Words for the Wise
One of my highest-ranked pet peeves about blogging regards bloggers who don’t take the time to do a bit of researching before posting an article. This is aimed at “A-list” bloggers more than anything. They are usually in such a hurry to beat the crowd and get something published that the accuracy and factuality of their information is left in the back seat.
For example, a few months ago I recall reading a review on TechCrunch where Michael Arrington glorified some service for its amazing Ajax interface - however there was no Ajax in sight. The service in question was nothing more than a Java applet. Someone called him out on that in the comments and then next time I glanced at that article, he had updated the post and deleted the snarky comment.
It can’t take too much longer to double-check what you’re blogging about right? Whenever Apple releases some new product I always make sure to give the specifications page a good reading to make sure I’m not blogging about anything incorrectly. The examples don’t stop with Arrington though. Today, Podtech employee (formerly of Microsoft) Robert Scoble wrote a lengthy rant about a person whom he claimed was an Apple employee. If Scoble had spent even one minute on the “Apple employee’s” blog, he would have quickly known that Chuqui was no longer with Apple. Heck, the blog post title that Scoble linked to even hinted at Chuqui’s job change.
As long as we are on the subject of Robert Scoble, why not mention the time he erroneously accused Elliott Back of spamming and got Google to temporarily cancel his AdSense account the same day. Only after looking like a fool did Scoble find out that he was blaming the wrong person and that Elliott had merely written a WordPress plugin that a spammer used for malevolent purposes.
Hold on, I’ve got one more juicy example for you. A ZDNet blogger Donna Bogatin wrote a strongly worded rant against Yahoo! employee Jeremy Zawodny. Donna got everything wrong. She claimed Jeremy used Google AdWords when it was clear that he used AdSense, a tool for publishers, instead of AdWords, a tool for advertisers. Donna’s post continued to spew nonsense by getting Yahoo! Search Marketing confused with Yahoo! Publisher Network. You might be interested in Jeremy’s reply.
5 Ways to Retain Your Blog’s Integrity and Reputation
- Get it right the first time. If you are going to blog about someone or their article, take a few minutes to read other relevant posts on their site and at least the about page.
Yes, people do make mistakes which brings me to mention how you might want to correct those mistakes. There is the polite, respectful way to correct mistakes by updating the post and letting people know that you changed something. Then there is the silently change it/piss people off/delete comments way.
- Not sure about something? Ask your readers if you can’t find the answer elsewhere. Don’t claim something without knowing for sure. Besides, asking your readers promotes user interaction and that’s always a plus.
- Better safe than sorry. The blogosphere is always on top of things. The second a press release comes out people have already blogged about it and are starting to appear on Techmeme, digg, etcetera. If you are one of these people, I ask you to hold off a bit and get all of the facts right. Too many errors are made with people trying to blog something as fast as possible. I can’t count how many times I’ve caught typographic errors, completely ill-formed sentences and various notable inconsistencies on prominent blogs.
- Stop using buzzwords you are totally clueless about. In this whole Web 2.0 bubble, bloggers are quick to talk about buzzwords when reviewing new “Web 2.0″ services. I absolutely hate when people start talking about Ajax, Ruby on Rails and other things like that when it is crystal clear that they have never been coders in their life and have no clue what they are saying. I can come up with a truckload of TechCrunch posts that violate this rule. Even worse is when they say the Ajax interface or what have you sucks and that “it shouldn’t be too hard to fix”… and you know this from your previous experience as a dynamic web application software engineer?
I was reading a post on Steve Rubel’s Micro Persuasion about the new .Mac webmail where he said the following:
It’s nice to see Apple start to use some of the same Web 2.0 technologies that others like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have been using for some time.
Grrr. The term as “Web 2.0 technology” does not exist. Ajax did not start out in life as a hybrid of JS and XML purely for Web 2.0 applications. There are several programming languages commonly referred to for their prevalence in many Web 2.0-classified web applications, not the other way around.
Update: Steve updated his post to reflect my comments and did so in a respectful manner. Steve Rubel ++.
- I think you get my drift by now. Just say no to A-list bloggers that have no idea what they are talking about.
I completely agree. Well put.
Awesome post. I agree.
Right on - don’t jump to conclusions, kids.
If only you weren’t blocked from digg 37 different ways, I’d gladly visit that gosh awful site to give you a digg. :)
Good stuff my friend.
Well deserved beat down to the A-list. Great job, keep dishing it out.
This is right on. I’ve noticed misinformation on tons of high profile blogs. Heck, I know this first hand.
One night I was a little sloppy on my research and ended up making some wrong assumptions based on some forums posts. The post got picked up by some major blogs, and to this day I still have people thinking what I said was true.
If you want to know more about what happened to me, read this. I’m the blogger the person is talking about. :-(
With that said, I now triple check my blog posts and even hold back on publishing the post until some more reports come in. Being right is way more important then being first.
Well said Paul
Great post.
I agree, great post.
I’m glad none of you have ever made a mistake.
Sorry I made one.
This article truly inspired me to write more quality articles. After all, quality over quantity is always best.
This is so true. ZDNet really impressed me when one of their bloggers slammed Firefox (I’m not a fanboy) for having a “blank grey toolbar” that he “didn’t know what it did” and “took up too much space, unlike IE’s interface”. Everyone let him know in the comments what it was: a bookmark bar.
Nice post.
I think we’re all guilty - at some point in time - of providing a tad of inaccurate information without even knowing it. You’re entire rant was well composed and merits the eyes of ALL A-list bloggers. Us amateur bloggers bow before you ;)
I was guilty a few days back when I posted that Firefox was released when Mozilla had not “officially” launched. Does that count as failing to fact check :P Dugg got sure though…
Nice post :) and totally agree on the “Stop using buzzwords you are totally clueless about” point !
However If a mistake is done, it should be gracefully accepted and reflected in the post.. I like Scobles approach on this matter, unlike Mike whom you say deleted the snarky comment
I like Scobles approach on this matter
The guy mans up and apologizes for his errors: Scoble+++… but then he comes here and plays the ‘poor me’ card and gets all sarcastic. So much for the high road… Scoble–
(damn, that looks like a digg comment).
You’re damn right. BUT, A-bloggers need to practice somewhere, maybe sometimes they’ll become real bloggers
If there is an A-lister out there who just doesn’t have a clue its Leo Laporte, the guy needs to just research for 5 minutes and read things.
I’m so tired of listening to Twit and watching MacBreak only to watch him be so oblivious to everything thats just happened - when a new Mac is released, it takes all of 2 seconds to get specs in your head.
Well done lined up :)
I agree, especially with the last part: “The term as “Web 2.0 technology†does not exist”.
Web 2.0 is a “meme” , a word/jargon than transfered to one another.
Leo is not as bad as you make him out to be, he does make mistakes though. However if you ever see him describe his recording set up or certain other areas of specialty, he actually is quite knowledgeable.
No one is going to be an expert on everything, and there are a LOT of so-called experts out there getting it wrong on a routine basis. I think Leo does a good job. Even if he makes the occasional mistake, he more than makes up for it by producing the podcasts he does, such as TWiT and Security Now.
At least guys like Leo and Scoble admit when they are wrong, and they do a good job on their work overall. Most people here (myself included) have stuff we do well, but we haven’t really contributed as much as either of those guys have to blogging or podcasting, IMO.
Criticizing is easy. Being right all the time with as much work as they produce is easier said than done.
Several good points in this post, I’m not sure I entirely agree with your tone though.
It’s another thing having your facts wrong systematically and not really care about it (cf. TechCrunch) and another one doing the occasional slip up. The former probably deserves a call out; on the latter you could probably start with a “hey, hey…”.
Finally, it was a bit funny reading your rant on AJAX, considering you had also misused the term in the past.
It’s very great post! Im very agree With You, there are lot of diots on the Web, but “c’est la vie”.
Some great points but no one can be right 100% of the time - just doesn’t happen, especially with the tech blogging A listers. So much happening, so much to blog about - errors will happen. You’ve just got to hope that when they do the blogger will rectify it in the right manner.
Look at mainstream media - how often are they right (and let’s not start on how often they deliberately mis-report)? How many bloggers reported way to early on the Firefox 2 launch this week? The good thing about blog’s in general are that error’s will be corrected by the community through commenting and discussion and mistakes are quickly rectified.
“Stop using buzzwords ….”
Such as “blogging”
as a newbie in the blogosphere i find your advice sound and sensible. i am occasional guilty of trying to post in a hurry but have been sensible enough not to talk about things that i know nothing about. all points taken.
I agree with you on that. This is something every blogger should take into consideration before publishing something that hasn’t been thoroughly researched.
“…and you know this from your previous experience as a dynamic web application software engineer?” seems like a dangerous argument to use.
Does that mean if one says anything related to share price, venture capital, market value, M&A, corporate strategy… one is open to “and you know this from your extensive experience as an investment banker, venture capitalist, management consultant…”
My fave site: http://xenisucks.com/
All about the foolishness of a C-list blogger. It’s a hoot!
I agree, 99% of what Robert writes is either not entirely the truth or based on his opinions. When you make that much money, you have to be right 100% of the time. Look at what happened to Dan Rather, and that was just ONE TIME.
I think that if Robert wants to continue report in a loose way, then he should demand far less(like 25k a year), because that’s what his media is worth. He is about on the level of a free local newspaper reporter. Not trying to diss, but that’s about how I evaluate his reporting. Be that good or bad, I don’t think it merits 150k+ a year. The president of the US barely makes that much.
If you’re going to pull in the 6 figures, act like it. That’s my opinion.
You make some great points, but I have to disagree with you on this:
“The term as ‘Web 2.0 technology’ does not exist.”
You’re right.
But at a certain point, if everyone but the uber-hackers get together and decide Hacker means someone who breaks into computer systems, and Cracker, well, is still a saltine … you will have a hard time convincing everyone that they have it wrong.
Anyway, AJAX is to a point know where it’s synonymous with dynamic apps (ooohhh, “It’s Web 2.0!”), and doesn’t really have anything to do with the underlying technologies anymore.
I agree that Java Applets are neither Ajax nor Web 2.0 (heh, far from it). But while AJAX used to be associated with asynchronous transfers *and* XML, well, the XML part is no longer necessary. I do AJAX all day long and never see a lick of XML come back from the server. (it’s all raw HTML or JavaScript)
By the way, it’s Ajax, not AJAX.
http://media.libsyn.com/media/podcast411/411_060925.mp3
Here is a rant I made on this subject with regards to both Scoble and Calacanis (among others) misreporting the issue with Apple and the Trademark of the term Podcast. If they had done any research they would not have written what they did. All to often we in new media want to be taken seriously yet so few are willing to do any actual research. No wonder those in Big media give us such a hard time.
Rob @ podCast411
Wow, this still managed to make the front page.. =P
I couldn’t agree with your more. I don’t know too much about Web 2.0 I put it my terms, usability. So whenever I see techcrunch articles on digg I just mark them as spam.
If what Josh Pigford posted is true, well, someone still Dugg you: http://digg.com/tech_news/Words_for_the_Wise_A_jab_at_A_list_bloggers_2
What’s funny is that the link that took me here is a Cross Site Scripting hole in squidsuds.com. Wanna know where http://www.squidsuds.com takes you? It re-directs to CNN.com! LOL
Thank you. I’ve been moaning about the fact that I’m a ’slow’ blogger.
Now I know I’m not only ’slow’ but I also get it wrong — I’m one of those bozos who bandy the term ‘web 2.0′ about it. I’m going to be much more careful from now on.
The blogging world is too frenetic: I’d rather keep up with fewer quality blogger posts than a zillion inaccurate ones. You did us all a service.
Thanks for correcting me. You are most right. Fixed.
We’ve been calling Scoble out on his mistakes since the days of Go Flock Yourself a year ago (those were good days). He was notorious for making false claims and ranting for the wrong reasons, and that’s a big part of why I didn’t think Microsoft was losing anything special when Scoble left. He’s careless and I don’t care to read what he has to say.
Everyone makes mistakes, even the mainstream press (especially the mainstream press). Furthermore, calling them “idiotic” does nothing at all to further the discourse in any useful way. I’m not an A-List blogger, I don’t know what it’s like to get posts out fast, but I could imagine pushing out over a dozen posts a day might be on the difficult side. And in the long run, most blogs don’t have editors, it’s up to the writer to research, write and edit there own posts, and if there’s an error between the chair and keyboard, well, then there are going to be mistakes made sometimes.
Colin: There’s no need to make excuses for others. The reason most A-list bloggers are constantly making mistakes is because they spend only a little time writing and most of their time at big blogger parties and such. If they treated their jobs with any professionalism, they would write a whole lot better.
“Everyone makes mistakes, even the mainstream press”
The big problem is that the mainstream press fact checks and releases news. A-List bloggers release their opinions and compare themselves to news organizations, even suggesting that printed news is now obsolete because of their L33T webpinions.
It’s not like most of these bloggers can’t afford to hire some students to proof their articles. They would probably say, “but that’s not what blogging is about”. Well then blogging isn’t responsible news reporting is it?
Blogging is no different than seeing your friends at the mall and going “hey, guess what?”. I wouldn’t compare that to actual news, and literally no more attention to detail is really paid than that in most blogs. Blogs are what they are and they should never be taken at face value.
The problem is that Arrington is not very technical. He’s a lawyer by profession. Mistaking a friggin’ Java applet for Ajax? Gimme a break.
Scoble is more technical, but not a developer and it shows.
Zawodny is too-legit-to-quit.
What are you talking about? .Mac Webmail _is_ Ajax based, completely. I challenge you to substantiate your claim that it is Java applet. All it takes is View Source in your browser to verify there is _not_ one trace of Java applet in the entire .Mac site.
It sure is ironic when the self-appointed tech expert get it so horribly wrong, eh?
Ethlite: What? .mac webmail is NOT THE APP THAT SCOBLE CONFUSED FOR AJAX. It is the app that Rubel was talking about when he used a silly term. The app that was a Java applet was SOMETHING ELSE ALTOGETHER.
It’s not surprising when trolls make stupid comments.
Anon: All the more reason why Arrington should hire a tech editor. The guy has more than enough money to afford one… he makes six figures easy. Hey, he could hire me! He wouldn’t even have to invite me to his parties.
I stopped reading at the second paragraph where in the first sentence you said he “glorified” the service and in the last sentence you state that his remarks were “snarky”.
That is where, for me, the point of your blog was lost.
OK. I did notice the first sentence of the third paragraph where you said;
“It can’t take too much longer to double-check what you’re blogging about right?”
to which I have to add:
“It can’t take too much longer to double-check the definition of a word you’re using, right?”
Sorry. I posted that based on this page - http://www.micropersuasion.com/2006/10/first_look_at_m.html
Looks like this other guy got himself confused with Scoble. My mistake for jumping the gun. My apologies.
One question. Where is this “A list” you are referring to kept Paul? Is it an actual document (with a date, author, title, publisher) that can be formally cited (and therefore should be), or is it ficticious with membership being a matter of personal opinion?
IMHO good reportage should also be careful to distinguish between “evidence” based on fact that can be corroborated, and speculation that exists purely in someone’s mind.
John C. Dvorak does this all the time on his blog. He gets it wrong, then bans and deletes comments from people who corrects him.
But hey…he gets no spam, right?
Bruce: It’s right here: http://technorati.com/pop/blogs/
I figured everyone knew that the A-List refers to this page… I guess some people are living under rocks.
OMG! Didn’t anyone (especially the author) notice that there are only 4 ways listed instead of the proclaimed 5! This has to be a joke, right?
Recalling Robert Scoble on Elliot’s plugin hit a raw nerve with me. Robert has been promoting his “Link Blog” for a couple of weeks now, which conveniently features full feeds.
I wrote about it here
http://andybeard.eu/2006/10/google-reader-splogs-linkblogs-blog-readership.html
It should be noted that both bloglines and pageflakes don’t offer an RSS feed of shared pages.
Bruce, the Technorati top 100 could be considered an A-list. It ranks blogs by a count of links from other sites: such as readers who like an article and link to it or less successful bloggers who are jealous and post rants to create controversy and boost their own numbers.
Well, whoop de doo, you have become aware of the blindingly obvious.
Sorry, I stopped reading when I came across your first spelling mistake
Quote >> “I can come up with at truckload of TechCrunch posts that violate this rule”
I have an idea - why not step down off the pedestal and practice what you preach?
Thanks for the catch Arthur! BTW, you can quote with the blockquote tag on most WordPress blogs.
You would be amazed how much information and factual stuff going around on the web is full of mistakes and subjective crap. Even a history book which tells one side of the truth, it is just the same.
@the writer of this article
A journalist is a real profession, and many of us here are no real journalists. We dont even have a press card but we do write articles. … Which I applaud! If you get your facts straight, and stay objective when you can.
What I do see: bloggers posting similar stuff, again not bad if you add your view on things. I love photography, I do! But on flicker I see not that many great shots but on real photography sites you see amazing shots tenfold. People blog their pics but at the same time are they worth showing to the rest of the world. I rather keep my holiday pics for my friends and family. Or a great sunset for a photocontest maybe …
WORD.
Beer28: Just to correct the record. Interesting that folks who claim to take the high ground got it wrong here.
I do NOT get paid to blog. I get paid to build a media network and to do my video show over at http://www.scobleshow.com. I have no advertising (which costs me thousands of dollars per month). My boss doesn’t care if I blog or not. He (and the VCs that funded PodTech) care if I build a media network and build an audience over at PodTech. They don’t own Scobleizer.
And, one little problem with saying 99% of what I write isn’t the truth: my comments are open. If I make a mistake it’s INSTANTLY pointed out on my blog by my readers.
I notice that most of those who comment here don’t even have a blog. I sure would love to read blogs from all of you to see just how to do blogging right.
I agree that the top bloggers should verify the facts, but I have learnt as a reader to not expect it from them. Usually you do tend to understand a blogger’s blogging system as you read him/her.
From another perspective, this is the difference for me between professional journalism and blogging. Must and should. Both are required.
Robert: “My boss doesn’t care if I blog or not.” Yeah, okay. Your blog makes you a celebrity. It gets you into all the parties, press-demos-for-new-web2.0-apps, and conferences. I really doubt you would be where you are today without it.
Heck, to the techie crowd, “scobleizer” is a kitchen name. It’s like “coke” or “pepsi.” I’m pretty sure that wasn’t your title at Microsoft or Podtech.
As for your readers, they correct you because when you are wrong, it has catastrophic effects. You have FAR too many readers to be going around dropping false claims and inaccuracies. When you accused Elliott Back of spamming, his Adsense account was shut down the very next day. That’s a lot of power and some of us don’t think you use it responsibly enough. Your readers are trying to curb the damage you cause.
Finally, as for most people commenting here not having a blog, I see about 50 people here and at least 40 blogs. Should be enough to keep you busy for a while. Go out there and take some notes.
Clearly blogging is a subculture and people get immersed into this whole read, write and comment network. I rather dislike the word “blog” since it sounds like a buzz word. Like look I am cool, therefore I blog. It is really funny to see that people talk here about A-list bloggers. This means that when a blog generates lots of trafic, and ad revenue, your stock value goes up? Also funny that bloggers talk about readers, is a blog the next newspaper? I dont think so, a blog is like a forum. See wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum, but not all bloggers are like Aristotles
Typical internet argument: lots of noise, very little respect.
Montoya:
“Colin: There’s no need to make excuses for others. The reason most A-list bloggers are constantly making mistakes is because they spend only a little time writing and most of their time at big blogger parties and such. If they treated their jobs with any professionalism, they would write a whole lot better.”
Ever heard of the phrase “ad hominem”? It’s Latin, meaning “to the man”. In the context of an argument, it’s used as a way of identifying people who try to get their point across by negatively attacking the opposing person instead of the issues. I highly doubt they spend “most of their time at big blogger parties and such” and this type of conjecture doesn’t lend well to the rest of your argument, either. Lot’s of noise, very little respect.
Beer:
“The big problem is that the mainstream press fact checks and releases news. A-List bloggers release their opinions and compare themselves to news organizations, even suggesting that printed news is now obsolete because of their L33T webpinions.
It’s not like most of these bloggers can’t afford to hire some students to proof their articles. They would probably say, “but that’s not what blogging is aboutâ€. Well then blogging isn’t responsible news reporting is it?
Blogging is no different than seeing your friends at the mall and going “hey, guess what?â€. I wouldn’t compare that to actual news, and literally no more attention to detail is really paid than that in most blogs. Blogs are what they are and they should never be taken at face value. ”
Many press institutions have departments dedicated to fact checking and research, yet there are still many mistakes, often inherent in the bias of the reporting (read: Fox News). The problem with your point is that the problem doesn’t lie with the fact checking or research, it lies with human nature. The responsibility, therefore, lands with the consumer of the news to decipher the truth from the given information. The consumer plays just as big a role in news as the producer.
There is a reason why some bloggers are bigger than others. Many of the causes for this reason come down to basic economics in capitalism: people choose to consume their news rather than others because they find it more enjoying, more informative, more something. If you don’t find you benefit from reading a blog, don’t read it. If someone isn’t fact checking their posts, let it be known and stop reading their blogs. Obviously, someone is going to their blogs and reading them on a daily basis because they’re wildly popular. This may be for the same reason why people watch Bill O-Reilly’s television show, but attacking them personally for the way they choose to convey information, or misinformation, is backwards and does nothing at all to further the discourse.
Maybe the answer isn’t to get the blogger to hire a student, but for the individual readers to read the blog, and realize the blogger is a lying douchebag and shouldn’t read his material anymore on the grounds of its factuality being questioned. But hey, that’s just me. The problem lies with consumers of the information as well as the producers.
Yeah, man, though one of the biggest “parts” about blogging for me is my quick authentic thoughts. I hear you though, but sometimes you just gotta say it quick.
Get your own Blog Honor badge here, free:
http://www.blogkits.com/bloghonor
Blogging is over its edge. http://westciv.typepad.com/dog_or_higher/2006/10/why_blogging_as.html
Montoya: >>When you accused Elliott Back of spamming, his Adsense account was shut down the very next day.
According to Google his Adsense account was NEVER shut down.
So, who is telling lies here and who isn’t?
Elliott’s AdSense wasn’t shut down, just they didn’t show up for part of that day as he said:
Paul:
>Elliott’s AdSense wasn’t shut down, just they didn’t show up for part of that day as he said:
Even that part isn’t true. I was watching every 15 minutes. His AdSense didn’t disappear at any point in the day. I verified it with Google. They never pulled his stuff down. So, who’s lying? Google or Elliott?
And, worse, did YOU do any reporting? Sounds like you’re just repeating stuff without verifying whether or not it’s true. Just to “get” Scoble.
Colin: Arguing about arguing and arguing about the subject at hand are two very different things. The former creates more noise than anything else.
Just because big, rich media companies make mistakes in their newspapers/etc. doesn’t excuse the mistakes that bloggers make. I don’t expect a-list bloggers to be “just as good” as journalists… I expect them to be the best as possible.
As for the big blogger parties/conferences/etc., I’m not exactly making this stuff up. But I think you and I are not on different sides of the fence here. I think we can all agree that the one thing you “can’t” do about a-list bloggers is get them off the a-list. Someone told me the word was “tautology,” but I’m not so sure about that.
Scoble: Considering I know Elliott personally, I’m bound to believe him over anyone else. I guess I’m just biased.
And everyone is out to “get” you because you are famous. It’s the celebrity life!
Here’s a 6th tip: Don’t use another blog as a source! So much bullshit ends up getting circulated through the so-called blogosphere like a game of telephone. Blog != Facts
I woudl call most blogging infotainment! Information and entertainment, harmless?
An interesting article, but you were a little vague with your examples. I would love to see this article expanded into an essay style exposé.
Bunch of blog monkeys throwing feces at each other, what’s new….and who cares.
I have even rewritten my last article to show up more precise information and demonstrate more research. You really inspired me to write more quality and less quantity. Bless you, Paul.
Great post Paul. I couldn’t agree with you more.
BTW - you mentioned tc removing comments - TC removed one of my comments on the thread about media temple about a week ago - basically i called mike out for using different language about his relationship with mt - on one post he says they host everything, on another he says they host some - he wouldnt answer me and then he removed my comment. cheap, very cheap.
All hail the B-list bloggers, love the anti-logo. We ALL make factual mistakes and omit obvious details to slant a story in the direction we want it to go. Any blogger that disagrees is full of it. That’s why we can’t or won’t get jobs writing on dead trees. Who the hell wants to be a writer? Such a one-way endeavor, boring and not enough focus on how important we are. Plus, we would have to be accountable to a higher standard and couldn’t throw such great parties.
Don’t get me wrong you all are entertaining to read as you learn how to blog (and some will never fully learn) but in a few years when you are videoblogging and looking back at print blogs as quaint you’ll get just as much wrong in your posts as you do now.
Come to think of it, this article was boring and a total retread, I like the comments much better, especially from those disparaged in the original post.
Yeah, I did this exact same thing with a post about Iceweasel that made it to slashdot.
As the first 50 commenters (rightly) tore me a new one, I updated my article to include their comments as a counter-point and kept a change-log of the updates.
Paul, especially in the case of TC you have forgotten something. TC is since a long time no blog anymore, but the tech mainstream online newspaper for the web-two-zero. Most of the posts are only quick blurps anymore and Arrington has mentioned several times that he doesn’t express his opinion that much anymore as when he started.
Where TC months ago really opinionated was, nowadays sometimes I think reading a press release.
Can’t chat long, I have a zillion things to blast out… just kidding!
While I kind of agree, I think the incentives in place are what is driving this. I find it hard to imagine that you can appeal to people to “behave well” and imagine that they ever will.
Enjoy your rant, and I’ll enjoy mine when I get annoyed at the lack of quality found so often, but it’s not going to get fixed anytime soon. If we can remove the rewards that are in place for low quality activity then we might get somewhere!
Hehe. Nice post Paul. I came across this as I was browsing through the archives, and it grabbed my attention. Excellent headline-writing by the way.
Wish I had seen this post sooner, and I would have referenced in one of mine. Good points, Paul.
Donna Bogatin strikes again! Only this time, she unfoundedly (and inaccurately) attacks me as a Yelper:
http://www.yelp.com/topic/houston-a-lesson-on-why-you-should-always-google-yourself
Thanks for writing this article! Always good to point out the hypocrisies in blogging.