Rude Blog Readers

With exception, blog comments -- including this one -- seem to be sinking to a rather low common denominator. If you are inclined to read gratuitous self-serving, mean-spirtied blather, there's always Slashdot.

Critical Mass. Blog readership has gotten sufficiently large (and broad) that instead of being the sole domain of thoughtful writers and hard-core technologists, it's now the same people that used to (or still do) post comments on Slashdot. Indeed, Slashdot provides an excellent model of this transition from meaningful information to spiteful idiocy.

Ultimately, the biggest issue with having any forum of public discourse is having to deal with the public. At least one of the benefits of the meta-discussion that blogging is the fact that discussion can always happen elsewhere.

Still, it looks like September has started.

Perhaps, Hyatt should have made his "no bugs, only comments" disclaimers more prominent? (I can't verify this because I don't remember the layout/design and he doesn't have the comment pages any more.) In any case, this is trumped by rule #2: People don't read.

In any case, couldn't he just ignore his moronic comments? I skip over mine.

"Still, it looks like September has started."

Now that we have AOL, it's always September:
http://www.catb.org/esr/jargon/html/S/September-that-never-ended.html

With all due respect to Hyatt and appreciation of his work, I think the disabing comments is not related to to the number of bugs submitted via these comments instead of Safari bug submission engine. It is not difficult to ignore the postings you do not want to read. The true reason may be the unwillingness to see all the critique towards the new version of Safari. There is a lot of such in the apple discussion forum, and complaints are much heavier than for older versions. I do not know whether they are justified since I have no problem with Safari 1.0, except Hebrew where there is a step backwards relative to what has been already implemented. I understand that it is not pleasanst for a "father" of the product to see that what has been done is not as good as advertised earlier (by Hyatt himself in his blogs, by the way). This is just ordinary human weakness: run away from criticism and deny your responsibility. I should add that Safari is my default browser and I am not going to give up on it, and thay I wish Hyatt productive work and success. One frustrating thing, though, is that when I submit a bug via Safari, I never know whether it goes to the Safari team of directly to the trash on my or their machines. Hyatt's blog with comments enables at least made the impression that somebody listens.

Michael, from my experience, no matter what kind of topic hyatt blogs about, people keep on adding bug reports.

hyatt blogs about font sizes, people complain about site xy not working.

hyatt blogs about a certain new / massively updated css implementation - people complain about TabbedBrowsing being buggy in their illegally obtained developer build.

And so on. It was getting truly annoying. The feedback button is right there at the right side of the toolbar (I don't know about the 1.0 release). Suggestions like "the feedback button won't get you a high bug priority; e-mail hyatt AT apple DOT com instead" would have wanted me to severely injure such guys if I were in hyatt's position.

Even if he disabled it due to criticism, that's his right. His blog isn't a Safari support forum, after all. It's not even officially an Apple place to deliver Safari news - it's just a private list of notes about it.

Of course, it is his blog and it is his right to enable or disable comments, and I have nothing against him. Just on the opposite, I highly appreciate his work and appreciated his patience. Nevertheless, I would like to make several points.

1. Before taking something on, you think hard to not retreat when encountering difficulties. It was easily predictable that many people would use the blog as a second (or first ?) bug button. Most of the Safari users are not developers but just web surfers (as well as I am) and are interested in a product, not the hard work invested. This is natural, and one could not think the humanity changes overnight.

2. It is natural that people start commenting on subjects not related to what is being blogged by the author. Many see Safari as not a sum of different parts but as a whole where the parts are interrelated.

3. At a moment, Hyatt provoked mentioning illegal versions by asking "if there were ...", so it is not fair to complain.

4. I, for one, get a lot of spam. The best way to deal with it is to not notice instead of flame. If you are overemotional, do not start discussions.

5. The relative number of out-of-stream comments decreased lately, so that it does not seem likely that that was the reason for disabling comments.

6. Last but not least, punished are those who complied and were polite and in-the-stream. Those who did obey the rules not did not loose anything:
"The rain it raineth on the just
And also on the unjust fellow,
But mainly on the just, because
The unjust steals the just's umbrella."

Michael

Of course, it is his blog and it is his right to enable or disable comments, and I have nothing against him. Just on the opposite, I highly appreciate his work and appreciated his patience. Nevertheless, I would like to make several points.

1. Before taking something on, you think hard to not retreat when encountering difficulties. It was easily predictable that many people would use the blog as a second (or first ?) bug button. Most of the Safari users are not developers but just web surfers (as well as I am) and are interested in a product, not the hard work invested. This is natural, and one could not think the humanity changes overnight.

2. It is natural that people start commenting on subjects not related to what is being blogged by the author. Many see Safari as not a sum of different parts but as a whole where the parts are interrelated.

3. At a moment, Hyatt provoked mentioning illegal versions by asking "if there were ...", so it is not fair to complain.

4. I, for one, get a lot of spam. The best way to deal with it is to not notice instead of flame. If you are overemotional, do not start discussions.

5. The relative number of out-of-stream comments decreased lately, so that it does not seem likely that that was the reason for disabling comments.

6. Last but not least, punished are those who complied and were polite and in-the-stream. Those who did obey the rules not did not loose anything:
"The rain it raineth on the just
And also on the unjust fellow,
But mainly on the just, because
The unjust steals the just's umbrella."

Michael

Of course, it is his blog and it is his right to enable or disable comments, and I have nothing against him. Just on the opposite, I highly appreciate his work and appreciated his patience. Nevertheless, I would like to make several points.

1. Before taking something on you, think hard to not retreat when encountering difficulties. It was easily predictable that many people would use the blog as a second (or first ?) bug button. Most of the Safari users are not developers but just web surfers (as well as I am) and are interested in a product, not the hard work invested. This is natural, and one could not think the humanity changes overnight.

2. It is natural that people start commenting on subjects not related to what is being blogged by the author. Many see Safari as not a sum of different parts but as a whole where the parts are interrelated.

3. At a moment, Hyatt provoked mentioning illegal versions by asking "if there were ...", so it is not fair to complain.

4. I, for one, get a lot of spam. The best way to deal with it is to not notice instead of flame. If you are overemotional, do not start discussions.

5. The relative number of out-of-stream comments decreased lately, so that it does not seem likely that that was the reason for disabling comments.

6. Last but not least, punished are those who complied and were polite and in-the-stream. Those who did obey the rules not did not loose anything:
"The rain it raineth on the just
And also on the unjust fellow,
But mainly on the just, because
The unjust steals the just's umbrella."

Michael

Of course, it is his blog and it is his right to enable or disable comments, and I have nothing against him. Just on the opposite, I highly appreciate his work and appreciated his patience. Nevertheless, I would like to make several points.

1. Before taking something on you, think hard to not retreat when encountering difficulties. It was easily predictable that many people would use the blog as a second (or first ?) bug button. Most of the Safari users are not developers but just web surfers (as well as I am) and are interested in a product, not the hard work invested. This is natural, and one could not think the humanity changes overnight.

2. It is natural that people start commenting on subjects not related to what is being blogged by the author. Many see Safari as not a sum of different parts but as a whole where the parts are interrelated.

3. At a moment, Hyatt provoked mentioning illegal versions by asking "if there were ...", so it is not fair to complain.

4. I, for one, get a lot of spam. The best way to deal with it is to not notice instead of flame. If you are overemotional, do not start discussions.

5. The relative number of out-of-stream comments decreased lately, so that it does not seem likely that that was the reason for disabling comments.

6. Last but not least, punished are those who complied and were polite and in-the-stream. Those who did obey the rules not did not loose anything:
"The rain it raineth on the just
And also on the unjust fellow,
But mainly on the just, because
The unjust steals the just's umbrella."

Michael

With all due respect to Hyatt and appreciation of his work, I think the disabing comments is not related to to the number of bugs submitted via these comments instead of Safari bug submission engine. It is not difficult to ignore the postings you do not want to read. The true reason may be the unwillingness to see all the critique towards the new version of Safari.

I'd have to disagree. David has been requesting that people stop submitting bug requests through his blog for sometime now. Besides most of the request aren't even related to items that he would work on in Safari. But despite the fact that he has indicated the best place to submit bugs is through the bug button in Safari, people post bugs, even on random topics. Hell there were even bug reports in his post about games he was addicted to.

With all due respect to Hyatt and appreciation of his work, I think the disabing comments is not related to to the number of bugs submitted via these comments instead of Safari bug submission engine. It is not difficult to ignore the postings you do not want to read. The true reason may be the unwillingness to see all the critique towards the new version of Safari.

I'd have to disagree. David has been requesting that people stop submitting bug requests through his blog for sometime now. Besides most of the request aren't even related to items that he would work on in Safari. But despite the fact that he has indicated the best place to submit bugs is through the bug button in Safari, people post bugs, even on random topics. Hell there were even bug reports in his post about games he was addicted to.

Of course, it is his blog and it is his right to enable or disable comments, and I have nothing against him. Just on the opposite, I highly appreciate his work and appreciated his patience. Nevertheless, I would like to make several points.

1. Before taking something on you, think hard to not retreat when encountering difficulties. It was easily predictable that many people would use the blog as a second (or first ?) bug button. Most of the Safari users are not developers but just web surfers (as well as I am) and are interested in a product, not the hard work invested. This is natural, and one could not think the humanity changes overnight.

2. It is natural that people start commenting on subjects not related to what is being blogged by the author. Many see Safari as not a sum of different parts but as a whole where the parts are interrelated.

3. At a moment, Hyatt provoked mentioning illegal versions by asking "if there were ...", so it is not fair to complain.

4. I, for one, get a lot of spam. The best way to deal with it is to not notice instead of flame. If you are overemotional, do not start discussions.

5. The relative number of out-of-stream comments decreased lately, so that it does not seem likely that that was the reason for disabling comments.

6. Last but not least, punished are those who complied and were polite and in-the-stream. Those who did obey the rules not did not loose anything:
"The rain it raineth on the just
And also on the unjust fellow,
But mainly on the just, because
The unjust steals the just's umbrella."

Michael

My apologies for multiple (re)postings: the preview-post buttons did not work properly and I was mislead thinking I have not posted (posting from Safari).