Like many people, I read the
original article on el reg yesterday and
the
conversation log
it linked to. Frankly the majority of the blame
attaches to the end user, but nobody covered themselves in glory there.
Reading the exchange of emails shows plenty of times where either party
could have easily stopped the discussion before it sunk to its eventual
depths, and instead a sarcastic reply or a threat was chosen instead.
Real smooth.
The register has a
further piece
today on some of the feedback the original article generated, too.
Needless to say, another paragon of reasoned and balanced discussion
managed to carry the news too, with
predicatable results.
While reading Joel On Software's message boards today, a comment in a
thread there caught my eye:
"Oh my. Now he's been fed to a baying mob of indignant socially inept
geeks. "How dare he not understand? How dare he attack intellectual
sensibilities? How can ANYONE be so ignorant? What a dumbass"
[...]
This is turning into a religious battle with all the venom and
bitterness of a real life entrenched struggle. Where are the people who
bridge the gap, the peacemakers? Oh they're being drowned out by the
baying geeks. We've seen several instances recently of mob rule on the
internet - and it's all been pretty ugly."
I'm disappointed, but not surprised, by the "baying mob". This always seems to
happen in IT discussions. If this mob were representative of the IT industry then
they're a shocking indictment on how unprofessional and immature our industry really is.
Hopefully, these mob are not representative of the industry, but are
almost certainly being seen as if they are by outsiders
. The end user made a mistake,
got
punished for it, got
mocked for it a little bit. Fine. OK, he
was a ass
and deserved to feel a bit of pain for that. Perhaps.
But there comes a
point where it crosses over the line and the feeding frenzy of people
looking to land their own little personal kick starts to become
disturbing.
If you were part of the
crowd
who rushed to flame this person, I have a question for you. If you feel
ill and get taken to the hospital and say something there which sounds
silly to a professional medical carer, would you be ok with every
doctor and nurse trooping into your room to make fun of you for it
constantly for a month? No. I didn't think so.
Something to think about before people rush to flame the next person to make a mistake eh?
One more thing. When we do have problems with systems, we expect users
to tell us. Events like this do nothing more than teach end users that
there is no point speaking to the IT Experts because they'll either get
patronised or outright made fun of. And that helps no-one.