[davewiner]

I am nice to people. Esp people who don't start out conversations saying personal and negative things about me. With that kind of beginning I either ignore them or defend myself.

Why I think anonymity correlates with cowardice? Because it does. Some things are just not worth arguing about.

[demachina]

Exactly, unless people start off being nice, complimenting you, agreeing with you and telling you how great you are you shut them off, instantly. For as long as I've read your blog and twitter feed you simply will not have a conversation with anyone if they start out by disagreeing with you.

Your feed swings between wonderfully interesting and insightful and arrogant and galling. On a daily basis I debate whether your insights are worth having to wade through all the angst. So far I keep finding in favor of your wisdom and insight but its always close.

If you toned down the arrogant and galling parts you would be a much greater leader in the tech community, more people would listen to you, and you would probably be advancing your goal of an open web far faster than you are which would be a win win for everone. You seem to want to be a leader, but you don't want to adapt to the limitations that come with being a great leader, one that people want and like to follow.

You didn't say "anonymity correlates with cowardice". You said anonymity correlates with untruth. Those are too completely different things. Anonymity does correlate with "cowardice" thats why /. has called them anonymous cowards since the dawn of web time.

There can be a LOT of truth said under the cloak of anonymity. Do you think Bradley Manning was a "coward" and a liar for using Wikileaks to give him a shroud of anonymity when he was speaking truth to power in his way?

When dealing with a personality like yourself anyone who who criticizes you under their real name knows they are going to regret it. You are the one compelling people to speak to you anonymously because you don't accept criticism, you instantly block people rather than engage in dialog and you broadcast your grudges on your blog like you did with Marissa Mayer.

You have the luxury of being self employed, so am I. You can say whatever you want under your real name, as long as you are OK with the reputational damage yourself. People who work for other people can't if its going to explode in to a reputation damaging, and employment endangering, flame fest which is what happens to a lot of people who engage with you. Some people operate under different constraints in this world than you and you don't seem to recognize that.

Not sure why I'm still trying to engage in a dialog here. Chances are you stopped listing right after your last post. That is most definitely your style.

[879ijko]

Brilliant summary, well done sir.

[davewiner]

You misread my comment.

[demachina]

Please expand.

I quite carefully read your comment about anonymity and truth, which suddenly morphed in to anonymity and cowardice when I called you on it.

I appreciate maybe I bent your meaning a little when you said you are nice to people except when they say "personal and negative" things about you. I bent it partially based on reading your Twitter feed and blog for years and seeing how you actually deal with people there.

Quick question, do you think the stuff you said about Marissa Mayer might be considered "personal and negative" by some people? If so why is it OK for you to say personal and negative things about other people, but not vice versa.

I should apologize for generalizing. I am sure you are nice to a lot of people. A lot of people seem to have a very high regard for you. You may be very nice in real life, I have no way to gauge that.

The issue at hand here is are you nice, or at least civil, to people if they disagree with you, especially online? Judging by comments on HN, you seem to have really viscerally angered a lot of people over the years. Why do you think that is?

[davewiner]

Maybe you just misunderstood. When I said I am nice to people who are nice to me, that doesn't mean they agree with me on everything or even most things.

I have a friend who is a Republican, and has many political views that I find abhorrent. However, he's an incredible thinker and doer when it comes to technology, and a great story-teller. I totally enjoy hanging out with him. I even like talking politics with him, and he seems like it too. Debating that kind of stuff with him is more about exercising my mind than emotions.

I am unusually interested in differing opinions, most people aren't. Some even think that if you disagree with them, that you are somehow disrespecting them, they take it personally. I am not one of those people.

So you've really got it wrong Mr or Ms DeMachina.

You might want to take a look at your process, because in this case it's yielded a very incorrect result. You could never debug a program the way you've tried to understand who I am.

About Marissa Mayer, I don't know her well enough to know how she takes criticism, and I have no idea how she felt about my piece. I got no response from her, nor did I expect one.

My purpose was to share some experiences I had with acquisitions, because that's what we, in the tech blogging world, were discussing that day. I wouldn't write that piece today or next week, unless there was a big buyout in an area that interested me.

I am a blogger. This is what bloggers do. If you don't like the way I blog, my guess that you probably don't like blogging much.

Anyway I don't try to be nice all the time in my blog posts, but I also dont' go out of my way to be not-nice. I really just want to explore stuff and share what I know.

[demachina]

As an aside there is one tactic Scoble uses to deal with critics on Twitter and elsewhere. He actually retweets posts from people who are criticizing, filleting him and trolling him. It shows he has a thick skin.

Trolls WANT you to get angry. Since you do get angry nearly 100% of the time, it makes you ideal troll fodder. If you retweet criticism like Scoble does, and laugh it off, it completely neutralizes a lot of trolls.