Hiya J,
To ensure that our conversation is actually public, I’m reduced to writing open letters on my blog. This isn’t the sort of thing people usually want to read here, but I’ll just have to take that chance with my readers.
When you responded to my last post, you pointed out a mistake that I made:
Scott Rafer says I’m being elitist by not providing comments. My response to Scott is that I’m 100% available to the entire world by SMS, email, AIM, Facebook, LinkedIn, Skype, Twitter, and blog post. If someone want to reach me they can–that negates your whole elitist argument. It is not my job to give people the platform, it’s their job to take it. If they choose to not take the platform and speak up, well, then maybe they shouldn’t be part of the conversation. Yes, I’m saying that. If you can take the five minutes to puke into the comment box you can take the 7 minutes to create your own blog and have some level of ownership of your words. It’s not elitism, it’s a meritocracy.
As Chuqui points out, “… as soon as the word “elitist” appears in a discussion, any useful discussion with that person is over….” He’s right; I messed up. I used the word twice when I should have only used it once. Referring to people as elitist is not productive — only systems can be called elitist in a useful way. The errant use is now struck out in the other post, though not deleted of course.
You aren’t elitist, you are just surprisingly disrespectful of people who use the web in a way you view as less sophisticated. That’s your choice. Their choice might be not to have a blog, for reasons you and I could never fathom. There are a frighteningly large number of people in our society who act on motivations that I can not fathom — I still try to learn from them. You’ll get some of your time back as a result of this decision, but you’ll lose a lot of knowledge you might have otherwise gleaned. Chuqui is again correct in that you should consider having your assistant moderate your comments as he/she does your calendar. Secondarily, please note that private communication, which you might or might not decide to post later, is no substitute for public conversation. Twitter is great, but it’s not a replacement for blog comments and other truly public forums.
Mahalo is designed (intentionally or not) as an elitist system, and that’s bad for business. You are betting a noticeable amount of other people’s money on the fact that Google is not satisfying peoples’ need for information on the most popular search results. Your method at Mahalo is to have a relatively small number of people try to consistently provide satisfying search responses for millions of other people. However, if I’m one of those searchers who feel the need for more hand holding than Google gives me, I need my own blog to have a public discussion with Mahalo’s CEO. Lots o’ luck with that.
Best,
Scott