Handling criticism and dealing with trolls May 21, 2007
Posted by JamesVinzer in Blogging Ethics, Internet, Social Engineering, blogging.1 comment so far
A few months ago, I posted an article on a website which I will admit wasn’t my best work, and a few people stated that, but then I got a little fucktard of a poster who decided to remain anonymous who said this:
Your profile says “freelance writer”. If by “freelance” you mean shitty and by “writer” you mean blogger, it all makes sense.
Shit like this is not cool, especially when you decide to cowardly hide under the shield of anonymity to deliver something like this. Yes, it may have sucked, but it DID NOT DESERVE someone mouthing off to me like that. You could argue that it is criticism, but it was criticism that was designed to hurt, rather then help.
People who do this will not fare well in the blogosphere. Nobody wants to deal with an asshole on their blog OR site. Even if you’re anonymous, your IP is still present, and one day, you’ll find yourself with a Forbidden error on your browser.
Bottom line: Don’t be an ass. We’re not here to let you say whatver you want to us.
Now, with that in mind, how to deal with idiots like this? Well, if it’s your blog, delete the offending criticism without a big show, unless the person has already created a comment war in the post. Then you say why the head comment got deleted later on.
If the person has a registered nick on your blog, and is a repeat offender, then you have more options. First, if it’s your blog, warn the person, and if they do it again, ban them. Second, if you’re on a service like wordpress.com, notify the admins about the troublemaker.
If it gets to the point where the person is consistently making new names or is constantly a bother, ban their IP. This also works when the person is “anonymous.” If the situation persists, or they start attacking you on AIM/Email, etc, write down everything they send you, and notify the authorities you are being harrased.
Whatever you do, try not to take any direct action by yourself that might be bad later on (i.e, no hacking, DoS attacks, etc.) You could land yourself in some serious trouble. Handle trolls as quick as possible.
Have you had trouble on your site? How did you deal with it?
Reviews for services: My opinion May 17, 2007
Posted by JamesVinzer in Internet, Reviewing, Social Engineering, blogging.add a comment
In 2004, Google released its awesome mail Client: Gmail. OF course, Google made it invitation only, so thousands of users flocked to sites where they could receive an invite. Many even offered to pay people upwards of $200 for an invite to use Gmail, among other things. It was incredible, back in the day. Wouldn’t surprise me if a few souls were traded in the process.
Of course, being a young dashing eSheep, I wanted one too! Of course, I got directed to the back of the Gmail invite line. But, then I looked at a blog where someone was saying how they got a Gmail account on account of being a journalist for a blog, and I got an idea.
See, at the time I wrote for a website under a different name that was based on political opinions, but we could occasionally let a tech article slip by. Having written about Gmail before, I decided to email Google saying that I was a writer for this website, and I wanted to check out their email program, and in exchange, I would write a review for them.
A few days later, I got an invitation from Google’s PR department to use Gmail! It was probably the best thing that has ever happened to me in my time as a blogger/writer. Something that people were desperate to buy had been given to me by the Google Gods in exchange for 300 words.
So I wrote the article, emailed Google and told them thanks again. But now it brings an odd question up: Was I ethical in doing that? If I write a review for a service in exchange for a chance to use it, is it a violation of a blogger’s ethics? With sites like PayPerPost, where bloggers can be paid to review a service (Provided they state that they were paid to do so,) I wonder if what I did was OK.
I personally believe that I am offering a service to sites like Gmail when I do this. It’s a small sacrifice on both sides: They give me an account, I write a blog entry about it. They get a little publicity, and I get the chance to do an interesting program.
When the next big thing comes out, I’ll be sure to try to do it again. Whether you will or not is completely up to you. Also, I would like a little briefing on the ethics on doing this? Got an opinion? Hit the comments.
