Bro Read And Support...

Being the wife of a Senior DeMolay and PMC I felt obliged to do what I can for the Mossimo controversy—the sale in malls and stores in the Philippines of a t-shirt design sporting a defaced DeMolay emblem on the upper left side.
defaced DeMolay emblem on Mossimo shirt

First I filled up the feedback form available on the Australian Mossimo website (the mossimo.com site has nothing other than the mossimo logo on it). I got an automated reply saying:

Hi Demolay Philippines.

Thanks for submitting feedback to Mossimo!

PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE!

This message is just an automated response to let you know that we have received your feedback, and a real human being will respond to it soon.

The following text shows what we received from you:
———————————————————————-
There are shirts with your brand for sale in the Philippines, featuring a bastardation of the DeMolay logo. Please read this blogsite for details

http://samuel.kusangpalo.com/?p=288
———————————————————————-

Thank you for your feedback!

–
Mossimo Feedback System
Sent 24 Jan 2008 16:07

There has, however, been no follow-up from the real human being that they said would respond soon as of this blog post.

Last night I used my wikipedia account to include a short description of the controversy, with a photograph of the offending shirt that Sam found in the DeMolay e-groups. After a few attempts at posting while keeping in mind the guidelines I must adhere to while posting in wikipedia, I managed to post a successful edit, using Jerick A. Gempesaw’s photo of the offending shirt.

This morning, however, I found that my entry had been marked for deletion by one of the editors of wikipedia and had therefore disappeared. Good thing I took a screenshot before I shut down last night. An even better thing is that wikipedia has an undo feature for registered users and contributors, and I could also create a post on the editor’s talk page stating the reason why I undid his edit.

I encourage any DeMolay with an internet connection or at least easy access to an internet connection, to create a wikipedia account and post questions on Talk: Mossimo, the discussion page on wikipedia behind the Mossimo page. Signing up for a wikipedia account is a no-sweat two-step procedure. If you have ever signed up for anything, mailing lists, forums etc, signing up for wikipedia is much easier. Just remember to keep your posts in the discussion page sober, any inflammatory posts will be deleted and will defeat our purpose.

And what is our purpose? Our purpose is to bring this controversy out into the open, where Google and Yahoo and MSN Live Search can spider our entries and make it available to more DeMolays across the Philippines and around the world. Remember that posts in private e-groups are seen only by its members. Mossimo (if indeed anyone from the company is looking) will not see your protests if it is in a private e-group. Only blog posts and public forum posts are spidered by the search engines and eventually become visible in Google, Yahoo, MSN Live Search and the like. Even Sam’s post P’mo Mossimo was picked up by the rss reader (ForbesFinder) at Forbes.com.

Go DeMolays! Use the power of the internet! This digital pen can be a million times mightier than any sword.

Update: 06 Feb 2008 | 8:20am Manila Time

My update to the Mossimo page on Wikipedia has been removed again, explained by the same editor as follows:

DeMolay vs. Mossimo

Unless and until you provide the slightest evidence (from reliable sources, and yes, blogs don’t count) that

1) the controversy actually exists,
2) the controversy is widely covered and important,
3) important and/or significant enough (as per the undue weight principle) to take up half the text of a very short article,

and

4) Is written in a neutral, non-weaselly manner

it doesn’t belong and is coming out.

–Calton | Talk 23:57, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

How to get a reliable source? If you know someone at a newspaper with an online presence (Gmanews.tv or abs-cbnnews.com for instance), let that writer know about this controversy, give him all the details you have including photos you have taken, and ask him to release at least a 3-paragraph article on the sale of these shirts and where they have been found across the country. Once we have that, I can repost my wikipedia article this time with links to that online newspaper article.

Come on, DeMolays—you can do this!



This article was taken from
http://bambit.kusangpalo.com/2008/one-for-the-demolays-demolay-vs-mossimo.html


posted by: Bambit on February 6, 2008
with the title: One for the DeMolays (DeMolay vs. Mossimo)