The subject of Trust.

I have started this blog due to being recently 'kicked off' another blog which shall remain nameless and that I had been invited to contribute on with various articles from time to time. There were no hard and fast rules outlined at the meeting with the Blog Administrator, just that I put up articles of interest and that had a general topical appeal.

The operating system of that blog (Wordpress) was totally alien to me, which impression I conveyed to the blog operator of my concerns for not being familiar with its operating procedures. Nevertheless, I persevered with 'swimming rather than sinking' and became somewhat familiar with what to do to get those articles posted. I noted during my tenure on that blog that even the blog owner had troubles with the system from time to time, and he was far more familiar with it than I!

Over time it became standard practice to communicate by email with each other on those 'problems' we encountered and by which practice generally fixed any concerns raised.

So imagine my astonishment to find that ALL my posts had been deleted from the blog without so much as an email or a comment left on the blog by the owner as to why he decided on this act of childish vandalism. What had I done to deserve his spiteful wrath?

Which now gets us to the main topic of this short essay; Trust.

Trust is a short word, a simple word even, but it is a word that contains a lot of meaning. To trust someone or something is to place an amount of faith in that someone or something which you become reliant on to fulfil a certain obligation. For example; you may be an employer who relies on employees to fulfil a contract to provide their labor, or expertise, or both, that allows you the employer to provide a certain service to clients which in return earns you money which you then give to the employee as wages or salary. In other words, a level of trust must be in place in order for that arrangement to work at its most efficient.

Once upon a time a man's word was taken as his bond, and a level of trust was raised as an expectation that what one man promised to another would indeed be carried out. How many people today would you trust and accept that what they said as a promise, and therefore, to be taken as a guarantee to a conclusion of mutual satisfaction? I am of the old school that still believes a man's word is his bond, call me old fashioned or a dinosaur even, but throughout my life taking a man at his word unless proven otherwise, has always worked for me.

Getting back to that blog owner who decided to end my participation on his blog. What caused him to do this? Did he no longer trust me to provide to him what he required? Would something as serious as deleting an invited participants writings from a blogsite not warrant at least sending an email to the participant? Would you as that blog owner not wish to reinforce in your own mind that what you were about to do was justified? If I had been that blog owner I would have sent that email just to satisfy myself that the conclusion I had reached about the invited participant, for whatever reason, was the right conclusion. So what was it that got him so upset that he decided to terminate my contribution to his blog?

Apparently when posting one of my last posts I ticked the 'No Comments' section, which I did not know existed at that time, and was not aware that I had somehow 'deliberately' done this until the next day after putting up that post. Much to my bewilderment the blog owner had inserted his own short post denouncing 'No Comments' as an infraction of his 'rules' which I was not made aware of until then. I answered with a comment to another contributor that the 'infraction' was not an issue as I knew at the time that I had not 'turned on' the 'No Comments' deliberately and if indeed it was caused by me it was done unintentionally and without my knowledge.

A simple email from the blog owner would have cleared this up, but no, there had to be a 'song and dance' and then complete elimination of ALL my posts without any reasons given.

So it appears that while I had some trust in the blog owner he decided he had none from me which is a pity because I did nothing that would warrant such a loss of faith. Trust can only work when two parties have faith in each others ability to continue the 'contract' of mutual unwritten consent that each will endeavour to provide to the other what is expected of them. Sadly, I have been let down by someone who is so engrossed in his own mission, has become so intolerant of other humans and their mistakes that even a minor infraction of his rules by those he has chosen to be a team with, will not be tolerated.

If I had known that the blog owner was of such a pygmy mindset I would have declined his offer to contribute in the first place.