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Robotech_Master · 08-25-2008, 04:39 PM

So Tor is not actually a business?

So the discussion in question was not actually about something that business was doing, that affected its potential customers?

So Torie and pnh do not, visibly and obviously, work for that business, and they are not assumed to represent that business in their public statements?

So their public behavior does not reflect upon that business?

Or are you saying that it's all right for people who work for business to insult their customers because "it's a blog"?

If my employer—a logistics firm who handles shipments for a number of important companies, including some on the Fortune 500—was to start a blog, and one of our customers were to post a complaint about the way we handled one of their shipments on it, and our president totally slagged him off, how much business do you think we would have after that? Do you think that our customers would laugh and slap their sides and say, "Oh, those wacky bloggers"?

There's a thing called professionalism. It's what you should have if you are a public spokesman for a business in any capacity, whether it's "just a blog" or not. Rightly or wrongly, whether you mean it or not, customers and potential customers will be influenced by what you say and the way you are seen to act, particularly when it is concerning a matter directly related to the behavior of your company.

If the topic in question had been a list of the last top ten nifty books pnh had read, or some goings-on at the ComicCon entirely unrelated to Tor, things might be different. But this was a question directly about Tor's business practices, brought up in the blog entry because there was apparently no other way to get a response from anyone who worked at Tor. In that context, you'd darned well better be speaking officially, blog or no blog, because you've been asked an official question.

And if one or two of the people making the complaints were a bit over-the-top, that only shows they are really passionate about the issue (with the typical social skills, or lack thereof, of the sort of chronic bookworm who should by rights be Tor's best customer). A polite apology would not only have addressed the issue, it would have "moderated" the discussion (as Torie is supposed to be a moderator) in the truest definition of the word, by not giving the over-the-toppers further provocation.

Regardless of whether or not Tor's representatives acted poorly, if you can't even see why we believe they acted poorly then there's probably no point in discussing it further.

08-25-2008, 04:39 PM	#202
Robotech_Master Fanatic Posts: 514 Karma: 2954711 Join Date: May 2006	So Tor is not actually a business? So the discussion in question was not actually about something that business was doing, that affected its potential customers? So Torie and pnh do not, visibly and obviously, work for that business, and they are not assumed to represent that business in their public statements? So their public behavior does not reflect upon that business? Or are you saying that it's all right for people who work for business to insult their customers because "it's a blog"? If my employer—a logistics firm who handles shipments for a number of important companies, including some on the Fortune 500—was to start a blog, and one of our customers were to post a complaint about the way we handled one of their shipments on it, and our president totally slagged him off, how much business do you think we would have after that? Do you think that our customers would laugh and slap their sides and say, "Oh, those wacky bloggers"? There's a thing called professionalism. It's what you should have if you are a public spokesman for a business in any capacity, whether it's "just a blog" or not. Rightly or wrongly, whether you mean it or not, customers and potential customers will be influenced by what you say and the way you are seen to act, particularly when it is concerning a matter directly related to the behavior of your company. If the topic in question had been a list of the last top ten nifty books pnh had read, or some goings-on at the ComicCon entirely unrelated to Tor, things might be different. But this was a question directly about Tor's business practices, brought up in the blog entry because there was apparently no other way to get a response from anyone who worked at Tor. In that context, you'd darned well better be speaking officially, blog or no blog, because you've been asked an official question. And if one or two of the people making the complaints were a bit over-the-top, that only shows they are really passionate about the issue (with the typical social skills, or lack thereof, of the sort of chronic bookworm who should by rights be Tor's best customer). A polite apology would not only have addressed the issue, it would have "moderated" the discussion (as Torie is supposed to be a moderator) in the truest definition of the word, by not giving the over-the-toppers further provocation. Regardless of whether or not Tor's representatives acted poorly, if you can't even see why we believe they acted poorly then there's probably no point in discussing it further.