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Comment by richardjordan | Hacker News Reader

This is a pointless waste if time. The guy has made shed loads of money and his actions have clearly demonstrated he doesn't give a flying whatever about anyone's opinion of his actions and will continue to do whatever maximizes his profit. I say that without positive or negative judgment. It just is what it is. The whole - hey we know you're really a nice kid so stop bullying the other kids - schtick never worked in the play ground and it doesn't work as grown ups. I see this sort of thing all the time. We don't live in a society where shame has any meaning any more so trying to appeal to someone's good nature and the whole "hey it's not you it's your minions" crap is of no use.

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I've chatted with Craig before. He has helped us at greatnonprofits.org quite a bit in the past. Regardless of what business decisions the executives in charge of craigslist are making that does not somehow make Craig not a nice guy. In particular I respect his decision to not second guess or meddle with the judgement calls of the executives in charge of craiglist. I am sure if he has any disagreements with how they do business he has the tact to discuss this with them in private.

As far as I can tell Craig cares a lot about the world. I'm sorry if he has been focused on customer service and his nonprofit work and doesn't have time to go out of his way to save every single wantrapanuer that believes they've figured out some way to make a dime off of his past investment in craigslist.

"Wantrapaneur"

I love this term. How did I not know of it before?

I've spoken with him too, very recently. It's my impression he's still actively answering support emails for CL (as in daily). No?

That is the impression I get. He comes to our annual events but I've been out of the country living the expat life and keeping expenses down . . . so you've likely spoken to him more recently than me. He talks with my CEO now and then and helps give her advice on growing our nonprofit and helping our consumers. Which we appreciate a lot.

I don't really follow his comments in the news and so on but everything I've gleaned first hand and second hand about the guy leaves me thinking that he's still a class act, and all around traditional geek.

As far as kribbr or whatever it is called goes . . . if there is a long history of litigious behavior from an organization and you go ahead with a business model that may spark a C&D don't act like your personal hero has stabbed you int he back. Whether the C&D was grounded or not how is it occurring a surprise. CL has every legal right to try to protect their business model to the extent allowed by the law. If you genuinely feel that they've over stepped it then fight it. Or come up with a business model that disrupts the space with out needing to leech off of what is already there.

craigslist is far from profit maximizing. That's part of why craigslist's users tend to love it.

And that's also precisely what a lot of the CL scrapers want to go after— try to pick up money that CL is leaving on the table.

I'm not sure if I should vote you down or up, as I can't tell if you're in favor of scrapers "pick[ing] up money that CL is leaving on the table."

On the one hand, you're correct in identifying the scrapers' intent, on the other its an ugly sentiment and the sort of thinking I would prefer to discourage if you are advocating for it.

It was mostly just an observation. I think the situation is that CL is not currently milking everything to the last penny, and other people see those pennies laying there tantalizingly, so want to build some milking apparatus on top of CL's pasture, to mix metaphors.

To the extent that I have opinions about it, probably mildly negative. I'm skeptical of the view that anything you can possibly monetize is automatically a good idea.

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