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."
It's also deciving to people who think they can speak their mind to the writers. I doubt they have a clause in their terms of use that includes "your comments can't damage our corporate image."
Back when I worked for Bell Atalantic DSL Support a customer, disatisfied with his DSL service, created an Anti Bell atlantic DSL website, after which time a flag was put in his file to not speak with him.
Yer free to speak, and the truth shall make yee fret.
Bacardi + slashdot = negative karma.
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
The comment wasn't even relevant to the post or the blog's overall topic (management software/HP OpenView). The blogger certainly isn't responsible for hosting off-topic comments about Media Center PCs!
And you alone decide people's moral obligations?
Apparently HP disgrees with you.
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.
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.
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've found that newegg does not censor negative comments regarding products. They do however censor inappropriate comments. If the comment has nothing to do with the product, service, ect. it is deleted.
As an example, this comment would be deleted:
Did any of you see the game yesterday? I can't believe the Vikings won.
This comment would be acceptable:
Yesterday I watched the Vikings game on this TV tuner card. The software was easy to install and the package got here fast.
This comment would also be acceptable from my experience:
After recording the game yesterday on this TV tuner card, I noticed the quality was not very good. The remote also does not work from my couch which is only seven feet from the sensor. I am considering returning this product and getting a different card.
Newegg's policy regarding censorship is the best I have experienced. You will find negative posts about a product like, "I received the hard drive a week ago and it died today."
I do not work for newegg but am a satisfied customer. I use the product reviews to gain some insight on how a product works, ect. Sure I know that some posts were censored but I am fine with that. I don't want to go through a millon first posts, racists comments, ect. before finding a review with some information I can consider before buying a product.
My hat is off to newegg and I wish I was working there.
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.
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.
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.
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!