[enntwo]

My main argument is now that they have allowed public comments and such backlash occurred, they cannot feasibly double back on it. Any purging of comments would only further feed the fire and damage there PR as you mentioned.

I don't believe that the avoiding the creation of a public forum on your service's site is surpessing information and communications though, but I will agree that once one is made it must be dealy with judiciously and should not have its contents purged or modified after the fact just because they are not in the companies best interest. This would only hurt further, and from what we have seen so far here, ZenDesk has left all the comments intact.

I also don't think such a backlash would be felt if originated from elsewhere, even from many other sources. The main issue here is that all of the users who are first discovering the issue have no time to think about how it truly effects there business, but are only tossed into a frenzy of doubt and anger.

Many of the users would not know about the complaints and discussions on twitter, and there competitors would not be getting so much attention if it were not directly linked and discussed on their page.

Of course I cannot know how much different it would be if they did not provide such a public discussion area, but it seems now they have provided a universal entry point into the user-mob that they must actually maintain.