Friday, September 22, 2006

Moderation Problems - Administrivia

Update: comments are coming through again. Regarding my angst in inappropriately sharing enthusiasm about one feature or any feature, a commenter shares:

I am in field sales and went to the company meeting. I can tell you with absolute certainty that everything that was demonstrated has been shown to numerous customers and partners, both large and small, numerous times. Those that claim otherwise must have an alternative agenda.

I felt really bad and personally horrified for a bit that I might have shared something that I thought was well worn public knowledge - bubbled up on TechMeme and such - regarding exciting and competitive features that we're delivering. I feel better now and don't believe I hit that third rail.

And regarding the negative comments and such (and I plan to make this the last bit I talk about that and myself and get back to what matters): first, at least dial up your language to civil. At least some notch above the frothing lunatics I get from Slashdot. If you're a Microsoftie, you can write G-rated text and get your point across just as well, if not better. Second, I acknowledge that if enough reasonable people saying you're quacking, including people whose voice you've heard before and respect, then eventually you've got to stop and consider if you're a duck. Only fair. Third, I've always written as if I had an audience of a few dozen and never let it go beyond that in my mind. Notice no web metrics have ever been here. And I plan to continue writing to those few dozen people. I write what I would talk about in a small group about issues and struggles I see hampering Microsoft where we should obviously be excelling. Just one voice.

I'm going to start going through the incoming comments from the recent past and repost some stellar parts of the conversation here. That seems useful at this point.


Original bits of this post:

Sorry, I have comment moderation problems right now due to a service I use having some severe server symptoms. All that is working is the cutting room floor.

And that's okay, because I'm having some incoming comment problems. Somewhere along the way, my enthusiasm for what was shown at the Company Meeting has been twisted and misconstrued into (a) blathering criticism and (b) earth-stopping leaking of highly strategic and confidential information. Headline: "Microsoft Critic Enthused About Microsoft Products and Lambasted."

What the hell? There go the brakes on my evangelism engine and showing stuff off. My first reaction is that people are rather sensitive. My second reaction is that a new batch of people have shown up and are simply expressing themselves for the first time and have a very different reality calibration than I do. My third reaction is more chilling and I hope is wrong... because it foreshadows a coordinated effort to bring an end to public discourse about being a Microsoftie.

Anyway, if you'd like to comment on the topic feel free to do so. Link to it on your on blog if you have positive / critical insights to add. I hope that my service will be back in the green again soon so that I can pass comments through again. If you're really needing a comment fix, then at this point all I can suggest is reading last year's post on the Company Meeting and the comments there and think about how much has - and has not - changed.

Sorry about the comment problem. In multiple ways.


No comments:

Post a Comment