Productivity Tip: Don’t Delete Weblog Entries Because Readers Disagree With You
Monday, August 1st, 2005 by Mike Rundle
37signals Signal vs. Noise weblog has been featuring entries recently on how to boost productivity, how to simplify your life, and generally how to GTD and be more organized professionally. Usually the tips are worthwhile, but one of the most recent ones hit me as strange, and I wasn’t really sure how it would boost my productivity. Here’s a link.
Normally I would just leave a snarky comment and be on my way, but this time, I ran into something a little out of the ordinary. After I clicked through from Bloglines, I wrote my comment and tried to submit it when MovableType threw me an error that said effectively that “The Entry Does Not Exist.” I’m used to strange web errors (hey, I’m a designer, weird things happen) so I went back to the SVN homepage so I could reload the entry, and maybe it would work this time.
When I went back to the SVN homepage, the entry had disappeared. Gone. Not linked anymore. Just in case the link is taken down completely by the time you read this, I managed to screengrab the entry and the negative comments that were posted before it was pulled. AdSense has been removed from the screenshot, and the design/content is ©37signals:
So What Really Happened?
You can see from the comments that other SVN readers thought the entry wasn’t very good either. So why was it pulled from the homepage and effectively hidden from SVN readers? It could be because it was pushed live by accident and wasn’t totally finished yet (even though it has a nice little conclusion) but maybe it was because the reaction to the entry was so negative and the 37signals crew wanted to stifle reader comments lest they reflect poorly on their company and products.
Conspiracy theory or the truth? What’s your take?
Updated 9am Tuesday: Jason weighed in on the conspiracy theory in the comments, and it proved Occam’s Razor to be true — the simplest answer is usually the best. The simple answer is that the entry wasn’t meant to go live that early, and Jason wanted to keep it for posting today instead. No conspiracy theory. No cover-up. Just call us the lone gunman.
Reader Comments
25 Responses to “Productivity Tip: Don’t Delete Weblog Entries Because Readers Disagree With You”
I love it. I’ve been asking for a while now how come the signals were able to get away with repeating themselves so often and not getting called on it…heck,each of their “products” mirror each other so closely, i can’t even keep them straight.
sig-owned.
August 1st, 2005 at 9:19 pm
Funny. I caught this too…
I checked the site just after 7, read the post, started dumping all the shit off my desk, then it hit me “WTF? What the hell am I doing? Maybe I read wrong…” but too late… the post was gone.
You know what they say, “do as I say, not as I do”.
August 1st, 2005 at 9:22 pm
Thanks for asking.
I pulled it because I didn’t mean to post it. I was planning on posting this tomorrow as I posted the other Productivity Tip today. It will go back up tomorrow. Hopefully this scandal will clear up by then.
Anyone who follows SvN comment threads knows that plenty of people disagree with us. We’d never pull a post — especially a post an innocuous as this one — because people disagreed with us. You know us better than that Mike.
Sorry to dissapoint you Craig, but it was an honest mistake!
August 1st, 2005 at 10:25 pm
The post seems to be back, although with the same 5 comments. :)
August 1st, 2005 at 10:28 pm
Is it wrong to edit blog posts over time?
I read an interesting post by Business Logs this evening. Basically, their thesis is that you should not delete weblog entries that are unpopular. When I was actively blogging about making a reality television show (the show is now airing and their …
August 1st, 2005 at 10:57 pm
Well, it just shows that everybody makes mistakes, and that people love to pounce on them for doing so. It’s funny that the people who seem to do so well always have the most critics.
Although, that productivity tip isn’t something I’d teach in class, the others have been great reads.
August 1st, 2005 at 11:39 pm
Scandal strikes signals 1 through 36
Its these little scandals that make me love this here blogosphere. Link [VIA]
Questions: Is it wrong to censor blog entries/comments?
…
August 2nd, 2005 at 12:01 am
Because, although the post is back up, commenting is prevented because the comment-system apparently doesn’t know the post is up, I’ll post my comment here:
“In this post featuring a screengrab of this post, including comments, also made by me, the author ponders over conspiracies by 37Signals to prevent the world to see negative comments on their blog. Luckily, it was quickly set straight why this post momentarily ‘pulled’ offline.
The reason I’m sitting here writing yet another comment is because the previously linked post implies that my comment was a negative one.. True, a fair bit of sarcasm should be read in my comment, but that is not to say this post hasn’t some valuable advice, if not underlying message.. I’m quite sure most of the stuff I’d put in the box would not come out at all, leaving me with, if nothing else, a desk I can at least see under all the clutter :)”
August 2nd, 2005 at 12:08 am
So no conspiracy theory?
No scandal of an A-Lister trying to sweep things under the rug?
I guess it’s time to go back to Slashdot for my daily dose of conspiracy.
August 2nd, 2005 at 12:19 am
A blog post about a blog post conspiracy. Is this Inside Edition? ; )
August 2nd, 2005 at 12:52 am
As of this comment the post isn’t backup but can be viewed because MT creates static files of all entries and they simply haven’t removed the static PHP file. That’s why your comment can not be posted Joost.
Even though Jason admits to it being a mistake I wonder why they would still feel the need to delete. Especially since it received comments already. I don’t think have two tips in one day would hurt the site at all.
August 2nd, 2005 at 12:57 am
Wow, well that’s not going to win over any new readers. Nice catch!
August 2nd, 2005 at 3:19 am
Ok. So a web developer pulls a post about productivity - so what? It’s not as if he were erasing the congressional record.
Mike, with prices that start at $10,000 for brand & reputation strategy, I would’ve been much more impressed to see BusinessLogs post on the real cause / effect of pulling a blog post and the recovery strategy, moreso than a flagrant attack on a peer and “conspiracy theories”.
We’ve been hearing a lot lately from BL on what others are doing / not doing - how about a few posts on what you are doing to better the online world, or at least some thought leadership without the lame attacks?
August 2nd, 2005 at 7:38 am
Mark - Considering we didn’t know the cause of why the entry was pulled down (when I wrote it), we wouldn’t want to make incorrect assumptions on what this would or would not do for 37signals’ reputation.
Flagrant attack on a peer? We saw something interesting on the web and wrote about it what we thought happened. Isn’t that what makes the internet great? Try not to get your panties in a bunch. Plus we had to bust Jason Fried’s chops after he called 9rules out for having superfluous titles a few days ago :)
The reason we don’t like to preach on our weblog is because we hate reading blog entries where the author sounds like he’s giving out commandments to readers. We like to report on what we find and let our readers decide rather than just straight up tell you what should be done. But if you’re a sheep who needs some “thought leadership” to guide your actions, I’d suggest leaving our weblog and going somewhere else because we don’t like holding people’s hands here.
And since you like to harp on our prices, maybe jump over to Nielsen’s website where some of his “design reviews” start at the price of a BMW coupe even though Nielsen couldn’t design his way out of a bag.
August 2nd, 2005 at 8:53 am
mark’s bitching on your weblog because nobody comments on his ….. it’s gotta be jealousy
posting then taking it down does look a little shady, but maybe it was just a mixup. either way i loved reading about it!
August 2nd, 2005 at 9:12 am
Mark: What’s interesting about your comment is that after Mike published this one I told him I would followup with an entry about the implications of doing such a thing. Guess what entry is coming today?
August 2nd, 2005 at 9:29 am
Man, I miss out on all the fun when I am basically without internet access for a week now (hopefully resolved tomorrow).
I think the only way we are going to please Mark is to have him hire us. ;)
August 2nd, 2005 at 10:04 am
“Even though Jason admits to it being a mistake I wonder why they would still feel the need to delete. Especially since it received comments already. I don’t think have two tips in one day would hurt the site at all.”
Because I wanted to. First off, I don’t see *any* problem with *anyone* pulling a blog post. What happened to embracing the medium? You can’t pull from paper — you have to retract. On the web you can change constantly — and change includes deleting something, removing something, or pulling something back for publishing later.
Who made the blog rules saying you can’t remove something? Blogs have rules already? 9rules?
However, as I mentioned, I didn’t mean to post it yesterday and I plan on putting it back up today. Thanks for everyone’s deep concern about the controversial vanishing productivity tip. Don’t worry, productivity is on the way — you’ll just have to wait another day for it! ;)
August 2nd, 2005 at 10:44 am
Hell you are entitled to do whatever you want on your site. The only rules for anyone are the ones they set for themselves. I was just more wondering what the reason behind pulling off a small insiginificant entry with comments was besides “because I felt like it”. Why go through the trouble?
I’m not trying to hassle you or ride your ass. I just like to see company’s thoughts behind how they run their blogs. How else can we get better at the services we offer?
August 2nd, 2005 at 10:59 am
All I know is, I’ll be very happy when I can get this much attention just by pulling a post from my weblog. 37s must be doing something right…
August 2nd, 2005 at 11:11 am
What’s more interesting, is what’s driving the criticism in the post. For SVN, I think it’s a backlash against the management guru topics v. just talking design. SVN is all Tom Peters now, instead of AJAX. Call it Tom Ajax or Management on Rails.
August 2nd, 2005 at 11:31 am
I think that happened with this post, too. It showed up in the RSS feed but when I clicked through, it wasn’t on the site. I looked at it as an opportunity, not a conspiracy. Surely the post would be up again later in the day, and this just gave me more time to compose my comments! :-)
August 2nd, 2005 at 1:21 pm
“A-Lister”. Huh. Personally, I think that SvN’s content is pretty thin stuff.
August 2nd, 2005 at 1:40 pm
Conspiracy theory or the truth? What’s your take?…
oh, i think you’re bored.
August 2nd, 2005 at 7:21 pm
The big problem with 37S is that their products aren’t accessible.
August 3rd, 2005 at 5:16 pm
Add Your Comment
Comments are moderated because spam's not tolerated.
