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My Public Apology

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Re: My Public Apology

#21

Post by mindslight »

My only problem with your initial comment is that it does not add much to the discussion; but neither do the comments that merely express sympathy. The story itself is only of interest because any startup may have to deal with similar situations, and hysterical public attention in general.

The real issue is how your unpopular comment immediately reflected back on your business. There are several calls to boycott ticketstumbler for your expressing an unpopular opinion - from a community that is supposed to be full of smart, rational people. How could the mass media ever have a chance at putting stories in perspective when even HN fosters such a witch hunt?

Re: My Public Apology

#22

Post by einarvollset »

palish wrote: post #20
einarvollset wrote: post #18

There are things in life that matter more than others. Startups, money, reputation; all that shit is worthless once you need to deal with the pain of someone dying. Someone taking their own life is one of those things that should cause you to stop and think of his family, friends and wonder what pushed him to this. I dunno man, maybe you haven't experienced it, but once you do (and everyone does), I hope you forgive…

What exactly do you want from him? The mentality "there are some words that should never be forgiven" is just as useless as "we shouldn't take the Lord's name in vain". Relax.

Not what I said.

All I said was, if you've never had someone close to you end their life or die suddenly, then you don't get what pain you cause by flippant remarks like he made.

So fuck him for feeling bad, cause he should. And you relax dude.

Re: My Public Apology

#23

Post by drusenko »

palish wrote: post #15
drusenko wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reasoning is true until it isn't. If you sweep things under the rug, the public eye generally moves on to the next thing quickly, and nobody cares or realizes it happened a week later. If you apologize prematurely, then you draw attention to it, and people remember. But if you don't apologize, and it actually is a big deal, then people do remember and you look like a horrible person. It's the same debate that ce…

I agree to an extent. The problem is that it's not possible to determine whether the "correct" course of action is to publicly apologize or to downplay the initial act. But to make that decision, we can look at how each strategy has worked out for other companies. Remember that hosting company that had major downtime, then made a followup blog post that made jokes ("whoops! we have butterfinters!") etc? The internet…

i think you have to play it by ear. you certainly don't want to over-apologize or under-apologize. that hosting company apologized with the wrong apology. a good, sincere apology explaining what happened and why it's not going to happen again can go a long, long way to gaining devoted customers.

somewhere in marketing 101 we read this study that showed that customers of a company that makes a mistake and handles it well are actually more loyal than customers of a company that doesn't make any mistakes.

if that hosting company had made no apologies at all and ended up with a techcrunch article about their downtime, with "no comments" from the company, you bet they would be worse off than had they posted a quick status update and then made a sincere apology with extended analysis after a certain threshold had been met (say, 2 hours of downtime).

look at amazon and ec2 for an example of why silence isn't always the best option.

Re: My Public Apology

#24

Post by palish »

einarvollset wrote: post #22
palish wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly do you want from him? The mentality "there are some words that should never be forgiven" is just as useless as "we shouldn't take the Lord's name in vain". Relax.

Not what I said. All I said was, if you've never had someone close to you end their life or die suddenly, then you don't get what pain you cause by flippant remarks like he made. So fuck him for feeling bad, cause he should. And you relax dude.

"Not what I said."

"... I hope you forgive yourself for the stupid shit you said today."

He's asking for your forgiveness, and based on what you're saying, it sounds like you won't forgive him, and you feel that he shouldn't forgive himself. I'm saying, that's a bad mindset to have. That same kind of hatred has spawned many wars, for example.

I understand you're emotional about this, and I'm sorry for whatever losses you've experienced. But try to restrain yourself, act rationally, and communicate clearly.

Re: My Public Apology

#25

Post by greendestiny »

rantfoil wrote: post #16
Ezra wrote: post #10

I think that it also exposes some of the crazy group think going on here, so maybe it wasn't all bad. I mean, You're an idiot isn't supposed to be a +5 comment on this site. And reasoned discourse like It doesn't really matter what the Justin.tv CEO said. He pasted some boiler plate because there's nothing more to be said; the deed had been done. What do you want? An apology for not finding the video? For not policin…

The rabid responses to Tom's post both shocked and surprised me as well. They just seemed a little bit more spirited than I would expect. It was a little schadenfreude-infused, to say the least.

So wait, we're shocked and horrified at downvoting, but suicide, hey happens all the time. Do the upvotes in this thread represent anti-group think group think?

Re: My Public Apology

#26

Post by jyothi »

mindslight wrote: post #21

My only problem with your initial comment is that it does not add much to the discussion; but neither do the comments that merely express sympathy. The story itself is only of interest because any startup may have to deal with similar situations, and hysterical public attention in general. The real issue is how your unpopular comment immediately reflected back on your business. There are several calls to boycott tick…

I was wondering abt the same on how his comment(thought inappropriate) should spur a whole lot of hate on product he builds. I would really down vote the person who first said "Note to self, stop using ticketstumbler". Seems more like an animated irrational crowd. Hard to believe on HN.

Re: My Public Apology

#27

Post by simonk »

palish wrote: post #15
drusenko wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reasoning is true until it isn't. If you sweep things under the rug, the public eye generally moves on to the next thing quickly, and nobody cares or realizes it happened a week later. If you apologize prematurely, then you draw attention to it, and people remember. But if you don't apologize, and it actually is a big deal, then people do remember and you look like a horrible person. It's the same debate that ce…

I agree to an extent. The problem is that it's not possible to determine whether the "correct" course of action is to publicly apologize or to downplay the initial act. But to make that decision, we can look at how each strategy has worked out for other companies. Remember that hosting company that had major downtime, then made a followup blog post that made jokes ("whoops! we have butterfinters!") etc? The internet…

What are you talking about. Apple has had all this time with MobileMe and had to make a few statements and even give a few free months.

Re: My Public Apology

#28

Post by palish »

drusenko wrote: post #23
palish wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree to an extent. The problem is that it's not possible to determine whether the "correct" course of action is to publicly apologize or to downplay the initial act. But to make that decision, we can look at how each strategy has worked out for other companies. Remember that hosting company that had major downtime, then made a followup blog post that made jokes ("whoops! we have butterfinters!") etc? The internet…

i think you have to play it by ear. you certainly don't want to over-apologize or under-apologize. that hosting company apologized with the wrong apology. a good, sincere apology explaining what happened and why it's not going to happen again can go a long, long way to gaining devoted customers. somewhere in marketing 101 we read this study that showed that customers of a company that makes a mistake and handles it w…

Yeah, that's valid. It seems like we're talking about two different issues though. And you're completely right about having to play it by ear. This situation is unique because Davis is a founder of a company and his comment could possibly impact that company. It's not a case where the company has made a mistake in its service. In other words, if someone decides to not use Ticketstumbler over this, it's because they hated his comment, not because Ticketstumbler failed them. So in this scenario, there's no reason to draw attention to the initial act with a public apology because it's not likely to happen again. Whereas if Amazon EC2 went down, that would (by definition) have an impact on customers, and it might happen again in the future. So in that case, it would be valuable to reassure the customers that it won't happen again, to provide reasons why it won't, and to communicate the measures being taken to prevent downtime in the future. So the situations seem similar, but they're actually very different.

Re: My Public Apology

#29

Post by junkbond »

tsally wrote: post #9
junkbond wrote: post #3

You are doing this because you don't want it to impact your business. Shame on you!!

I for one don't think that a self serving apology is in line with his posting history. A unsubstantiated comment, on the other hand, is in line with yours.

thats harsh
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