Earliker today, on another blog I made some disparaging remarks about Jason and WIN.
They stemmed from a lack of communication / too much busyness / some confusion several months ago, as well as an idea for a new site, where several of his existing bloggers (and some new ones) wanted to pump some life into a large and profitable market.
Either way, my comments to him were over the top. And they were in a public place. My apology needs to be just as (if not more so, hence this post) public.
Jason and WIN are doing a fantastic thing. I have nothing but respect for what they’re doing. Jason is one of the most patently honest guys you could ever meet (I’m hoping I can do just that at Gnomedex) and runs a great ship.
Yes, I believe there are communications issues at WIN (having 40 chat windows open and writing 3 broadcast emails a day isn’t the same as really talking to every blogger every week, but I’m hardly the example of perfect communication so I shouldn’t be talking). Maybe WIN needs to hierarchicalize a bit more, so that Jason and Judith aren’t trying to cover such a large sphere. Who knows.
Either way, my comment was unfair, over the top, and not really deserved. Sure, my opinion of WIN has … lost it’s shine in the last year, but given the opportunity to one day work together with Jason and Judith (on WIN or something else), I’d jump at it. I’m a big fan of working with good people, and Jason’s definitely good people.
April 12th, 2005 at 12:03 pm
I’m always open to feedback… there is no way for us to get back to every single person out there, and there is no way in our model (300-500 bloggers and a small support staff behind them) for us to be talking with every person every day.
However, you’re wrong in the fact that we don’t talk to each blogger every week.
1. We have a discussion list anyone can post to–it’s not a broadcast list like you say above.
2. Judith talks to 20-50 bloggers every DAY one-on-one on IM or Skype. She takes every IM or call from every blogger… just like I do!
So, there is no issue with blogger communication inside of WIN… anyone can talk to anyone at any time, and people talk all day long.
Now, there is the issue that people want to partner with us in ways we can not them. We hire accommodate bloggers to blog, we don’t:
a) do sales for other people’s blog
b) run blog editorial for another person’s blog
c) pay people for blog ideas
We get a dozen folks a week who say “let’s start a blog together about music… I don’t want to blog it I want to get paid for coming up with the idea and do strategy.”
Obviously just coming to us with an idea for a blog will not go anywhere… we have a list of 700 topics for blogs, we don’t need ideas we need people who want to blog!! There is no strategy or idea function in blogging… it’s all execution.
anyway, parts of your feedback were good so thanks for that. if you’re overworked/frustrated and you lashed out a little bit, well, welcome to my world.
— my rule is not to blog when i’m pissed off… let alone IM. 
best jason
April 12th, 2005 at 12:07 pm
> a) do sales for other people’s blog
> b) run blog editorial for another person’s blog
> c) pay people for blog ideas
Agreed. Thankfully, I’m not sure most intelligent people expect you to do this at all.
The idea that was pitched to you recently was definitely a full blog idea, with the people ready to do it. All it needed was the go-ahead.
Sadly, things have changed since 2 months ago. I’m not sure if everyone still has the time for it, but I still believe in the idea (and the ability to execute) of the idea.
Maybe we’ll talk in a few months
Thanks for popping by mate. Maybe I need to learn not to blog / comment on anything but my own life when I’m overly busy or stressed as well…
April 12th, 2005 at 2:13 pm
Hey Jeremy,
It takes a big fella to fess up and say “I’m sorry”. Especially so soon after the event.
Jason’s comments about not doing anything while being pissed off, are pretty wise.
I believe we often become better at what we do, and better people, by how we resolve conflict and learn from what we’ve done. Not that one has to go out and deliberately make mistakes just to learn, but to make ‘lemon out of lemonade’.
Cheers,
Randy
April 12th, 2005 at 2:23 pm
I’m a little confused by Jason. I’m a big fan of many of the WIN blogs, but he’s is incredibly overzealous in deleting comments. For example, I saw a comment yesterday on Jason’s own blog that was just mildly critical of that Focus Ad program he has — and Jason immediately deleted it. It was weird, because I had sent it to someone to look at that comment, and it was gone.
So I posted a very friendly comment, asking Jason if it was an accident… and he DELETED that also — and the only post left is a very positive post from you.
Jason talks about transparency, and you call him “honest” but it doesn’t look like he knows how to take the slightest bit of criticism. After seeing him get upset at you, he seems to have a problem taking any kind of constructive criticism — which is unfortunate. For such a smart guy doing such a great job with his blogs, he’d be better off relaxing a bit and not being so itchy on the delete finger.
April 12th, 2005 at 2:25 pm
“Someone”, I have wondered about the comment deletion of late as well, actually.
April 12th, 2005 at 2:40 pm
I’m being by three different folks who are posting comments, then the same person posts that I deleted their comments, and the two others post vulgar comments… so, I’ve basically turned off comments on my blog at this point since the stalkers/freaks are going mad. It’s sad since we had some nice discussions going, but it’s taking to much time to track and deal with all these freaks all day long.
If real people write intelligent stuff from a real email I let it through… at this point the emails from FCKYOU@HOTMAIL.COM are not going up…
j
April 12th, 2005 at 3:06 pm
I never saw anything vulgar, just posts asking Jason to clarify some of his statements. Certainly nothing I posted there could be considered vulgar IMO.
It seems that Jason’s idea of “nice discussions” consist of purely sycophantic responses to his posts. For a guy that holds himself and his company up as the paragon of blog ethics, his attitude towards deleting posts — particularly in these Focus ads — is unquestionably suspect.
BTW, Jeremy, apologies for bringing this debate here. But Jason’s unwillingness to let anything stay up on his own blog makes it hard to have an open discussion there.
April 12th, 2005 at 3:17 pm
Ron Mexico (is that your real name?),
At this point I’m turning off comments on my blog and deleting all the off-topic debates about the turning off of comments on my blog. I’m getting dozens of comment spams from all kinds of crazy emails addresses (i.e. email anonymizers).
Nobody posting with a real name and email with on-topic, non-vulgar comments, is being deleted. I can take any comments, just not inclined to have stupid/stalking/vulgar ones in my own backyard.
People can start their own blog and write about how horrible I am if they like, I’m not going to allow folks to go off in in my own comments… I’ve got my family reading my personal blog, they don’t need to see the insane, vulgar, stuff coming in.
best j
April 12th, 2005 at 4:16 pm
Wow!
Weblogs Inc claims “Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments.” Never, huh?
However, Jason not only deleted my post that was neither vulger, nor obscene, but HE POSTED MY EMAIL ADDRESS WITH A LINK, so that (I assume) spammers will spam it.
Look, Jason, I was being nice. I wasn’t spamming. I wasn’t being mean. I was just asking a question. I told you that I liked your blogs. I’m a FAN, for crying out loud. I was just concerned about the deletions, which seemed weird. I wasn’t spamming you. I just asked you to explain why these comments, which weren’t vulgar were deleted, and you went out and PUBLICLY DISPLAYED my email address that you insist you would “NEVER” display and called me a spammer?
You’ve lost all my respect. You lied. You deleted posts that were perfectly reasonable, and then you posted my email address, despite a clear statement that you never do that. I’ll never trust another WIN blog again, which is a real shame.
I never said anything mean. I never said anything vulgar. I just asked you why you were deleting posts and if it was an *accident*. I honestly didn’t think you did it on purpose, and my reward for asking you a legit question in a friendly way is to have my email address displayed for spammers?
April 12th, 2005 at 5:00 pm
Jason (is that your real name?),
Please highlight anything insane or vulgar I posted.
Maybe it’s been so long, you’ve forgotten your post on “What makes a website a blog?” – http://calacanis.weblogsinc.com/entry/0883457356734213/
“How is it different from a standard website? Well, I’ve narrowed the list down to about five items. The first three items are essential…
2. Comments
Comments
I’m sure this is something people will debate, but as far as I’m concerned not having comments means you are not willing to have a dialogue with people on your home turf. Forcing people to write their comments on their own blog makes you the New York Times, and the New York Times is clearly not a blog. Now, I know there are some high-profile blogs without comments, and I know some folks have turned off comments because they are a headache, but the tools are getting better and I think someday soon everyone will be able to have blog comments without comment spam. At that point anyone who doesn’t have comments has no excuse for not turning them on unless they are scared of the truth. Now, you do have the right—as a blog owner—to turn off comments you find inappropriate, but you should tell your audience the ground rules if you do this (i.e. Jarvis tells people not to talk about his day job, which is understandable).”
I’ll highlight a couple things for emphasis:
“as far as I’m concerned not having comments means you are not willing to have a dialogue with people on your home turf.”
“Forcing people to write their comments on their own blog makes you the New York Times, and the New York Times is clearly not a blog.”
“At that point anyone who doesn’t have comments has no excuse for not turning them on unless they are scared of the truth.”
It’s also interesting how you continue to bring up this “stalking” idea. But is it stalking when you seem to manage to pop up on pretty much anything that’s written about you on the Web, particularly if it’s negative?
April 12th, 2005 at 5:03 pm
Jason (is that your real name?),
Please highlight anything insane or vulgar I posted.
Maybe it’s been so long, you’ve forgotten your post on “What makes a website a blog?” – http://calacanis.weblogsinc.com/entry/0883457356734213/
“How is it different from a standard website? Well, I’ve narrowed the list down to about five items. The first three items are essential…
2. Comments
Comments
I’m sure this is something people will debate, but as far as I’m concerned not having comments means you are not willing to have a dialogue with people on your home turf. Forcing people to write their comments on their own blog makes you the New York Times, and the New York Times is clearly not a blog. Now, I know there are some high-profile blogs without comments, and I know some folks have turned off comments because they are a headache, but the tools are getting better and I think someday soon everyone will be able to have blog comments without comment spam. At that point anyone who doesn’t have comments has no excuse for not turning them on unless they are scared of the truth. Now, you do have the right—as a blog owner—to turn off comments you find inappropriate, but you should tell your audience the ground rules if you do this (i.e. Jarvis tells people not to talk about his day job, which is understandable).”
April 12th, 2005 at 5:54 pm
Same here. About a month ago, I posted a reasonable comment on calacanis.weblogsinc.com. The worst adjective I used was “unfortunate”. That was too vulgar for Calacanis. I wrote another, remarking on the disappearance, that stayed up all of five minutes. I wouldn’t care, if Jason Calacanis wasn’t pitching himself as the “king of corporate transparency” on Problogger.net. Hypocrite.
April 13th, 2005 at 10:13 am
Man its fun to watch how useless comments are in blogs. I also don’t get why its immoral to delete comments. I delete stupid comments in my blog all the time. Some a for, some are against what I have to say. If they are stupid, vulgar or all of the above… they get deleted. Sadly I think a lot of this stems from bloggers shooting their mouth off before they think. This whole thread started because someone wrote an opinion.. THEN stopped to actually think. Oh I made up the email name so people don’t go flaming my blog with more stupid comments. Jason, good advice in your comments.. maybe someone will actually read it before they respond. best
April 13th, 2005 at 1:07 pm
It wouldn’t be such a big deal, S.D., if Jason didn’t hold himself up to be the authority on blog ethics, and then sell advertisers these ads where he promises, implictly or explicitly, transparency in readers’ feedback.
That and the fact he’s a hypocrite.
May 7th, 2005 at 9:31 am
Scoble’s comment policy: “I don’t delete comments.”
I wish every blogger operated similarly to Scoble when it comes to comments, but unfortunately, not all find it important enough to activate comments or if they do, some make it really convoluted to leave a comment.
Someone claimed I deleted some co…