From: Doug Meil

To: Editor

Date: 26 Feb 2004

 

Regarding On The Real Asses: You Be The Judge, and specifically "Man, that Pascal guy is a real pompous ass, isn't he? His comments were bad enough in private email, but to publish it was just wrong":

 

I thought that comments that inspired that comment such as "You see only what you know and you don't see what you don't know." And so on, were terse, but not gratuitous.

 

However, it is widely assumed that private email conversations are just that--private.  And if an exchange is to be publicly quoted (and cited to a specific person), it is courteous to ask the other party "do you mind if I quote you?" 

 

Publishing missives using initials to represent the reader at least keeps their identity private, which should be acceptable for most exchanges.  But if any private email exchange with dbdebunk can be published publicly with full attribution, it would be courteous to disclose this practice on the home page. 

 

 

From: Fabian Pascal

To: Doug Meil

 

If you want me to bother to read your stuff and respond to it, you must be willing to do it publicly and open yourself to the judgment of others. I don't care for those who want to hide behind private messages.

Which is why I add the red alert at the end of a response, to let them know that if they want a reply, they must agree to go public.

If the person is a public personality professionally--vendor, journalist, well-known consultant, authors, etc.--I do not see a reason to withhold names, they are, in fact, imperative to prove my point about The Ignorance Mechanism (see the article I just published). I never publish email addresses.

 

 

Ed. Note: The tendency is to reject my argument that ignorance is widespread in the industry even at the top. It would be very easy for those interested in marginalizing me to take private stances that demonstrate my point, but disallow publishing them. I am often taken to task for the claim even when I publish evidence to that effect, what do you think the result would be if I could not publish the evidence?

 

 

Posted 04/23/04