Thank you, sir, may I have another?
A few weeks ago Todd Cochrane, had a hissy fit about some podcasting issues he had with MT. I weighed in and Movable Type PM Byrne Reese came to the rescue with a Podcasting plugin for MT4 in record time. The ever astute Su of House of Pretty fame did some good analysis on Cochrane’s claim that the Enclosure plugin doesn’t work in MT4 that indicate that the plugin does work contrary to Cochrane’s claims. So while Six Apart’s Pocasting support was perhaps overstated and certainly could have been better, his rant was mostly based on operator error. Nice.
Quick to judgement, Cochrane was slow to acknowledge the work, but he eventually did.
Thanks, but its a little bit late. Saying you where too busy to response on your blog after putting out such an acerbic public drubbing is total rubbish. His claim that Six Apart needs to listen to users and stop catering to developers is even more so. I’ll say it again: the ProNet list is mostly made up of users and not developers. The (admittedly overstated) Podcast features in MT4 where added at the behest of users on the ProNet list. To say that Six Apart is not listening to users on proves how uninformed his commentary is. Bottomline is Cochrane’s handling of the whole situation was blown way out of proportion and poorly handled for what it is.
There is a bigger point I mean to make here though.
This isn’t the only instance of this sort of thing happening. (For instance, here is another. Overstated marketing launches tirade of half truths and way too much irrational commentary.) I’m getting increasingly bothered by, even worried, by this culture of battering Six Apart that persists and wonder if honoring rants and verbal abuse with such a nice response is really healthy overall. I look at it like Pavlov’s dog. If I verbally beat the tar out of Six Apart and get the results I was looking for I’m conditioned to do it again next time. Maybe I’ll even make the leap of logic that if I do it more often and harder then before I will get better results. Controversy, if I choose to be civil and mannerly and I’m not being heard, perhaps I need to be a jackass to be heard over the din of the ranting loons. This is why I wonder how healthy this is to the community as a whole.
I suppose we’ll see. With Six Apart moving MT to an open source license the community is likely to see a radical transformation and it will be interested to see if these instances subside or increase.
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