To follow is a great posting from Dave Taylor related to the perils and the opportunities of having a high profile blog. Getting flamed is never fun but how you handle it can turn potentially nasty situations into positive results. Dave always teaches about netiquette and about being “nice”. So this is a really good reminder to all of us in blogosphere about playing nice and being professional. Thanks again Dave!
Hello everyone. This week I have an interesting interchange to share, one that’s definitely behind-the-scenes on my AskDaveTaylor blog, but one that I hope will be informative and thought-provoking.
As with many online forums, I find that sometimes people get rather surprisingly hostile when the tip doesn’t quite address their problem, when I offer up advice that they don’t like (for example, that it’s illegal to download copyrighted material, regardless of what the Web site indicates about the shared materials) or just when they’re having a bad day. If you’ve been online for a few years, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
At the same time, any site that offers up suggestions, tips or solutions runs the risk of having incorrect information. Is there a liability problem?
Perhaps, but that’s why I had my lawyer whip up the disclaimer on the bottom of every page of my site. It says:
“Note: This web site is for the purpose of disseminating information for educational purposes, free of charge, for the benefit of all visitors. We take great care to provide quality information. However, we do not guarantee, and accept no legal liability whatsoever arising from or connected to, the accuracy, reliability, currency or completeness of any material contained on this web site or on any linked site.”
Of course, whether people see it and accept it is another story, and thereby moves us into the current situation…
YOU KILLED MY MUSIC LIBRARY!
A few evenings ago, the following comment was added [warning, profanity]:
>>> That was horrible advice. Thanks for deleting my 4000 songs. now I have 4.
>>> Thanks for costing me music and photos I don’t have backed up.
>>> When I plugged it in it deleted all my shit automatically, and I
>>> can’t change the preferences w/o the ipod being plugged in.
>>> Thanks dick, you ruined my week.
>>> Keep your trap shut if you don’t know how to fix something.
Now I admit that I did go into the comment and replace the crude profanities with milder words (I hate reading this kind of thing), but otherwise left it intact and both posted and *emailed* to the commenter the following:
>> I hope this email address works. Tell me exactly what happened: I
>> have tested those directions extensively and as far as I have
>> experienced, there’s no way that iTunes would step on your library
>> unless you clicked on the dialog box that says “sync” or “reformat”,
>> both of which have a warning about erasing the contents of your system.
>>
>> Any music that you bought from the iTunes Store you can download
>> again for free too, by the way. Hopefully you can do that without too much hassle.
>>
>> Sorry for any problems you’ve had: if there are errors in my
>> directions, I definitely want to know about it so I can fix them!!
Two days passed and I figured that was probably the end of it. However, I was wrong. This morning he finally responded:
> I apologize for my comment. I got a little upset. However, that was no
> excuse for me to be rude.
>
> This is the story, I have a 60gb ipod, a 40gb g4 titanium gb
> powerbook, and a 250gb external.
> My goal was to store all music and movies on my external, as well as my ipod.
> I had itunes on my laptop as well as my external. they got confused. I
> had the actual music in the external, but the system itunes still
> retained the song titles. so I deleted the hollow titles. Which brings
> me to your website via google.
> It is impossible for me to plug in my ipod without it adding or
> subtracting songs and or movies, (from my ipod) even with manual
> settings, sync is off as well. Maybe I have a defective ipod,
> powerbook, tiger, or brain, but it adds or erases as it pleases, even with manual settings applied.
> plugging in wasn’t the answer for me.
So while there’s still a question of whether the tips on my site are correct and why they aren’t working for this particular chap, I think this is a good example of how you can try to turn a hostile commenter into someone with whom you can at least have a civil interchange.
It reminds me of how many people in the political space experience this, where people will leave the most vitriolic, hostile comments, then prove to be quite pleasant and reasonable in person.
Anyway, the moral of today’s newsletter is that in my experience, at least, it’s always smarter to respond to hostility with politeness than more hostility. Maybe there’s a life lesson there or something too… 
Cheers,
Dave Taylor
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