Hacker News Reader

Comment by jerf | Hacker News Reader

I don't care about their internal motivations. Why should I? It's not as if what you said is even all that different than what we thought anyhow.

Now, I realize that may sound like snark, but I actually mean it on a deeper level than that. Why should I care about their internal motivations? EE chose how they would interact with me. It was their choice. They get to live with the consequences. If they had wanted to be perceived differently, it's incumbent upon EE to decide to treat me differently. It's not my responsibility to try to "understand" them, any more than it is my responsibility to interact with any other company in exactly the way they want. That's freedom, for the both me and EE.

You're equally free to defend them, and I was free to read the defense out of curiosity, which is why I'm posting at all. But the end result is the same; I know EE by their actions, and the result is what it is.

View on HN

I get what you're saying, but haven't you ever made a judgement on someone only to later learn more about the circumstances around them and then modify your judgement?

To me, EE is not deserving of the campaign against them. They're not patent trolls - they built a business that added value, and then they applied some spammy marketing to it. Patent trolls deserve to be taken down with a passion. EE, not so much. Thanks again for your comments.

Yes, that happens all the time. But in that case, there was already a judgment about someone and then I got to know them and then realized that what was said about them was either gossip, or the person changed.

The thing about EE is that it is not gossip. People hate EE and they don't hate it because someone told them to hate it--they already had come to that conclusion on their own. I always hated EE and when I talked to other people about it, I found out they also held the same opinion, many times a fierce hatred of it. There was no campaign to build the hate; the hate was already there, all discovered independently by frustrated coders looking for an answer.

Maybe the evil intentions of EE were not real. But there are moments when I am coding when I want to tear all of my hair out. That emotion is real and won't be forgotten.

Admittedly, they generated plenty of frustration for me, as well. SO has changed everything, but it's kinda funny to me that when we encounter content that isn't free, we have a visceral reaction against it. Yet when people demand our software be free, we'd laugh them to scorn. Thanks for your comments.

> Yet when people demand our software be free, we'd laugh them to scorn.

Speak for yourself. I think free software is pretty much a net good. It's a shame we're not at a point yet where it's the status quo; I'm glad it is for content.

You yourself admit that EE used grey-hat practices and spammy marketing. If, after being named and shamed they apologized, and admitted that they were doing morally wrong stuff, and stopped doing that - then they wouldn't deserve a campaign.

They didn't, and apparently still don't - so they deserve whatever people think about them. Instead of making excuses, you need to apologize - it's that simple.

If your business model really, really, needs cheating your users - then the ONLY moral way out is to quit, no matter what other good things are there.

The issue I had with EE was that their "spammy marketing" took more value than their answers added.

Also this:

>It’s a little known fact that top contributors to EE got VIP treatment. They were flown to different locations around the world, wined & dined, and got lots of cool swag (computers, tablets, etc). When the experts came to visit us in San Luis Obispo, it was all-out fun for them. Experts on Experts Exchange have the potential to get some sweet perks.

Some of that money could've easily gone into improving the UX and adding features to the site which seemed to be stuck in 1999, or failing which, reducing the price of subscriptions. Throwing expensive swag around when there are better places to put it is a bad idea.

They wasted more of my time than they ever saved, with their pollution. To hell with 'em!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com