Brouhaha, Part II
Re: Responses to my “Why Bother with Cheap Shots?” blog: My blog was not about rehashing whether or not VMware View is a server-based computing solution. The not-so-fine points of that dispute were already beaten to death.
What I addressed was the issue of civil discourse, which earned me a dressing down from some of our opinionated -- and anonymous -- readers (see the comments to that blog). I don't think it's too much to ask that competitors disagree without calling each other liars and making the strongest possible defamatory comments they can about each other. If this allowed to go on, where do you draw the line? At what point do you demand that people make their points without lacing them with a lot of extraneous and vindictive commentary that does nothing to advance anybody's position?
My position is, I want our readers to get the best, most helpful information they can find anywhere without having to wade through childish rants and cheap shots. If you want to pillory me for that, be my guest.
I'm not trying to police anybody here; I'm just trying to do my job, which is to serve our readers in the best way I can. I want vendors to vigorously disagree with each other in the strongest -- but still civil -- terms they can muster. I love a good food fight as much as the next editor, but I refuse to condone, or provide space for, pointless tirades that waste everybody's time.
Posted by Bruce Hoard on 02/22/2011 at 12:48 PM