Bengo wishes he got better criticism and gets a taste of his own medicine

Bengo has been complaining that he doesn't get good criticism.
He makes a nice list of negative traits that he sees in the people who comment on his site. Let's take a look, with annotations of course.

• Dismissive know-it-alls. Don't bother them with logic or facts, they just spout. -Sounds like Bengo. Whatever information is brought to light his initial theory is sound. All conflicting information is anomalous or made up and not worth further investigation.-
  
• Ignoramuses. They are in over their head, and blame you when they embarrass themselves. -Again, sounds like someone else I know.-
  
• Cherry pickers. They can't manage seeping overviews, so they nitpick about inconsequential items. -Alternatively, they could be finding holes in your reporting that they think you might want to know about.-
  
• Evaders. These are the ones who dodge serious questions, to distract others, and to avoid answering. -So, Bengo, why do you never give people evidence when they ask for it?-
  
• Self-righteous peaceniks. They shield themselves by denouncing debate as "drama" or "arguing," and so try to raise their own self-regard. This is generally a cover for what is simply intellectual cowardice. Debate and rhetoric are art forms dating to Ancient Greece. Read up before you start squelching people. -Or perhaps, they just find you too blinkered and stubborn to try and debate with and give up.-
  
• Snipers. Afraid to confront me here, they blow steam about how I've ruined their lives in blog posts, most of them obscure. I find them because, ironically, they send a disproportionate amount of traffic, jumping out of analytics reports. Love it or hate it, they plunge into the blog for long periods. (There really is no reason to fear criticism, and people who over-react are probably revealing insecurities of long-standing. I do it myself from time to time.) -Hey, Bengo, enjoying the blog? Do you know why I post here? Because there's no way in hell you would allow my comments to go live on your blog. Even if I was at my most polite, you would still reject them as random petty hate, because you don't want criticism, unless it's a side note in a post full of praise. Admit it.-
  
• New faces that start out rude. I can handle posts from Scott Kurtz because I know he is prone to bluntness and so does everybody else. Strangers who walk in with a chip on their shoulder are not good contributors, and whining won't guarantee them a seat at the table. By contrast, Scott's made some good points here, though he's going to have to persuade me on others. -So, well known people who you consider rude are allowed, but us nobodies aren't? Sounds like double standards, or maybe just the fact you can't quieten people with much higher readerships than yourself?-
  
• Delicate flowers. These are people who carry burning hatred because I am candid in saying that webcomics are not nearly of the same quality of comics historically, and that many people are engaging in life-of-luxury pipe dreams. Reality spoils their fantasies. How dare I? -Bengo, never carries burning hatred to people who say things he doesn't like. He never, never ever, throws petty tantrums if people derail forum threads of his or tell him that they think his projects are missing the point. Never. I've never seen that happen.-
  
• The thin-skinned. These are people who do dodgy things and try to stay hidden. They don't respond publicly, if at all, and they bad mouth their friends in order to ingratiate themselves with you. Feeling a need to kick ass wherever it needs kicking, I pry them out. After about a year, they emerge, red-faced and furious. It's as if you could here the scream of a raw oyster. -I'm not even sure I understand this comment. What are you going on about, Bengo?-
  
• The anonymous. It turns out this has mostly been one person, with a morbid preoccupation. The problem: they are not accountable, and the mischief wrought here by a sad case makes it impossible to honor. -Hey, Bengo, here's an idea. Maybe several people really do feel that your reports on Google Trends are in fact badly written and badly informed. Maybe multiple people really did feel the need to comment on the failings of those articles. Have you ever considered that?-
  
• Scape-goaters. Generally people with weak comics who decide they will feel better if they take me down. Like lost souls on an Outward Bound expedition, they hurl themselves forward again and again, until at last their rage begins to dissipate. -If people try to badmouth Bengo or his work it obviously has to be for this reason. They couldn't just think that he is a bad researcher, a bad journalist and wilfully misleading his readers at times.-

Bengo would like to hear "from someone immersed in the webcomic scene who can nonetheless speak with real authority about many of the issues discussed here, with eloquence and reliability." If this sounds like you, go ahead and comment, except, oh... You can't. He disabled commenting on that post. Oh, well.

With his next update, Bengo posted a link to a site about Harvey Pekar's birthday. I like this. More of this sort of posting please.

Bengo follows this pleasant interlude with a complaint about another blogger deleting his comment on a recent article of theirs. How dare someone delete one of his comments for being angry and not being civil enough? What kind of self righteous, pigheaded, individual would... oh.. wait... Bengo. Never mind.

Laughingly, while complaining about having his own comment deleted (keeping in mind that his first comment wasn't deleted, only his second comment) Bengo has still left comments turned off on this latest post. Can you say hypocrite everybody?

I would like to finish with this quote from Bengo:

"I would like to see someone accept my long-standing offer to explain to the world how wrong I am, how offensive, and how irrational, by taking my offer for a page of their own here, to speak to readers without interference. I would like to see an essay by someone who has read my best contributions, understands them, and finds fault nonetheless. I could probably prepare a primer to save them wading through the archives."

I will be emailing Bengo later today to take him up on his offer. I urge anyone reading to do likewise and if he doesn't post your articles, don't worry I will. Shall we see if he's really willing to stick by his word here?

...and just when it seemed he was getting it right.

Following Bengo's post claiming Fluffy as the originator of the malicious comments, here is another comment by Bengo, seemingly arguing with the atmosphere again.


"@fluffy: There's the tantrum (not printed), right on schedule. You're really grasping if you think I don't know you hijacked the identities of innocent people, so you might as well stop writing, or I'll let them know what you've done. I don't expect to say anything more on the matter to you -- ever. Seek help."

What triggered this? According to an email from regular contributor to Tilting at Lightbulbs and would be regular contributor to The Floating Lightbulb, Jessica, inspired by my previous post she asked for an apology having been mistakenly identified as being the person spamming his site.

Apparently Bengo still can't believe that multiple people could take issue to the content of his blog. I guess that means I'm Fluffy too.

Bengo criticises Google Sidewiki and for once I agree with him.

I've been busy working, so this post is going to have to cover three posts on the Floating Lightbulb.

The first one is just a short piece called "Raising Provenance on Archive Pages" which is just a short blog entry on potential ways to increase views of comic archives and although it's a bit on the short side it all seems reasonable. I have nothing bad to say about it. If the Floating Lightbulb concentrated more on articles like this, just a little longer maybe, it could be the valid resource that Bengo wants it to be.

In the second post Bengo claims to have identified who is responsible for spamming him with rude and unhelpful comments. Is he right? I don't know, because he doesn't say how he can prove it's her, which would be something useful, but if he is telling the truth and he is correct in this matter then it is essentially a personal issue and possibly understandable in this one situation that he hasn't given evidence. I say possibly for one reason. He has publically called her out on it and if you are going to make accusations of that sort in public then you need to be able to back them up. Perhaps this would have been a matter dealt with privately. A statement that he had identified who it was and that it was someone he and Pug had previously dealt with on a social level would have sufficed.

Of course, I'm not entirely convinced that such an event really happened. I've learnt not to trust everything that Bengo says against people as his own personal feelings towards them often seem to cloud the reality of the situation. Maybe in the end it would be best for him to just leave all personal squabbles away from the site and only deal with them in the comments to actual blog posts if they're unavoidable.

Of course you will note that person he has accused here is not the same person who has written to me at this here blog and been publically accused by Bengo of posting as multiple people before.

"@ Jessica Ottowell: Why keep sending letters? You have little to contribute and show no sign of having read the blog or the previous comments, one of which was to you. Your email account is associated with six different people of various genders and nationalities -- not a sign of a serious person so much as a troll. You alternate from reasonable to nasty, American to English. Under what circumstances does this give you entitlement to be published?

It's probably more accurate to deduce that the fellows accusing me of an obsession with them are trying to pump bilge water into the discussion without being observed.

Nothing harms the status of webcomics more than the fact that the would-be spokesmen of the field often seem less mature than their fans.

The relentless need to burnish self-esteem and buffer unhappiness by scapegoating others will presumably lead to an unwelcome ending. Professionals welcome comments because they have faith in their work and their credentials; stonewalling and casting blame is the trade of the pretender.

Regards,
Bengo"

As, as far as I can tell, Jessica appears to be a real individual and not in fact a figment of someone else's imagination, unless somehow it's mine and I really don't have any readers, I wonder if Bengo has any plans to retract that previous accusation now that he claims to have found the real culprit. I hope so.

The third post is Bengo's take on Google's Sidewiki service, which I've seen some talk about recently. Bengo questions whether such a thing should exist and although his feelings on the subject don't seem to be as strong as mine, we mostly seem to agree about it. It's refreshing to visit his site and see that two out of the three new posts he's made don't give me a single thing to criticise. It's put me in quite a good mood actually. Let's hope he can keep it up.

On the subject of Sidewiki, well what can I say?

Reading through the pages about it on Google (I can't install it myself just now) there is no reference that I can see about website owners other than the ability for site owners to post a special comment if they're registered. This service could be an interesting and useful one if it was entirely optional and that doesn't mean the ability to opt out. It means that people should have to opt in for it to appear on their site.

Paul Myers, who wrote the article about it on talkbiz.com has managed to sum up one of the biggest issues I have with it in one line.

"Or they link to porn sites from your family-friendly children’s toy shop or religious fellowship forum. But hey, look at blogs. They never try that sort of thing in those places."

For many people, myself included, it's important to make sure the content posted to our sites is suitable for our readership and although Sidewiki does not actually post to the site itself it still links content that we may not want on our own personal corners of the internet.

I won't ever censor commenting to this blog unless people post porn or links to malware, but not every site I run is run this way. They serve different purposes. I criticise Bengo's censorship of his blog because he claims it to be a place for discussion and because I believe that any site that posts articles and opinions in such a manner should offer a public forum to discuss matters in, but not every site is a news site or editorial blog.

On top of this is another much larger issue. Even though Google are willing to remove comments and even if they can do it quickly enough, not everybody knows it exists. Not everyone with a website bothers to check to see what Google have been up to recently. Not everybody cares.

Paul give from talkbiz gives a perfect example of what this sort of thing can lead to and indeed has lead to.

"A gentleman I know is a really hard working guy, who’s busted his butt for more hours in a day than I ever want to work, for years, to provide a good living for his wife and daughter. I mean, 14 hours a day in the long term, building a business that’s based on providing value to his customers.

This guy has a medical condition that results in one eye pointing off at an angle that’s not even with the other. The picture he uses on some sites makes this obvious.

Some ignorant, malicious, psychopathic, deranged, bored, sadistic bastard of a man-child (sorry, but that’s the most polite description I can use and still convey the merest surface of my contempt) used that as the basis for a “wiki-note” implying that this guy was a pedophile.

On Sidewiki, right next to the guy’s own business web site.

If there’s any lie a person can tell online that warrants having a 6-inch hole put in them that the sun will shine through, that’s the one.

This… mindless, soulless, stupid creature told that lie for nothing more than his own amusement. Because his victim has one eye that didn’t track right in a photograph.

Google got rid of that one pretty quickly, but how much will their response time slow down as the service grows?

And how many people have to see that before it becomes likely that some gossip-monger latches onto it and it starts to spread, gaining a life of its own?

For a busy site… not too long, eh?

It should be mentioned that the creep in question makes a hobby of doing exactly this sort of abusive stuff, and has for quite a while. He’ll keep doing it until he gets sued into oblivion, or develops the aforementioned light-conveying orifice in his torso.

What kind of damage can that sort of thing do to a person’s business, when it’s shown to their best prospects? Or to visitors they paid to get from their AdWords budget?"

What if the gentleman in question had never seen it and what if nobody who was inclined to report it had ever seen it?

Google are being ridiculous if they honestly think that this thing is a sensible, workable project.

Google don't own the internet and though they may have some control over this site, the other sites I'm involved with running are off limits. They belong to me or the people I work with and if anyone should have a say in what content gets attached to it it's us.