Does free mean you cannot complain?

Well, no. In fact, for services which are purely free, complaining is really the only way to push for a change.

But it does mean that if you're complaining about something very far outside the core of the product, you're a lot less likely to be taken seriously by either the provider or bystanders, and rightfully so. And if it's a freemium service, you shouldn't be surprised that complaints from paying customers warrant more attention than free users.

More importantly than how much it costs is how it represents itself. If a service specifically tells you that from time to time you can expect a few hiccups, you can't complain, paid or not. If Gmail were to announce that it had developed the perfect spam filter, and people switched to it for that very reason, they would have every right to complain if it didn't work.

I don't know why so many people come to rescue twitter. So, the point of argument is don't whine if you lose tweets. Because the notional value of tweets is less compared to gdocs.

I guess there are four methods: 1. calmly complaining 2. complaining 3. bit of grunting 4. whining

No, you shouldn't complain, but you could do one of either two things:

1. Offer constructive criticism. In some cases that won't work ("Hey, try not to lose my emails next time, OK?") but in others it works a treat ("Hey, can you offer me a way to download my email?").

2. Vote with your feet as most likely there are competitors that offer the same service also for free. Good luck moving your data, but you already knew you were committing your data to a service that is not guaranteed to exist tomorrow, right?

there is, I would suggest, a difference between complaints and whining.

Whining is only, really, allowed when you pay for a service. Other wise register your complaint calmly and sensibly.

Secondly there is a vast difference between losing some tweets and gmail losing emails or gdocs losing documents. Sure have a bit of a moan: but you can only really viably complain if what is lost has significant value (a point the blog writer makes whe nhe talks about grannies vs. companies losing email).

If you are using a service that is making money by your mere presence aren't you in a way paying them?

Although I don't exactly understand the rationale that free invalidates complaints, I would think a company wants to hear from their disgruntled customers. While praise is a nice morale boost it's the unhappy customers you need to please, the happy ones are already taken care of.

It does mean you can't complain (or risk sounding like a whiny teenager) It doesn't mean you can't offer constructive criticism or take your business elsewhere.

Nothing means you cannot complain.

I've seen this a few times on HN. I don't like it.

Somebody will make a criticism about the programming of the site and somebody else will say something like shut up and stop complaining! It's free.

I think any time a user of your code speaks, you should listen. There's good stuff in there. I don't care if it is free or not. If you're providing it, and I'm using it, then we're in some kind of a relationship. And that relationship means I get to provide feedback. I also think that people should be polite when providing feedback.

And I would like a pony.

Now can we get back to technical articles instead of "what's polite?" articles? Is this Ms. Manners or HN? These things will just generate unneeded smoke.