Slashdot Mirror
HP Deletes Negative Corporate Blogger Comments
Thomas Hawk writes "HP has recently been making the rounds promoting their new company blogging efforts. Nora Denzel, HP's senior vice president and general manager of HP's Adaptive Enterprise and Software Global Business Unit has started a podcast and a number of new bloggers including David Gee, the head of worldwide marketing for HP's management software business, have also started company blogs. So imagine my surprise when I tried to legitimately leave a comment critical of HP at David Gee's HP blog and had my comment quickly erased and my HP passport (required to leave comments) revoked. Is it one-sided blogging to only let people say positive things about your company on your blog?" Update: 05/07 04:24 GMT by Z : Indeed, "Update: It would appear that David Gee has changed his mind and has
reinstated my comment along with a comment from him saying he would pass
the feedback along. A good first step. I've asked for an explanation as
to why it was removed and hopefully will hear back soon."
Sounds like they admitted what they did. Did it take a bunch of bad PR for them to have a change of heart?
"Earlier this week, an HP customer posted a comment about his experience upgrading a media center PC. His experience was not good and he let us know. We pulled the comment. This was a bad decision and we have reversed it."
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
They have no obligation to host data on their servers that doesn't benefit them. If you have something negative to say about HP you have every right to publicize your message. HP doesn't have to pay for it, though.
It's true! Es verdad! Just like all liberals, he believes in free speech until someone disagrees with his "well cultivated" beliefs and virtues!
Update: It would appear that David Gee has changed his mind and has reinstated my comment along with a comment from him saying he would pass the feedback along. A good first step. I've asked for an explanation as to why it was removed and hopefully will hear back soon.
No. Because you're free to set up your own site and comment. Why the hell should they allow you to post whatver you want on their resources: get your own site.
The only concern is that in america, if they delete a post, they are accepting that they have editorial control over posts and have to censor other posts as the various powers that be wish too: that's why slashdot doesn't censor, only moderates. Otherwise people would have to be employed to remove each and every stupid crapflood if some old lady in michigan complains about the obscenity or something.
Did you think you have the RIGHT to post something on their site and have it published continuously? It's their server, they can do what they want. Publish your own freaking blog. Your Rights Online, indeed.
[
If you go look at the blog, they already put back one negative comment. Was it the posters?
best college pickem site ever: pickem.terrbear.org
Since it's apparently so vulgar, slanderous and unintelligble that it can't even be shown on Slashdot, I can see why HP would want to remove it from their privately owned site and revoke privileges to the account in question to prevent further abuse. But lets hear some really out there comments from the "1st Ammendment means I can say whatever I want where ever I want and stomp on other peoples rights to do it" crowd before we pass judgement.
futureshop.ca starts deleting bad comments on products? If u buy it and dont like it, and they give people somewhere to talk about how good it is, they should sensor out bad comments. The people have a right to know. Only reason to remove it would be if it was WAY over the top, or vaulger.
-EL
corporate blogs are just another arm of their public relations department, everything needs to be positive, big whoop. Once in a while they might include *insider* information, but thats usually sanctioned..
Really, find a way to blog anonymously and rip your company to shreds. Fucked Company or whatever is probably a good way to go about it.
Sounds like their idea of adaptive.
Regardless of them reversing their decision, they have no obligation (moral or legal) to keep any comments on their site that they don't want to keep.
Besides marketing HP products worldwide, it is the Marketing Director's job to silence any criticism directed towards them and make them seem invinceable, which is trying to make up the fact that they decided to merge with Compaq when everyone knew it wasn't a good idea.
In America, you spam computers In Soviet Russia, computers spam you!
You made a jackass comment that was neither well written nor respectful (as you described it in your own blog post) on a company blog. I'm surprised they even put it back up.
Some Japanese thing saying "If you believe everything you read, you shouldn't read."
I like screwing with people. I like managing a webserver. I'd give someone free hosting for their blog and change all kinds of stuff on them, bofh style.
Who cares, really? What if I wanted to say wh ILOVESLASHDOT ILOVESLASHDOT ILOVESLASHDOT nd that was on here for example, you don't think they'd edit it, do you?
FLR
It would be one thing if HP called the site a Postive Comments Only Blog, or something like that. But they call it a blog, a term that means one thing - a site for public news and discourse. Then they try to make it something else that suits their PR.
Either have a blog, or don't. That's their right, as it is their servers. But if you ask for feedback from the community, and you give the appearance of being impartial - deal with the consquences.
jh
Isn't he using poxies ? Don't you have to get his proxy list as fast as he does, and get those IP's banned by posting Taco's home phone number faster than he can start using them ?
I thought that was s.o.p. in case of crapflooding.
HP, of course, associated with these people (read: they pay them to blog). The blog is meant to get them attention, and free advertising. Posting thoughtful comments is really not what they have in mind: they want "HP Goooooooood" comments on the site. Naturally, someone being critical of the company that is hosting such a site will be silenced.
Do, do not, or delegate to someone else: there is no try.
What ever happened to people just shutting the fuck up?
Everyone who cares about what some no-name dude from HP has to say, raise your hands! Oh, right, that's what I thought.
The fact that HP allowed this tripe to begin in teh first place is quite puzzling. Shouldn't people working there be working, instead of writing mindless crap all day?
Agree. This guy seems a little full of himself. The comment made no sense to me, although I got the gist of his beef.
I ran out of ink and it is difficult to replace cartridge and I had trouble and HP refused to send over a technition to replace my cartridge and wash the ink stains from my fingers and pat dry my fingers. THEY SUCK. DON'T BUY.
"Is it one-sided blogging to only let people say positive things about your company on your blog?""
Slashdot is wonderful! OSTG is great! No I'm not being paid to say such things
You have the right to speak, but no one is required to listen.
You have no right to use anyone else's press, be it my web page, HP's blog, or Fox News. Freedom of the Press doesn't override the right to do what you want with your own private property. This seems to be a distinction that eludes many these days...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
"Company blogs" sound like the stupidest quasi-astroturfing lame-o crap to ever hit the Internet. And if an HP employee blogs about the company on the company's servers, does anyone really expect that any negative comments about the company will necessarily be allowed?
I fully support HP's right to delete any comment from HP-hosted blogs at will, and I further support everyone's right not to waste precious minutes of their one and only precious and oh-so-finite lifetime reading such drivel. Why do you care about some Senior Vice President's "podcast"? Go outside or at least read Slashdot instead.
Freedom: "I won't!"
the same folks who run POTUS Bush's town hall meetings...
Comments are not essential to the nature of the beast. We're talking about a public log, essentially a one-to-many form of communication. Comments are mainly for feedback, to be read by the author. They're not a soapbox for anti-author messages.
HP has behaved like this in the past. They lied about the $400 iPaq a lot of people bought not being upgradable to 2003 SE (in spite of the fact a lot of it was written and tested on it) so you'll drop another $400+ to buy a new one to get it.
They make AMD64 notebooks that come with Windows XP Home and then screw customers out WinXP 64Bit by not offering themselves and by shipping them with XP Home making them ineligable for Microsoft's trade-in program.
Anonymous Cowards generally receive no replies because you're a coward and I'm a bitch
Means that when you own it, you have the right to censor it. Not going to argue if it's a good diea or not for HP to do this, but they are will within their rights.
I mean when you get down to it, all blogs exist for pushing the point of view of the owner. Even if you allow comments, they certianly dont' have the same prominence as your own posts and many blogs don't have them at all.
If the corporate face is attached to the item, do you really think that they're going to be as even-handed about it as you think? If the bottom line could be at stake, which goes first, the blog, or the rest of the entire company?
If even the *perception* of trouble comes up attached to the H.P. name, do you think that H.P., or any other company, is going to not do preemptive damage control?
"The Devil does not know a lot because He's the Devil, He knows a lot because he's old." -- unknown
Folks who think know damn well that no matter how good you are someone will had have something bad to say.
/.) would disappear :-)
An undeserved rant requires no response as it pretty well speaks for itself.
A poster is likely quite pleased to see some of his comments pulled. I know I wish some of mine(no not on HP or
Of course it is (one sided).
Business coopts something for self enrichment.
*Shock*
HP's stated intention on that blog is to have an open dialogue with customers. That *implies* both good and bad comments. It does not explicitly say that they are going to publish anything, but there is an expectation that they will publish negative comments as well. To do so reduces the blog to another advertising avenue, which is fine except if they admitted that then no one would go there.
So basically HP was intellectually dishonest about the intention of the blog, and if you read the rest of the comments you see they are almost all a bunch of ring-kissing cheerleader posts. The fact that they re-posted the comment is not impressive at all, it just means they aren't completely incompetent at damage control.
Personally I have nothing for or against HP, but this blog doesn't really seem worth the time or effort to look at, and the people involved with it have lost my trust.
Some penguin headed zealot didn't like my Pro Microsoft / Anti Hippie Linux message on Slashdot and modded me down! CENSORSHIP I SAY!!!
By revoking a comment simply because it was critical they showed they cant be trusted. Since HP is a big company and not just a 4 year old, saying "I'm sorry, and wont do that again" isn't good enough.
They need to provide something to gain peoples trust back, which will either be very creative or take a immense amount of time. This move alone is just PR, and probably doesn't indicate anything. Even if it does, HP will still have to work for years to gain peoples trust.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
IMHO, the real point here is wouldn't you like to live in a world where companies and people actually could be honest and open? The current ethical cesspool really benefits no one.
I'm so tired of overly affluent, unethical people who claim to be where they are because of honest efforts. Sure.
Words to men, as air to birds.
This is corporate America we are talking about--not freedom of speech. Their marketing people are all about "positive spin" for everything. They're profiteers cashing in on a new fangled fad where you're nothing but an emerging market demographic.
You must be smoking crack if you even thought your negative comment would go unchecked on a large corporation's website.
Now, it would be nice to live in a Utopian world where people are treated fairly, corporations aren't greedy, and their products don't have (ahem) "quality control issues." But, seriously, dude-- you're either a very young, starry-eyed, idealist or you live on another planet, cuz that ain't the way of capitalism.
You're generation next sucker--where you wallet is the target of all things corporate. Check your ethics and egalitarian notions at the door.
I'm not bitter--I live in Houston: Home of Enron!
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
There have been a number of comments here saying that you are not obligated to host what you don't want to. Makes some sense. But...
Are you obligated to route stuff you don't want to? If I'm Quest or Verizon or somebody, and my router sees a packet coming in that contains the plaintext "Verizon sucks," am I obligated to route that?
What if I have routers and I'm the Chinese government?
Something similar happened to me and others with the HP support forums. See the following thread: http://tabletpcbuzz.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=2 1659&whichpage=3
o rt/questionanswer.do?threadId=809256
o rt/questionanswer.do?threadId=812063
In particular (since that site can not take much trafic)
---- citing relevant parts of the thread on tabletpcbuzz:
Hmm. My efforts turned out to be futile, since HP removed all my complaints about the loud fan from the support forums. Maybe I was a bit intrusive after few days, when both technical support couldn't help, and my complaints remained unanswered, but they could have kept at least one thread about the issue open, or answer me a straight, but clear "don't even try, we will never ever resolve this problem for you"...
---
I think this is really bad behaviour on HP's part.
I also posted on the HP thread that stevetooth opened. The thread indeed seems gone.
HP have full contact information for each person on the thread, since you have to sign up to post - including serial number of the TC1100. So they know they deal with customers, and have a phone number+address+email for each.
And yet they delete the thread - the don't mark it as resolved, which is an option, it is all gone.
---- Then, a second thread, is also removed:
Why has the thread at HP been removed????
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/bizsupp
---- (end of cite)
Finally, the following thread survived at the HP site:
http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/bizsupp
I'm mentioning this mainly because I think it is bad behavior on HPs part, and people should know...
slashdot sucks!! screw you all!! you guys gonna delete my comment now? but seriously, how closed minded can you get? its the internet; people have the right to say what they want. if you dont want those kind of things there, then don't allow commenting at all!
Very regularly. Try going over to http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/ and entering something which departs from the party. Then count to ten...
Not respectful, not on topic, not even clear what the complaint is.
e nt%20Screenshot-2005.05.06-08.19.47.jpg for screen shot.
If I were HP, would delete it simply for incoherence.
See http://thomashawk.com/hello/305309/1024/HP%20Comm
If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all.
How can it be illegal? Our government does it all the time!
Ok, so, I read Gee's reply "Taking it on the Chin".
Uhmm, I thought that that phrase was a reference to oral sex... but that really doesn't sound like something that that would make it into HP's blog.
What does the phrase taking it on the chin mean?
In Customer Intimacy:
/. story rightly believing he was censored)
<May 5, 2005 2:26:43 PM PDT> thomashawk complained about the media center pc support
(Tom's post disappears, Tom writes a
<May 6, 2005 4:14:43 PM PDT> D Gee responded and apologized for tom's bad experience
<May 6, 2005 4:41:33 PM PDT> thomashawk replied, saying: "Thanks for responding David. Can you explain why my initial comment was deleted and then reinstated? Thanks, Tom"
<May 6, 2005 6:23:53 PM PDT> D Gee informed him: "Tom - you can see my response in my entry "Taking it on the chin""
(Friday May 06, @07:24PM PDT, Slashdot post hits frontpage about HP censorship)
We had no effect on this. They changed their mind BEFORE they got publically shamed for it. Not that I'm agreeing with them removing the comment in the firstplace, but it's interesting.
For context, click Parent.
It just backlashed at them with the /. story.
[nelson]Ha hah![/nelson]
This entire post would make more sense if someone would explain what a "blog" was.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
This is why HP has fallen so far from where it once stood as technology company.
A customer makes a bonafied and honest comment regarding his experience with one of their products and what do they do? Delete and then ignore it.
His complaint wasn't even highly critical. Regardless of the retraction which only seems to have occured because of bad PR it has really solidified by view of HP overtime. The old HP is truly dead and dead.
I'm sorry but this is enough for me to make sure that I stay away from HP stuff permanently.
It's called blowing smoke up someone's ass. It just makes them feel good. And that's what HP wants; to feel good. They feel good. The investors feel good. The chairman of the board feels good. The janitor feels good. EVERYONE feels good.
Marketing Division.
Pass me another drink and a joint.
that feeds you
"...and yet, I blame society" Duke - Repo Man
Yes, the above was a joke....
But honestly: I LOVE MS!!!
I was on The Daily Kos, they posted about how a Conservative Republican was acting like a terrorist, I posted on how some other politicans who were Liberal Democrats who also acting like terrorists, and my account was "anonymized" in that the post was deleted and my account was no longer able to post or create a diary.
I heard The Free Republic does that to people who hold different views too, but I am not on there to confirm it.
Same thing with Kuro5hin, I had a different point of view than some editors there held, and I was "anonymized". Lots of users got "Anonymized" as I recall. Many signed back on with new accounts, protesting their rights being taken away.
Apparently the freedom of speech does not apply to blogs. None of them, apparently, support the freedom of speech to one who posts a negative comment or a different point of view.
On other forums, like IWETHEY, you will get flamed for having a different opinion than the groupmind.
Apparently this is abuse from those who hold a majority point of view, editor, or administration access of a blog or forum. Fascism, Communism, it don't matter, because your right to post your opinion is taken away without even a warning or reason why it was taken away. If not, you are personally attacked until you are forced to leave.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
That blog seems to be sitting behind a diode.
A very sophisticated diode, that is.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
*Is* there such a thing as watching too much 24?
Quack, quack.
Only a fscking moron blogs anyway.
...they could just delete the comment. What're a few whinging geeks gonna do about it? Cry on Slashdot?
Firstly let me say that I agree with all you've said, except the following. Note that I'm not endorsing what HP initially did, although I am endorsing their actions in putting the comment back.
Every consumer knows not everything will be perfect every time.
Unfortunately, there are consumers / customers that expect perfection every time, which I think is unrealistic, and commonly they're also the most vocal. Futher more, they're sometimes also the most stingy - they have "champagne tastes" on a "beer budget".
I've learnt through bad experience there are sometimes "customers" you don't want to have. Some customers want your cheapest priced product or service, and if you give it to them, then have the gall to complain that what they got wasn't the "top of the market". Spending time and effort then dealing with all the follow on "crap" disolves any profit that you derived from the initial sale. They'd have been better not to deal with in the first place.
Less experienced people tend to believe that in business, any customer is a good customer. However, it is better to remember that the only good customer to have is one that is actually a good customer - one that is willing to pay a fair price for what you are providing, and is willing to accept that you're not 100% perfect (just like they aren't), and is then willing to give you reasonable opportunities to rememdy an problems in an acceptable time frame.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
Get with the times, gramps. 1024x768 is the minimum these days. Or are you some miserable schmuck with a phone or pda? In conclusion, LOL.
If you don't like your job you have an option - vamoose. This is not the Soviet Union, you can leave. This job-blogging crap is really getting undignified. People shitting on coworkers after they quit, ragging on execs, etc...yet they won't get off of their asses and put their money where their mouths are and find a place more to their liking. Mostly these people are the cranky insipid perpetual complainers who just want to whine.
They're just using the concept of blogging for the purpose of showing they're 'in'
of course, in the real world I'm sure they wouldn't think twice in deleting posts that are against their post. plus if they do that, visitors would just see those positive praising kiss-in-the-ass posts. giving an impression that they're 'in'
Nothing to see here, just a bunch of hypocrites at their finest.
Homosexuality is a crime against God.
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
they stole a page from W's playbook...
Bushferatu!
sad ...
GetTheJob.com : Nothing but Real Jobs.
but its also our right to discuss their policies, and not respect them as a company as a result of them.
They now have a PR fire to put out. They can get the lawyers if they want... but they will need years to put this one out.
They are now known for silencing anyone who disagrees with them among the tech community.
Personally I don't censor anything on my blog unless it's: illegal, obscene (and I'm rather liberal about this one), racist, etc. I don't really care about critical comments. I just don't want people to read and be offended by what they read in my visitors comments.
HP's going to need a lot of PR to undo the damage this slashdot story will do to it.
Sorry HP, you blew it. Go ahead, for now on, your blog community is useless as a PR tool because nobody trusts it. Even Business Week realized how important blogs are to business. And you managed to ruin your blog presence. Bravo.
If I were a VP at HP, I would seriously consider terminating who ever made that policy decision. That easily costs millions in PR (the fact that it ruined the "blogs as PR" strategy). You can make a mistake at work, but one one that ruins a marketing strategy of such large size.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out. My guess is HP is not just going to read this slashdot article and ignore it. Heads may turn, they may lash out at bloggers who comment on it, and try to scare them... but they will respond.
Lets just hope they learn something, and other companies get the idea: silence customers, and they ruin your business.
I have never heard of this blog before, and quite frankly it seems like a waste. The only comments are those by thomashawk and David Gee, oh and another guy suggesting he has nice hair. Besides it is his blog, why can't he delete the comment? I think mr. Hawk is taking this a bit too far and Zonk should never have posted it.
Back in 1999 I had problems with the Rockwell modem in a new HP Pavilion desktop that I bought. The modem would dial and connect but could not maintain even a 28.8 connection on the admittedly noisy POTS line that I have in this older neighborhood. Every other computer in the house, including a Toshiba PII laptop had no trouble connecting and staying connected for hours. I went to the HP discussion forums for my model and posted questions. I called tech support and got a the news that it was a fine modem and that it was my phone line in spite of telling them that all other modems worked fine. I saw a post from someone else that had the same problem...and the next day it was gone. I posted my comments outlining the situation above and my message disappeared by the next day.
I wrote to the CEO, whoever that was before Carly, and pointed out the situation and mentioned that I run a discussion forum site of my own that gets around 75,000 visits a month and that my next step was to post a serious discussion about the modem and how I was treated on the HP forum. I mailed from Illinois on a Thursday. On Tuesday I got a call from a staffer at the CEOs office telling me that if I'd go buy whatever kind of modem I wanted and fax them the receipt, they cut a check for that amount and mail it the same day. I went and bought a US Robotics USB modem, the latest greatest, for some $239.00. I faxed the receipt, didn't even open the plastic wrap on the modem and returned it. By this time I'd already bought a Zoom external for $99 anyway. I got the check in 3 days and have lived happily ever after.
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
I got a bunch of my informative goatse links and tubgirl redirects deleted there. Now I can't post anything. Fucking corporate whores, is freedom of speech only for those who own the marketplace in Bu$h's America?
Is it one-sided blogging to only let people say positive things about your company on your blog?
That's corporate America for you! Ignore anything critical, continue in the same way you always have and damn them ungrateful hippies whenever you export their jobs to India! How dare they bitch!
This is the sure way to success. This will guarantee that HP stays on top!
NOT!
How did he get the before photo? I don't know about you, but I don't go around taking screenshots of my desktop randomly... Did he start with the assumption that HP is evil and would therefore delete his comment and thus need the evidence?
You posted a smartass comment. You could have phrased it in a way to invite a helpful response, but you didn't. It's because of jackholes like you that I have the following Mitchelesque disclaimer on my site:
We will print no comments. We will give no space to opposing points of view. They are wrong. We are at war and will give the enemy nothing but battle.
Maybe they need some sensitivity training classes, to better moderate trolls upwards.
Slashdot, however, needs no help in this department. Only occasionally do they notice, even in your case. (Evolution isn't credible because of Dawkins? Please. I might as well argue that slashdot isn't credible because of *you*.)
ohh wait, I mean slashdot...
Anybody afraid of DDoS attacks?? I thought so ^_^
Your one-sided stupidity are belong to... you. Get it?
Have a good one.
===== "Every head is a different world so don't invade mine you FREAK!" smartSAGA said
Interesting how the Slashdotters complain about being censored by the corporations, while slashdot is a censorship haven. http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=148620&cid =12459645
So it's friday night and i'm spending it reading the posts around the public discussion i had with Tom http://h20276.www2.hp.com/blogs/gee/2005/04/12/111 3321761000.html which started in earnest today. to be honest, when tom posted yesterday, i was travelling back west from the east coast and didn't know his post was removed until i got into the office this morning PST and reversed the decision which is being so passionately debated here.
We run a commercial enterprise which lives and dies by our ability to build and deliver value to our customers from the largest enterprises to the home user - whether they be printers, PCs, servers, storage, services and of course management software. There are tens thousands of hard working people at HP, just like me who show up every day driven by this passion to deliver customer value. We may not be perfect, but we strive to do what's right.
Found at forums here:
http://www.totalwar.com/community/rome.htm
So community acts:
http://www.petitiononline.com/rtw/
Even a small company should consider a policy on this before they put up forums or blog/response. Only realizing later that customers don't like their comments deleted is poor planning!
I don't know about you guys, but HP is one of those companies that makes me want to get out the tin-foil hat. These blogs are nothing more than a secret vector to infect the public's sensibility with mindless drivel.
It helps if you tell them how long you've been a stockholder, and you know the date and address of the last one. If you say all that in one breath, even an empty such threat goes a very long way.
Yeah, this is definitely HP's style. After the uproar that they had decided not to offer a windows mobile 2003se upgrade for their PDAs (even though they had already developed the upgrade and had shown it at a trade show, and I used this info when I decided on my purchase of a 2210) so that they could make way for their new lineup of PDAs using 2003se. The massive uproar in the forum was very well controlled, nonetheless, it was moderated, and eventually, the entire thread regarding the subject was closed, and the topic was forbidden for discussion, and people were stopped from even viewing the thread anymore. HP's got a bad habit. Try not to take anything they publish on faith, be critical.
Slashdot goes for blood.
(story is a little out of focus on the issue)
However, I await a slashdot overlord to remove my comment then to reinstate my comment but only after the mod. has a chance to retort.
peace be with you.
Blogs can be dangerous things to large corporations and small businesses. Look for the blog of the author Laurell K Hamilton (I don't have a link at the moment). She makes a change to her story line, and naturally some of her die-hard fans are outraged. So what's the focus of the blog posts? The negative, rather than the good that has gone into the books thus far.
Any efforts to clean up public posts appear to be cowardly acts or conspiracy. It's like giving everyone a megaphone instead of a customer service phone number. If a company wants feedback, the public will give it to them. And they won't all be polite. Just look at the Slashdot effect - now everyone thinks there's a grand conspiracy to silence the client base, when it could be perfectly innocuous. Bottom line... blogs are best for personal, small-scale or author-post scenarios. Having a blog that allows comments on a multimillion dollar corporation is just asking for trouble.
What right is being violated or threatened here? The servers belong to HP, the way I see it they have the right to delete anything they want. It might not be nice, but that's an entirely different matter.
Slashdot editors, can you at least *try* to keep the section on topic please?
It's official. Most of you are morons.
TV used to have fantastic credibility, back in, say, the 1950s. Now, whenever a commercial comes on, people automatically zone out. Most commericials are irritating because they are not entertaining, not realistic, and not honest. Blogs may go the same way.
This doesn't have a thing to do with having the "right" to decide what material should be on their server. They're trying to convince people that they're genuine. Now everyone sees that they aren't. They blew it.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
I agree with the guy who said you can't treat a company as a single entity. This was plainly an error of judgement by one guy who decided to pull a comment he didn't like on his blog. The error was compounded because he didn't consider at the time that it could end up somewhere like Slashdot where it would be viewed by thousands of net users, many of them HP customers (or potential customers).
But what happened next? The comment was restored and a speedy and (fairly) humble admission was given that a mistake had been made.
Personally I don't have a strong opinion either way about HP (other than that Carly Fiorina was a mistake). But it seems to me that one guy (albeit the Worldwide Head of Marketing) made a misjudgement and then corrected it. Big deal - this happens in business every day and I'm surprised it's even considered newsworthy. Actually for standing up and admitting his error, Gee has more respect from me than he did before; although that's primarily because I didn't know who he was!
If its HP, they can control the content as they feel, and welcome to the real world.
If its not HP, then bring it up to the owners.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
He starts off by needlessly telling us he's working on a Friday night, as if this is some indicator that he's taking the issue seriously...
to be honest, when tom posted yesterday, i was travelling back west from the east coast and didn't know his post was removed until i got into the office this morning PST and reversed the decision which is being so passionately debated here.
We run a commercial enterprise which lives and dies by our ability to build and deliver value to our customers from the largest enterprises to the home user - whether they be printers, PCs, servers, storage, services and of course management software. There are tens thousands of hard working people at HP, just like me who show up every day driven by this passion to deliver customer value.
We may not be perfect
, but we strive to do what's right.
This is shameless responsibility avoidance. Take an ethics class, David Gee.
He starts off by needlessly telling us he's working on a Friday night, as if this is some indicator that he's taking the issue seriously...
Maybe he's just trying to make the point that he's just some guy, like you or me, who reads Slashdot. It's called making a human connection.
to be honest, when tom posted yesterday, i was travelling back west from the east coast and didn't know his post was removed until i got into the office this morning PST and reversed the decision which is being so passionately debated here.
Maybe he doesn't want to/doesn't need to/can't expose internal issues. If he fired his administrative assistant over this, would you want him to tell you that? Could he?
We run a commercial enterprise which lives and dies by our ability to build and deliver value to our customers from the largest enterprises to the home user - whether they be printers, PCs, servers, storage, services and of course management software. There are tens thousands of hard working people at HP, just like me who show up every day driven by this passion to deliver customer value.
Maybe this is the corporate mission statement, and he actually believes in it. Is delivering value to customers a bad thing?
We may not be perfect
Nowhere does he do that. Maybe it's just a guy eating crow.
, but we strive to do what's right.
Neither his intentions nor his actions were reprehensible.
This is shameless responsibility avoidance. Take an ethics class, David Gee.
I'm wondering what more you want. Guy not only recognizes the wrong thing was done and reverses it, he goes over to the very public forum of his primary critics (looks like he created an account just for this event) and publicly apologizes. Would you be man enough to do that?
No, I don't know either party and have no connection of any sort with HP.
Slashdot? Ethically challenged?* Say it isn't so.
*Wonder if he's an athiest?
Chris Locke predicted this behavior with his book Gonzo Marketing. Some exerpts from it are here.
People are interested in REAL conversations, not the contrived sort of marketdroid speech that makes people want to gag. People are also very good about recognizing BS when it occurs, and the internet is an effective way to provide negative feedback. (How long will it be before the HP blog comes down?)
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
Yeah exactly. THe policies arent all "hard-wired", people interpret additional meaning into them, and commonly practised standards are always rather different than corperate policy.
I bet the people who took off the negative comments, did so to protect themselves and the blog in general from other departments who would have taken it more seriously. Basically, they were covering their asses by deleting the comment, because any level of the company can read it, and will make a big deal out of nothing. Thats because there are departments, and people, whose job is to PROTECT CORPERATE IMAGE at all costs; they wont hesitate to anihilate blogs, etc., even if the managers think its a good idea.
AC: Slashdot? Ethically challenged?* Say it isn't so.
...Female ...etc]?"
*Wonder if he's an athiest?
With the sibling's quibbling about spelling aside, there is no correlation between being atheist and ethically challenged. A statement like that is just as bigoted and egregious as "Ethically challenged? *Wonder if he's a Jew [...African
For the retards: Atheists have Ethics, Too.
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
this is hardly a new thing, ask anyone who has been invovled in the live-beta test of the star wars galaxies (mmog) games recent combat upgrade. Unless you had "contrustive" things to say a.k.a. praise for the machine..your posts where deleated and you where likely to be banned from the boards. this has ben going on for ages in many forms on the net. company sponsered boards..blogs whatever are subject to the editing whims of the company conttroling them, they always have been. unfortunately most companies have such disdain for the single uninited consumer that they now feel that they can simply tell us as an individual to go to hell, theres a world of us individuals out there still and our dollar wont be missed, there are others waiting in line
"tell the ones that come after me that 5 is to much"
Say I'm an employee of Corporation X. My job, first and foremost, is to do everything I can to make buttloads of money for X's shareholders, be that in increasing revenue, decreasing costs, or inflating the stock price.
Conversely, if I do something in your spare time, say, while blogging, which injures your company, my ass is on the grill. Hell, they could even roast me for due diligence if I fail to do something, say, remove somebody's negative comment on a highly public blog under my immediate control.
It's pretty screwed up, I know, but that's the game. Don't look at it so much as a corporation subverting a media form, or murdering the truth, but rather a corporation doing exactly what a corporation's sole purpose (making money) prescribes.
For instance watch Jennifer Garner's message board for posts about her man-ish looks. I've seen some respectfull and interesting posts get deleted, yet if the post is chidlish and Garners fans "beat up" on the OP the post is left....
IMDB won't respond to my emails asking how and when they justify removing posts that don't violate their terms.
Can anyone help out?
why in hell does this come as a surprise to anyone?
"Corporate blogs" were never intended to show the public what a company is doing or how they work - they exist to show what the compay wants people to perceive.
Remember: blogging is a form of communication. Corporate blogging thus equals Corporate Communication, which in turn equals Advertisement.
One should have no more faith in a corporate blog than one does in any other press release.
Still, at least HP host the site themselves, so nobody should be under any illusions as to who retains editorial control..
"For the retards: Atheists have Ethics, Too."
...Female ...etc]?""
Yes. There called "situational ethics".
"there is no correlation between being atheist and ethically challenged."
Well there's certainly a correlation between those who practice religious morals, and those who don't violate copyright. Or did you think all that "Thou shall not..." was just for our benefit?
"*Wonder if he's a Jew [...African
Speaking of retard. People are born a particular race, or gender. People aren't born with ethics, or morals for that matter.
but they can't force us to buy their products.
I personally don't like this Thomas Hawk, from this whole thing.
1) If you read his blog about it, he insults ALL IT professionals and tech support people in particular.
2) His post on HP's site was not well written.
3) He then expects slashdot to rally behind him.
Sure, Slashdot didn't post it before it was changed back, however he sought this avenue before that point.
which makes it easy to pretend that stealing from a corp harms nobody, but it does.
among others, it harms the employees. Most slashdotters, those that actually have jobs at least, are employed by corporations.
How about you, parent?
The whole company blog thing is just a popular PR stunt. It makes a big corporation seem more open when they're acting the same as they always do. Letting employees blog is just a way of presenting a "friendly" face to the outside world.
Don't expect companies to be nice.
Well, there's also a strong correlation between priests and 'molesting little boys'.
Or is that okay because it's not listed in the "Thou shalt not" top ten?
My post could have only been redundant if everybody, except the original poster, knew that some customers weren't worth having.
of course, if the original poster didn't know that, then my post wouldn't be redundant to him or her.
Actually, come to think of it, with the amount of complaining about various, insignificant things here on Slashdot, a relatively high percentage of slashdotters would probably be "customers you don't want to have ...".
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
No way! You actually sound surprised that a corporate giant who is only blogging as a PR technique is deleting negative comments that might affect their public image! Gosh what's next, politicians saying bad things about each other?
Honi soit qui mal y pense.
This is just one more example of how corporate / business ethics has gone the way of the dinosaur, all we have is the structure all the flesh is fake. In the last few weeks we have seen this same type of flip-flop from at least three of the big ten in the Tech-sector "MS, HP and Oracle" and I am sure there are more. Have you ever read some of the rules of submission on some of these corporate blogs? HP: http://welcome.hp.com/country/us/en/termsofuse.htm l See: User submissions and Chat rooms and other user forums. We do not have the right to be heard if they wish to silence us they have that right "It is there bandwidth". It is the same way with politics here in the "LAND OF THE FREE"; "WE THE PEOPLE" are being silenced everyday! We the people have allowed the CEO's and politicians to run our life.
Maxwell L. Barrett Comp-WE-Mentor Software Trainer
One of the issues at hand though is that if somebody has a problem with a product that directly relates to a major fault, one may not know about it if comments towards said fault are not known. This doesn't just affect new buyers (which I'm sure the censoring is aimed at not scaring away) but current owners who are trying to troubleshoot their problem.
I have a Pavillion ZD7000 laptop. This laptop has a *known* issue wherein if you fill the second RAM DIMM it will tend to spontaneously reboot if you use memory-intensive applications. So far there has been no fix since late last year, what comments I could find referencing it on HP are now faded into obscurity. This is a serious problem, and one that could land HP in a class-action lawsuit if it isn't remedied. I really can't see HP being very public about it, it would scare away potential customers and invite others to gather aginst them... but where else would somebody find out about such an unexpected issue? Most would probably assume it was the OS being flakey, and even googling doesn't come up with much on the issue.
I actually found my error when the adobe site came up with the issue in regards to PhotoShop (it also occurs in GIMP, etc). Sorry HP, but your solution isn't good enough...
While I agree with the parent's message in spirit, in practice it is incorrect to treat a corporation as monolithic. Legal doctrines arising from obscure footnotes in Supreme Court decisions written by clerks notwithstanding (Corporate Personhood) a corporation is actually a collection of disparate people of varying viewpoints, abilities, levels of knowledge, loyalty and engagement, often with widely divergent agendas, ruled over in an autocratic and massively inefficient manner.
No. A corporation that's small and focused isn't like that; it's accountable. You can't excuse poor behaviour based on a corporate design that scales badly. That's letting them have their cake, and eat it, too. With privelege comes responsiblities. If a corporation is to be viewed as a legal entity, it is to be viewed as a legal entity, fine. Then it has all the responsibilites of any other singular legal entity, including the responsibility to act like one, at all times, under all circumstances.
If it's impractical for a corporation to live up to it's requirements, then it should not choose to remain a corporation. It's a choice of how to do business: and a business can and must be held to whatever standard it purports to be. Otherwise, it's getting away with lying about it's status: and such fraudulent behaviour is unacceptable. If you can't scale your business communications up appropriately, you shouldn't scale them up at all.
My point is, we don't know, if it was simply the administrator of the blog who removed the negative comments, his manager who directed him to do it, or a stultifying policy straight from the top.
It's irrelevant: the corporation as a whole is reponsible for correct action, at all times. If that's impractical, then the scope of the corporation is too large. We shouldn't absolve a company for sheer incompetence: it has publicly and formally claimed it can legitimately be treated as a "person": and now it has to live up to that claim.
--
AC
For the retards: Atheists have Ethics, Too."
Yes. There called "situational ethics
No. They're called "ethics". They're based in fairness, kindness, and honesty.
Religious folks, on the other hand, have "faith" and "dogma". They're told what to think, and what to believe, and their beliefs are often ugly and corrupt.
Jehova, the Christian god of sacrifice, sends Abraham to slaughter his son Issac on a stone altar to prove his loyalty. This is called a "test of faith": being willing to kill, even innocent children, as loyalty to their faith is a much glossed over, but very present, part of Christian teaching.
"Devout" people learned hatred for "unholy" people and "unclean" acts. Atheists take the time to think carefully about right and wrong, and make up their own minds in a consistant, fair manner.
Of the two sets of ethos, give me the guy who is not out to slaughter my chickens (or worse, my children!) on some altar to appease the voices in his head.
--
AC
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