He said (basically) all that? I'm not surprised you don't agree with most of what he says. Did anyone throw chairs at him?

Well, I pretty much lied :) His was the first talk, and I admit to having doctored it up a bit. To be honest, I didn't think anyone was going to be reading my blog, so I thought it'd be safe to post stuff like this. I'm actually feeling a little bad now, as I said it in order to be funny, rather than because it was true. There are elements of truth in there, but I really went overboard. On the whole, I really wish people would *stop* throwing chairs (figuratively) at the guy. He's passionate, and passionate people tend to stir up trouble. Yup. Definitely feeling a little bad about this particular post...

And I wish Dave would stop throwing chairs at everyone else.

Here's the thing Rory: I understand the tongue-in-cheek of your post. I also understand the sincerity of your followup comment. But did you see DW link to your original post? You know, the one that wasn't sympathetic to his POV? No. But you _did_ see him link to your comment about stopping the throwing of chairs. That's how this guy ALWAYS operates. He treats the world as an us/them proposition. Talks a different talk than that sometimes, but NEVER walks that different walk. Take my advice right now. "Do a Dave". Pull this post RIGHT NOW. (He does it quite a bit, so you can too.) Because if you don't.... well, sit back and watch the flames begin in your comment thread.

There's a good reason why I wouldn't pull this post: I have some integrity. I don't have a problem admitting when I'm wrong about something. Just because Dave might not choose to link to me when I'm being critical of him doesn't mean that *I* wouldn't link to someone else who is critical of me (in fact, I did this recently). I don't really care about the politics of blogging. I don't care about being "right," either. What I did wind up caring about was that I was shitting on this guy who really believes in what he's doing. I made it clear that I don't really agree with a lot of what he says, but I admire him for continuing after all the crap he's gotten. Also, I'm not terribly interested in defending a position that I don't see as being correct, and it has nothing to do with how people might think of me. I'm a horribly honest person, and, at least in my private space (my blog), I feel free to say what's on my mind. If someone judges me for it, then that's fine. It doesn't bother me at all. If I lose readers, then that's fine. It doesn't bother me at all. If people think I'm being a hypocrite or a weakling, then that's fine. That doesn't bother me, either. After I began questioning the A-List bloggers and their integrity, I noticed that I stopped getting links from Scoble. There's a (potentially good) possibility that the two things aren't related, but I've decided to take the paranoid stance and assume that Robert didn't like what I was saying (or that he simply decided to side with his friends, which isn't an unusual stance). Even though he stopped linking to me, I still keep a link to him in my blog roll. That's because I like what he has to say. As long as I like his blog, he'll have a link here. He could insult me everyday on the hour in his blog, and I would still visit it because of the other posts that I know would make it worthwhile. In other words, I'm not keeping score - I'm keeping a blog, and I'm doing it simply because I love to write. I don't sit up nights worrying about my "link cosmos." I worry about whether or not my sister is going to be entertained by a particular post. If other people like them, then great. It makes me feel really good, but I'm not competing in here. Anyway, I'm rambling :) I got about sixteen minutes of sleep last night. The point is that I don't mind admitting to the blogging world that I made a mistake by jumping on the bandwagon and attacking Dave. It was childish. If I didn't like RSS (I do rather like it, actually), then I should attack *it* - Not Dave. Actually, while I'm on a soapbox, I want to add one more thing: All this shit slinging that's been going on in the blogging world? Has anybody noticed how it all gets around? The answer, of course, is RSS. Think about that for a while...

I just wanted to thank you Rory. I got an email from a reader of your site asking me if I actually said the things in your post. I sent him an email saying no, not even in the ballpark. Then I clicked on your comments and saw the nice note about not throwing chairs at me. So I linked to it, being sure that some of the chair throwers would see it and come throw some chairs. Cowards, they are. I'd like to see them say the things they say in person. That was the lesson of XML Devcon. When you meet someone face to face and see that it's just a person, just like someone you might like, surprise, you end up liking them. That happened not just with me, but with others. I met Rich Salz. Based on his posts I had the wrong idea about who he is. At one point in one of our face-to-face arguments, I said "So we disagree, what's the big deal." He broke out in this big grin. We shook hands, and for the rest of the conference we couldn't get over how much we had in common. He comes from Lawn Guyland (I come from Queens), and lives in Boston (so do I). But in software we come from different worlds, so we look at things differently. So what. That doesn't make him bad, and it doesn't make me bad. Talking with Peter Drayton, another person I met face to face for the first time, we came up with a rule abouty flaming. You shouldn't be allowed to flame someone you've never met. Or a friend of yours has met. That way someone can clue you in when you miss the point totally, as flames about people you've never met always do. And so life goes on in the weblog world. More powerless virtual chair throwers. So damned boring. But people who say that passionate people stir up trouble and we should cut them some slack. Now that's unusual! Mazel tov.

And to DD, I absolutely did link to the post that said the nasty stuff about me. What's wrong with your browser? You know what's worse than a guy who stinks up a comment thread? A guy who stinks it up and gets the facts totally wrong. What's left after that. You gotta tell him he not only has terrible manners, but he's also pretty stupid.

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