From: Tim DiChiara
To: Fabian Pascal
So, we've published anti-ODBMS (you), pro-ODBMS (the CTO
guy), and somebody who bridges the gap. I call that balanced reporting. Whatever
your subjective opinion, that's the job of an impartial IT media outlet.
From: Fabian Pascal
To: Tim DiChiara
I am surprised that you, with a scientific background, do not
realize the main issue here. The kind of "balance" you refer to is
appropriate in politics, conflict resolution and personal opinions. There is no
such thing as balance between science and non-science, between logic/math and
ad-hoc approaches.
If you don't understand that, then what can we expect from
uneducated practitioners?
From: Tim DiChiara
My scientific training isn't in object databases. I, like 99%
of IT media people, am not an expert in every technical sphere (or any, for
that matter!). Since 1) many experts promote object technology; and 2) many
companies have adopted it, it is therefore worthy of coverage. It is then your
job -- and the job of other experts -- to promote or critique it from a
scientific/mathematical basis or otherwise. Object databases (and associative
databases, etc, etc) are not immediately dismissible by non-experts like me.
The pros and cons must be aired in the public forum.
The best you can hope for is that the media gives a
reasonably balanced view of a technology, then lets the marketplace
(eventually) decide the outcome. That is, after all, what has happened with
relational databases -- other models have come and gone, but the RDBMS (however
imperfectly implemented) carries on. (I usually am very wary of relying on the
"marketplace" to decide anything, by the way.)
From: Fabian Pascal
You are missing the points.
1.
I did not mean scientific training in object databases --
there is NO science behind OO, that's the problem -- but in science per se. You
should be able to distinguish between a theoretical foundation -- predicate
logic and set mathematics -- and ad-hoc approaches. You should know that an
approach other than relational would have to substitute something better for
logic and you should ask what that substitute is from anybody who wakes up in
the morning and out of sheer ignorance "replaces RM".
2.
If you let me
criticize ODBMS, but insist on giving equal time to all sorts of nonsense,
without any discerning -- that's your "balanced approach" -- you are
essentially implying equivalence between the arguments. Since the readers know
even less than the authors and you, you are misleading them.
3.
The fact that something has been adopted or promoted in the
industry does not mean it is good, or right, or useful. In fact, chances are it
means it is not. Yes, it needs to be covered, but critically, not
'balanced" just because some vendor or idiot says it.
4.
Reliance on "the market" serves in capitalism the
same function that communism and religion serve: it's sheer ideology and has no
relation to reality.
Let's see how "balanced" you really are when I
submit the next columns.
From: Tim DiChiara
I will continue to maintain that one job of an impartial IT
media is to present the pros and cons of widely adopted technologies. It is the
experts' and the readers' job to promote or critique them based on science,
logic, set theory, witchcraft, or whatever. Alas, much of the IT media only
presents the "pro" (aka hype) and not the "con". I hope
that SearchDatabase is different -- after all, we're paying you to say whatever
you want. eWeek or Computerworld wouldn't give you as much freedom, that's for
sure.
If the marketplace is sheer "nonsense," why has it
been dominated by the RDBMS (however imperfectly implemented) for 30+ years?
If the [next columns] contain reasoned arguments instead of
ad hominem attacks, then they will most likely be published. However, I can't
make any promises until I see them, naturally.
From: Fabian Pascal
Equivalence of theory and witchcraft is just what I expect
from the media (and certainly not from a scientist).
Not exactly "whatever I want". Remember how my
initial contact with SearchDatabase went; and your frequent warnings NOT to
respond to certain postings. But as I said, I'll put you to test and we'll see.
As to other pubs, I wouldn't write for them anyway.
SQL technology was adopted as one of the fads, not for
serious reasons. And it survives for the same reasons that hierarchic DBMSs did
before it: once it's adopted, migrating to a new technology is prohibitive.
I never do ad-hominem attacks and I dare anyone to point to
any critique that I published that is NOT reasoned. Unfortunately, our concepts
of reasoning are very different. Your concept includes Guzenda's rebuttal,
which you called coherent and a reader has readily shown that was hardly the
case. Ditto for Hurley and Barry, as I shall demonstrate
From: Tim DiChiara
I forgot -- the other thing I don't like publishing is
responses to responses to responses, critiques of critiques of critiques. I
think it's uninteresting and difficult to follow -- and the traffic stats
corroborate the fact that readers don't like it either. Thus, your agenda is
not advanced, and TechTarget's money is not well spent. So, if that's what you
have in mind, then we may have an argument on our hands (what a surprise!). Of
course, I'll reserve judgment until I see the text.
From: Fabian Pascal
Let me get this straight: you publish my stuff which is
reasoned and based on theory; you then publish, for "balance",
nonsense that is not reasoned, then you disallow my rebuttal to demonstrate
that it is nonsense because "it's not popular". Is there any wonder
that the field looks the way it does?
I have yet to see one iota of evidence that when I criticize
bad criticism, readers "don't like" it. But even if this were true,
check out the text following my signature. Truth is rarely popular, which
probably explains why marketing BS is so popular in this society.
Either you make sure to leave nonsense out, or you allow as
much criticism of it as necessary. Anything else is disservice.
Ed. Note: On 7/18 I
received a column termination notice from the editor. I proposed to make it
public, which triggered the following exchange:
From: Tim DiChiara
"I had a meeting with TechTarget's CEO today and we went
over SearchDatabase's traffic stats for the year thus far. Unfortunately, your
column has not grown in accordance with our membership growth--traffic has
remained steady at about 1500-2000 page views a month. Furthermore, our sales
staff has yet to find a sponsor for it.
As I always do, I fought strongly to keep your column, but he
decided to discontinue it after the August issue. His reasoning was that we're
paying you and we're not even breaking even on the investment. I'm sure you
predicted this, and I'm sure it confirms everything you think about IT media.
In this case, you're right of course. But in this dismal economic climate
(which is especially dismal in the media), I'm amazed that I was able to keep
you on for as long as I did.
However, I value your unique contribution to the site and I'd
like to retain our relationship somehow, if you're interested. You can use the
"Ask the Expert" section to drive traffic to your site. Also, we can
schedule at least two webcasts per year (these we could offer you paid
compensation, as before). Finally, I can pay you our typical rate of $1/word
(max $600) for occasional self-contained articles (these would be more
straightforward educational-type articles).
From: Fabian Pascal
What took them so long? All that can be said I already said
over and over again.
How about publishing this notification of yours in the last
column in August -- let's see what kind of reaction they get. But I won't hold
my breath. I will, of course, publish it on my site under any circumstances.
As a rule, I am not very keen on relationships in which my
work is not appreciated (I mean TechTarget, not you), let alone contributing
for free. But as a favor to you, if they are willing to shift the fee from the
column to the Expert section, I will be willing to answer a given number of
questions per month. Ditto for webcasts. As to articles, all of mine are
educational, but it's not education that's of interest.
If and when I have anything, I'll let you know.
From: Tim DiChiara
Keep in mind that the "termination" was based on
traffic stats, and had nothing to do with content -- the CEO doesn't know you
from George W., after all. So if you're intending to use this as an example of
the problems of the IT media, it doesn't really fly. If you were getting more
traffic, it wouldn't matter if your column advocated worshipping Satan.
From their perspective, you're not working for free. The
promo spots we're offering you are worth a minimum of $3,000 each.
Probably won't work. You're a critic of XML, of course. How
about a topic that you would argue FOR, instead of against? Off the top of my
head: "Top 10 misunderstood aspects of the relational model" or
"What is a data model?" etc.
From: Fabian Pascal
Your notification says it was traffic, anybody reading
it should see that, so what's your point?
And this certainly does reflect the problems of IT
media, and quite well. You kept telling me how you won't make judgements about
content and will publish anything, apparently as long as it gets
traffic. With a vast majority of readers uninformed and uneducated and the
media caring only about traffic and not content and publishing mostly nonsense,
I would say that's exactly the kind of major problem I've been deploring.
Hunting profits affects the content, it's just that the hunters either don't
see it, or are disingenuous (I have this sense that if the writer were a
vendor, he would stay on even without traffic. There are "business
considerations", you know.)
Contradicting yourself again, aren't you? Weren't you saying
that it's my task to criticize? You've got tons of crap on XML, but
hardly any criticism. Where exactly is your so-called "balance"?
What you propose certainly won't solve the traffic problem.
But substantive criticism of a current fad that is being forced on people by
some vested in it may.
From: Tim DiChiara
There really isn't any use making an argument when there
isn't one, as we've discussed ad inifinitum.
The mainstream IT media wouldn't have hired you. We did. The
mainstream IT media wouldn't have kept you on for two years. We did. To use our
site, and this incident, as an example of anything is silly.
Your column was stopped because of traffic concerns, not
content. The root cause of the lack of traffic is either 1) your writing style,
or 2) the lack of education among the public... NOT anything we did or didn't
do. If the column were stopped because of something you wrote, then you'd have
justification for outrage at the spineless/corrupt nature of the media. But
that wasn't the case, obviously.
Since we are a for-profit company and not a charity, we need
either traffic or advertising revenue to justify our freelancer expenses. You
seem to want us to not care about either. Sites that don't need to make any money
-- academic journals, hobby sites by individuals (e.g., dbdebunk.com), etc --
might have kept you on indefinitely.
I'm sorry to see the column go--it offered a unique
perspective. However, you can still offer that unique perspective if/when one
of our reporter’s contacts you for comment about a breaking story. Of course,
if you refuse to do that, your voice will be unheard. (Asking reporters
questions instead of providing answers won't work--sorry, that's the reality.)
I don't really care one way or the other--it's up to you.
Like I said, webcasts, Ask the Experts, and occasional
articles are also opportunities for you... It's up to you. Hopefully, you'll
decide that our 160,000 members represent a rare opportunity to make you some
money on your seminars, which of course is one of your main goals.
No, that's not what I said (besides sarcastically).
From: Fabian Pascal
It is you who are arguing at infinitum and trying to
extricate your company from the general category it belongs to. My analysis is
correct and applies to your company as well as it applies to all mainstream
media.
They allowed it because they trusted you that the traffic was
going to increase. Had they really understood who I was and what I am writing,
they wouldn't have let you publish me. In fact, they rejected me from the
start, when they wouldn't publish my introductory article. And you did keep
trying to convince me to change what I was writing.
You are simply in denial of the effect of trade media
behavior on content; I can understand that, it's not pleasant to be part of the
system and you must rationalize it somehow, or you would suffer from cognitive
dissonance.
Let me reiterate: the media does not have to discontinue
material explicitly for content reasons in order to determine what
content is published and what is not. The traffic considerations in
themselves achieve this result. By insisting on traffic they by
definition disallow certain types of content and permit others. And their own
traffic considerations are bent sometimes not for quality content, but for
ulterior considerations, such as relationships with vendors.
You cannot, and I will not allow you to dismiss your
employer's responsibility for disseminating misinformation and disinformation.
My two years column is a drop in the bucket relative to the tons of crap
they're publishing, and which by itself makes it easy to marginalize my kind of
material and, thus, lower the traffic for it. You can rationalize it to
yourself and to others all you want, but you can't do it to me.
The point is your company would publish anything that
makes them money and would not care a damn bit if it's accurate or not.
Please, give me a break. Reporters, really. You just rejected
an article which exposed how your own reporters work and that they were offered
advice and ignored it, probably in large part because they don't want to bother
educating themselves -- if they are not required to know anything (as you
admit) why should they bother? [Ed. Note:
Stay tuned for the publication of the rejected article here and judge for
yourself.]
As I said, I'll think about it. I may do submit only when I
deem something important, but I will never fool myself into believing that
large audiences are worth addressing. It's when I start attracting those that
I'll have to worry where the hell I went wrong. I leave the masses to the trade
media.
Of course that's not what you said. But if it's not accuracy
and relevance that the media uses to decide whether to publish or not (which is
what you argue and defend) and the priority is traffic, the result is exactly
what I say and demonstrate in ample writings, the logical conclusion
which you prefer not to admit. And may I add, as an aside, that that's typical
american thinking [Ed. Note:
Meaning failure to realize or recognize that commercial policy has a
filtering effect on content].
Posted
05/03/02
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