Dancing Geek

Smarties: Inverted Double Spiral (-1,2) by gadl

Blogging on blogging on blogging on blogging – it’s about as incestuous as it gets

So, Naomi wrote a post about dropping comments from her blog, Harry wrote a post about what he thought was wrong and John wrote a post about the reaction to Harry’s post.

Exhausting, eh?

Then you’ve got all the comments. And there’s a lot of them!

I’ve read the posts and the comments, got angry, wondered why I got angry and written 6 pages of thoughts (unfinished) about it in order to get my head around it. Yes, really. This is the short version with just the salient points included.

What can I add to this?

I think that Harry’s post tried to cover two subjects, blurred them and ended up communicating neither. There are some who state that they got the intended message, but I think it could have been handled a lot better.

Harry and James have both said that they are open to people calling them when they think they’re out of line. So consider this a call out, Harry.

Why am I calling Harry out?

Because I believe the following statements are fair and that Harry was unfair by going against them.

1. If you’re going to talk about someone’s blog then link to it. Otherwise people have nothing to go on but your opinion. If the point you’re trying to make isn’t about them in particular don’t allude to an individual at all.

2. If you’re going to call someone out be clear about it and why you’re doing it. Don’t mix messages as it can end up coming across as a personal attack.

Is this call out fair?

Ok, so this is a call out about a call out (the recursive level of this post is bordering on the idiotic). This means that I need to follow my own rules about a fair call out. To be clear about exactly what I am calling them out on I am gonna get specific.

1. The two messages I believe were intended to be communicated (from reading all the posts and comments) are:
a) That removing comments from a business blog will hurt your business.
b) That Naomi’s post went too far and was rude.

If I mentally remove comments about Naomi’s blog from Harry’s post I see someone passionately stating a belief in communicating through your blog with your customers. This would have been a great post on it’s own.

If I read only those parts about Naomi’s blog I see him mentioning the language she used, points he feels she raised and responding to both.

I think a lot of confusion could have been avoided if these two issues had been dealt with separately.

I support my stance on this by the fact that both Harry and James have repeatedly had to explicitly state that this is not a personal attack on Naomi.

And finally, a thank you

I want to add a thank you to the bottom of this post to Naomi & Harry for giving me something to get so engrossed in. On a personal note, it has helped me to push through my resistance towards fully getting to grips with a subject to a point where I feel I can have an informed opinion from which to take action. This is going to help me immensely in the personal work that I am doing and so I am truly grateful.

P.S. I disagree with both the messages I stated as getting from Harry’s post – but this isn’t about debating that – if you want that go read the posts and comments for yourself.