TechCruch UK Heat
All started with third Le Web Conference, when former editor Sam Sethi puts some own views on Le Web Conference. Conference organizer Loic Le Meur, however, took offense at the post and left a regrettable comment, calling Sam an “assholeâ€? (the comment has been removed already)but later Loic apologize publicly (even in his own blog). Probably he lashed out after being hit all day yesterday with criticism about the conference, general human error nothing more. In Loic’s own word, probably you will feel how sorry he is—
This comment is true and I apologize for it. I will post more on my blog later, take the insult as an exhausted organizer after a few crazy weeks. I was only referring to your post in the context of TechCrunch helping us since day one on this event, not to your opinion. Basically I would have not reacted if it would have been on your personal blog, I felt really weird to see it on an official TechCrunch blog. I should not have commented that.
This being said I note that you do not consider email as private communication which I find surprising.
But things got more interesting just after that when Sam left the comment in reply of Loic, and then wrote a new post(which has been removed by Arrington), finally his boss Mr. Arrington got upset and puts TechCrunch UK on hold (Do I have to even say that Sam Sethi is fired). Here you will find Arrington’s side of the story.
The whole situation stinks, first Loic got upset, next thing Sam got out of his editorial responsibility and at the end Mike Arrington cooks it up. I was quite a frequent reader of Sam Sethi, in my opinion his Le Web conference reaction was a lot moderate then other Le Web review I have seen on the web. First of all Le Web was supposed to be a conference for web and social networking guys to make things better but Honorable Simon of Israel made it political march (what the crap he knows about web). As for Loic, what he did is also logical, that guy has been working so hard to make one of the largest tech conference in the world and all the people are just criticizing him, instead giving him some sympathy and credit. Come on guys it is not his fault that Simon Perez wanted to join Le Web, and how can he deny a Nobel prize winner? it is not simply good for reputation. Loic i totally understand your pain, you did a great job(whatever happen it is not your fault). Finally as for Mr. Arrington, i guess things would have been much clearer if he would have left those comments(not Loic’s) and Sam’s post. Some of the guys copied the deleted post from the feed reader before it got chopped off.
TechCruch UK, Michael Arrington, Sam Sethi, Loic Le Meur, Le Web
December 13th, 2006 at 9:45 pm
Actually, Loic only sent the apology after Sam responded to his insult with another (diplomatic) comment. Sam didn’t write a second post following the apology.
Sam was fired because he refused to delete Loic’s original comment as he knew the blogsphere would loose respect for him if he did. This was a topic which we covered just a few days ago with some of our colleagues. We all agreed unanimously that deleting comments was a big fat NO.
http://www.web2ireland.org/
December 14th, 2006 at 2:40 am
Thanks Paul for enlighten us.
Somewhat Mike Arrington disagree with that, as i said since both post and comment are deleted now, noway to tell which one appeared first. I have no doubt about sam’s credibility, on the other hand businessman like Mike also knows the importance of Sam in techcrunch. So simple disagreement on a comment moderation leads to firing Sam isn’t sound logical.
December 14th, 2006 at 5:15 am
Kamrul,
The feeds picked up all the original posts and there is a few thousand witnesses to the comments going up and then coming down.
It’s simple really, Mike doesn’t see anything wrong in deleting comments for the sake of appeasing one person/company. Sam (any many others including myself) thought this was wrong. Sam refused to delete Loic’s post and hence put himself into a ’situation’.
December 14th, 2006 at 7:44 pm
Paul thanks,
Finally someone provided me some feeds, and i can see your point now. Sam was right about preserving his ideology.
Anyway people like Sam don’t need TechCrunch, We read blogs for the blogger, not for the company who runs it. So wherever Sam will write, we will read him.
Hey paul,your blog is fantastic,Keep up the good work. count me as your daily visitor:P
December 15th, 2006 at 11:15 pm
[...] Comment Etiquette and Policy December 15th, 2006 by Kamrul When I was covering the “TechCrunch UK Heat�, I came across with so many articles regarding comment etiquette and policy. Different bloggers have different views of comment policies but somewhat the suggested etiquettes are similar. This whole year I have seen lots of “Ego war� in blogosphere, some of them turned into ugly word exchange, which gives me a strong feeling that bloggers needs to draw an outline of comment etiquette and policies of comments. This will help blogosphere to be clean, well mannered. When an outsider (someone who doesn’t blog) will come across to any blog won’t say we are bunch of baboons. Additionally we need strong and standard comments policies regarding- moderating, removing and altering comments. [...]
April 15th, 2007 at 1:06 am
Interesting comments..