that his frequent posts were being viewed as spam. Mr. Mizerek never responded to my email (which says something in itself), though he did cease posting his tutorials. His "snapshot" thread in general discussion - which I eventually deleted after multiple emails from NPN members - seemed more designed to stir contention than anything else.

In many ways, NPN is a self-governing community where the majority set the tone for the way people should participate. In this regard, I consider the NPN forums a total success as we are renown for the quality we maintain. Though I think this situation was handled properly, and that the ulterior motives were easy to ascertain, we must be careful not to let "self-governing" become "mob rule." I don't see that happening, but I think I would be remiss in my duties if I did not bring it up.

Thanks again to all for helping to keep our forums civil, educational, fun and free of blatant commercialism.

Tom,

Thanks for your post and the followup. I am glad Mr. Mizerek's info is out there on the web for those who wish to utilize it, but I am happy his posts are no longer clogging up the forum.

It's good to see the digital forum back to normal again

AMEN to that. I stopped visiting when I saw his name in the 'new posts'

Thanks Tom and Jim. It was pretty transparent and blatant opportunism.

Thanks to all of you for maintaining the high standard that prevails in NPN. I appreciate being able to see some great photos and have interesting discussions without being bombarded by self-serving crap.