June 16, 2004

• Won't anyone think of Dave Winer? Poor guy.
• Yeah, he's a big jerk. However, you get what you pay for, and since Winer suddenly had to foot the bill himself, what he did makes sense. Apparently he's giving people the opportunity to contact him to get their entries pulled off and sent to them before everything is deleted. The stupidest thing he did (related to the webloggers) was making his public statement as a sound file rather than text. That's just foolish, but he has his moments. However, anyone who's using a free weblogging service and isn't backing up entries needs to not be surprised when one day everything disappears. I'm not a big fan of Winer, but there are few things that annoy me more than people who think they should get something for free just because they have gotten it free in the past. Get a job, leeches.
• However, anyone who's using a free weblogging service and isn't backing up entries needs to not be surprised when one day everything disappears. I'm not a big fan of Winer, but there are few things that annoy me more than people who think they should get something for free just because they have gotten it free in the past. Get a job, leeches. I use a free service, but I agree with you on how post aren't secure. As for Winer, the man is a master of giving himself bad pr. If he would have gave a month's warning he at least would have a good defense. He's a businessman and he conducts himself in a poor manner. If Evhead did this I'm sure Winer would be the first on his ass. For the record: I take Winer over Evan Williams any day.
• Somebody pass the hat for that poor bastard.
• you get what you pay for Agreed.
• you get what you pay for Especially with Dave Winer. Most these guys using Weblogs.com were tech bloggers that always defended Winer and constantly talked about how he owns rss feed (which isn't true). I wonder how these techies feel now.
• Sure, you get what you pay for. No disputing that. On the other hand, the guy can take the time to mail out invitations to a $500 blogging convention, but can't be bothered to give those bloggers a heads-up about their accounts? Again, if you offer someone a free service, you don't owe them any more, but that's a bit low class.
• what a winer
• Here's a typical scenario that would give one pause: You had free hosting, that you let people use indiscriminately. Then, suddenly it's no longer free for you. You're a high-profile person person that nobody likes, so what you do is likely to make news, good or bad. You decide to give one month's notice. What does everyone do? Well, they post. On Slashdot, infamous for giving people $10k bandwidth hosting bills and molten servers. On MetaFilter, not quite as infamous, but dangerous enough in its own right. On MonkeyFilter, a force only for the benign. Also, on at least six relatively majore News Sites. Plus, all of those bloggers will immediately jump on downloading all of their information immediately, so you're going to have a huge spike in downloading, followed by several smaller spikes, and a fairly large monthly bill. Instead, you say, "Sorry, time's up, if you contact me in the near future, I'll get you your data, but wait too long and you're out of luck." He's not disenfranchising any of these people. He didn't just wipe out the hard drive and say, "Tough luck if you don't have a backup." He's giving them the opportunity to move, but on his schedule, not theirs, and yeah, they have some downtime on their extremely important free weblogs. If he had the time and inclination, he could set up the server so that you have to log in with an account to get your information, and throttle bandwidth limits and the like, but that's a lot of work for the joy of giving people some more free stuff just because you gave them something for free before. Again, the guy's a big jerk, arrogant as anything, but the proper response to getting something for free is, "Thank you very much for what you gave me," not, "I demand more for free, or you're a big jerk." The demand for more free stuff is, in my mind, the low class part.
• One more thing, since I looked into it. I read the link about the Blogger Con, but it didn't include a text of the message. So I googled around a bit, and is this the invitation to which you refer? Because, if it is, whoever was complaining about it being an invitation to speak was clue-free. There's no mention of being asked to speak, and other sources seem to indicate that speakers are paid for, so I don't think that was entirely accurate. I did some additional googling, and I can't seem to find anything that corroborated the post on This Modern World. Maybe I missed it. I've found lots of complaints that $500 is too much for a one-day conference, which may be, but is completely irrelevant to the current conversation.
• Susannah Breslin made the same complaint as Tom Tomorrow. Her blog is no longer on line, but wrote about how she took issue with it. Two big name bloggers said that they received speaking invitations that turned out to be bogus. The whole Blogger Con deal was another pr situation that blew up in Winer's face. Here's a Register article about it.
• While I totally agree with Sandspider on the petulant nature of many, many internet types who want everything to be a big, free toy for them - without any downtime or glitches or awkward interfaces or advertising or lack of moderation or overzealous moderation or copyright or lack of copyright or rules or anarchy or publicity or privacy or blahblahblahblahblah - accepting all that, Winer still sounds like a first class git. I think this guy, whoever he is, gets it right: you want to be an internet big cheese? You want to set standards? Or do you even, simply, want to be a generous guy who helps people? Then there's responsibilities, and you should probably think about those before you decide to do something that'll have everybody like you/respect you/fear you. You should have an exit strategy, as it were. And I'm sorry, but anybody who has been hosting 3,000 blogs without noticing that it is at least a little bit like a business (only without the getting paid part) is a bit out of touch with reality, no?
• Sandspider: Other people have faced this problem and dealt with it infinitely more gracefully. When Phil Greenspun, hardly known for his extraordinarily good manners, got sick of Photo.net, he turned it over to a bunch of people who wanted to keep it running. And if the intention was for Winer to avoid hitting sites like MeFi and ./, he's failed miserably. On top of that, seizing people's copyrighted materials with no promise to return them could, if any of those 3000 users feel bolshy enough, result in a whack of legal costs. That said, while it's a shitty way to learn this lesson, hopefully the people on the recieving end of this, as well as spectators to it, will now understand the value of backups and the dangers of locking your data in proprietary software - especially proprietary software you're relying on someone else to provide!
• Some of Dave Winer's silly online fights with Mark Pilgrim and Glenn Reynolds.
• there are few things that annoy me more than people who think they should get something for free just because they have gotten it free in the past. Get a job, leeches. There's no excuse for doing this kind of thing without warning. Giving people a few days to download their content themselves would have saved Winer all the trouble of contacting them now, and sending them each a data export. Lots of free services go offline eventually, but I've never heard of this many people getting fucked by surprise. All the folk who are complaining about the complainers pass themselves off as very wise and worldly, but in the real world, it makes much more sense to make a change like this slowly, and no sense at all to make 3,000 enemies in one day. Winer fucked up.
• flash: Matt runs MeFi.
• Hmmm. What sympathy I had with his position rapidly dissolves when I read self-pitying drivel like this. His excuses for why there was no notification are nonsensical, which makes it pretty clear that his only reason for giving no notification was pure thoughtlessness. I have to say I giggled at "One of the things I learned is that just because a site is dormant doesn't mean it's not getting hits" - was that not covered during Interweb 101? middleclasstool: I know Matt runs MeFi. Sorry. I must have fucked up my tags. *looks around for a hole to crawl into... damn, why can you never find a hole on the internet when you're looking for one?*
• flash: It occurs to me now that you were being sarcastic. Please feel free to kick me square in my dumb ass. *extends posterior as a potential target*
• No, the fault was mine. I've been staring at this damn screen for too long. My brain, it is goo.
• Gah! We must stop cross-posting like this... people will start to talk... Hmmmm - nice posterior.
• If you're going to dedicate so much time and effort to your magical online journal, you might as well fork over a few bucks a month to host somewhere reasonably secure. "Goddamnit, I paid you nothing, but you owe me!" That he's actually hooking people up with their files at all is admirable to some degree. Sure, he could have given them warning, but then, he could have also charged money.
• What is this "blog" thing I heard so much about in 2001?
• Analogy. I'm going to put an ad online saying "ANYONE WHO NEEDS TO MOVE CAN BORROW MY TRUCK." Then, once somebody takes me up on it, I'm going to show up in between their first and second runs back and forth, just as they're loading for their second trip, and say "I WANT MY TRUCK NOW."
• *pops out of hole in internet, waves at flashboy*
• You know what, scarabic? Even though that's inconvenient for the people moving, tough. They got to use a truck for free to get some stuff moved. If you needed a truck on your schedule, then you shoulda forked over the money for it. Where the analogy falls down is if you're suggesting that the truck owner is going to take off with all the stuff in the truck. Since the weblogs are digital, there's no reason why you shouldn't have a backup, whereas with physical stuff, that's not the case. I'm not saying it wasn't inconvenient for the people involved, but that inconvenience comes with the not paying. Yup, he coulda done more, but saying he had to do more just because is wrong.
• So what your saying is that it's okay for him to be inconsiderate, as long as he's doing something for free?
• If only there was a really neat site about holes, like one that's internet equipped...
• *strolls in, looking up in the air* Nope, I still can't find any hol- Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh........ *thud*
• Yes, the man was being inconsiderate. But was he doing something -WRONG- ... well, I think it's a little harder to say something like that.
• The Sacred and Profane, I get the feeling you give people in wheelchairs dirty looks if they ask you to hold the door open. I'm also wondering if you and f8xmulder are the same person. You seem to be arguing for the sake of arguing. Boring.
• ad homimem argument, -1
• ho mi NEM goddammit
• I think we're better for having opposing viewpoints. And there's certainly nothing wrong with playing the devil's advocate if it gives everyone else cause to actually argue their point in a cogent way. I've only skimmed this thread but it sounds like what it boils down to is that Winer had a right to do what he did, but he went about it all the wrong way. Ignore me if I've oversimplified.
• I think we're better for having opposing viewpoints. And there's certainly nothing wrong with playing the devil's advocate if it gives everyone else cause to actually argue their point in a cogent way. I agree with tracicle (I'm looking for my +1 post, evidently).
• goetter: poor spelling, -1.
• (like I'm one to talk)
• lack on preview on my part, -10 and an automatic first down for the other side
• Flahsboy = Thales?