A fair bit of feedback on some recent posts. It reminded me that going on a puritanical save the world by highlighting wrongs binge isn’t always a good thing, people in glass houses etc…
Matt Mullenweg
I found an email from Matt Mullenweg in my spam box re the post on WordPress and the crackdown on sponsored templates.
Matt is pissed, and probably rightly so. The post in retrospect was unnecessarily personal and it wasn’t called for; she who must be obeyed asked me a very good question: would I like to have that written about me? One should never mess with she who must be obeyed, she is all wise and always right. So sorry Matt, it went too far.
However without taking away from the personal apology, I still believe you’re wrong. Your email stated that people were abusing sponsored templates by stuffing them with spam, but here’s the beef: in Australia Aboriginal people commit crimes at a higher rate than non-indigenous Australian’s, for memory the crime rate amongst African American’s is probably similar as a percetage of the population as well: would the solution therefore be to lock all black people up? You see Matt, you’re punishing a pile of good people for the actions of a small number of bad people; blanket solutions are rarely ever the right answer.
The link thing is still silly as well: you can’t ask people to not include links on their templates then stuff your own links on every install of WordPress, no matter how justified you think you are in doing so; it’s an all or nothing thing, and not practicing what you preach to others does make you look like a hypocrite, but in a nice, non-personal attack way 🙂
Ars Technica
Got an email from Ars re my post on their linking policies. They point out that the case I highlighted was an oversight, and that they regularly link out (and provided examples). I still see a lot of Ars stuff without sources, indeed I’ve seen stories on stuff I’ve written at TechCrunch appear as a stand alone story on Ars two days later without links. However on the basis of the email I’m willing to accept that on the whole they are at least trying. Perhaps they could try harder, as indeed we all could, and there are times where you get a tip from a reader which doesn’t come sourced, meaning that you don’t know that it’s come from elsewhere; even I’ve been in that situation a couple of times.
So apologies to Ars. If it’s any help, I only noticed because it’s one of my regular reads, and a bloody good read most of the time at that.
Happy
OK, my lets right the wrongs of the world purge is over for now. Promises that I”ll be good again 🙂
