This morning, I saw a tweet from Mike Figliuolo where he was sounding off about an anonymous comment on one of his blog posts, indicating that he’d left a “scathing reply”, and asking for reactions.
As so often is the case, I started to leave a comment on his blog, but as it grew, I figured I might as well make a post of its own about it. There are a number of core issues going on here, in my opinion. If you’ve got a blog, or even if you just comment on others’ blogs, it’s worth considering how you feel about these issues.

If you’ve got a blog, it’s your baby and you can do what you want with it, but I think it’s important to be clear about your objectives with respect to comments. If you’re really interested in a public discussion of the thoughts presented on your blog, then you’re somewhat obligated to embrace and foster an open exchange of ideas. If, on the other hand, you’re not really all that interested in an open discussion, then turn off comments. I suppose a third possibility is that you want to see comments, but only the ones that agree with you. In my opinion, this also really defeats the purpose of comments.
Whatever your objective, it stands to reason that if you respond to a negative comment by going nuclear, you’re not going to encourage an open exchange of anything at all. Sadly, it’s a given that people behave more rudely and abusively on the web than they would in person (especially under the veil of web anonymity), and this shows up in comments. When you see a comment that strikes you as truly abusive or destructive, you’ve got every right to moderate it, but in the case of Mike’s anonymous commenter, that’s not what I saw. What I saw in Mike’s response, though, was Mike suggesting that the commenter hadn’t read his post (or, apparently all of Mike’s previous posts) carefully enough to form a well-reasoned opinion. That’s not a great way to encourage more discussion.
If you blog, why do you do it?
Although there are any number of reasons, I suspect that every blogger at some level wants to make an impact on people. We want to share our opinions and, hopefully, sway some readers to consider our opinions, and hope against hope, maybe to even adopt our opinions.
So how much are you really accomplishing if you’re only reaching people who think just like you?
If you’re looking for an example of open discourse done right, Robert Scoble is the best I’ve ever seen. There are plenty of people who disagree with almost everything that comes out of his mouth, but Robert will engage any of them in an open conversation about what he’s said, and he does it without taking negative comments personally. As a result, Robert has made a name for himself as a communicator, and I suspect he may have even learned a thing or two along the way.
Who have you seen that manages comments well?
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A couple weeks ago, Microsoft announced a tool called Lightswitch, and the response in the development community has been almost universally tepid. One of these responses really caught my eye, though. It was from Bill Vaughn, who’s been the patron saint of Microsoft data access for as long as there’s been Microsoft data access. This guy knows a thing or two about what works, and he was dumping all over Lightswitch.
I left a comment on his post, and I thought it had been swallowed up by the great spam filter in the sky, but Bill just resurrected it (thanks, Bill!) and responded. It looks like the biggest fear with Lightswitch is that this tool is going to be used to create a bunch of garbage apps that “pros” have to come and clean up later. This sentiment is echoed across many of the lukewarm comments I’ve seen elsewhere, too.
All good developers would rather see an application start out with a proper foundation and high-quality architecture. We hate seeing messy apps, and we hate cleaning up after junior developers, or worse — amateur developer wannabes.
But there’s a business problem that we can’t ignore: we’re expensive – especially when we sit down to “do something right.” There is a need need for business owners and managers to produce prototype applications at a reasonable cost. If Microsoft doesn’t provide that capability, someone else will. You may not like that, but it’s a fact.
And here’ s another fact: If applications are being prototyped on someone else’s application development stack, guess which stack is going to get first crack at upsizing those apps when they need to be scaled?
Lightswitch might not be the prototyping tool we’d all like to see in its current form, but don’t let that distract you from the fact that Microsoft needs to be present in this part of the market. It’s important for them, and it’s important for you, too.
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