PR Communications

How Should You Criticize People On Your Blog?

Have you ever been the target of criticism and felt crushed? Then you might have been the target of insults and a harsh judgment, or perhaps the object of some well-intentioned constructive criticism.

Jen McClure makes a plea in her post, “A is for "Authenticity," Not "Asshole" - A Call for Civility in the Blogosphere,” to the blogging community to think before pressing the submit button on their blog posts when it comes to criticizing other people. Otherwise Jen suggests people who do not blog will come to associate blogging with, "opinionated sniping, complaining, name-calling, undocumented accusations and profanity." Jen suggests this is not good for the discipline of blogging and that bloggers should before rising to someone's bait, take a few steps back, contact the person, privately and discuss the other person’s concerns in a mature manner.

Jen asks bloggers to stop cyberbullying, by being positive and kind. There is even a "stop cyberbullying day," that you can join, developed by the national crime prevention council. You should see the video on their website, the scene opens with a crowded auditorium, and two teenagers, one teenager reads out a list of faults of the other teenager, and you see the reaction of the audience and teenager, mainly shocked silence. The message is that if you would not say such negative things out loud why are you writing them on the web?

I can certainly agree with Jen that is a good idea to act maturely. I do think it is okay to give your opinion and criticize other organizations and people. I think the way in which you should conduct criticism is through either positive or negative constructive criticism. I've written about this before in developing my idea about the curmudgeon meter, the idea that a rating for people who complain about other bloggers and organizations, except such criticism may fail to do anything because it is unconstructive when laying out the facts would just suffice.

Factors that go into making the curmudgeon meter were:

-Sticking to facts

-Level of personal attack

-Level of importance of the incident

-Is there a pattern of disagreement between one blogger and another?

Wikipedia defines constructive criticism as the process of "offering valid and well-reasoned opinions about the work of others, usually involving both positive and negative comments, in a friendly manner rather than an oppositional one."

I think key to this definition and Jen's point is how the comments are delivered, are the comments friendly or confrontational? Here I am not saying that all criticism should be positive, but that if you are going to criticize, try to deliver the criticism in a constructive manner.

Who Is Your Favorite Curmudgeon?

There appears to be quite a few bloggers out there who need to reflect on their curmudgeon rating. I know my curmudgeon rating went up a notch or two in the last week.

The idea for the curmudgeon rating was developed from a post I wrote in January of 2006:

"I get suspicious that the reason for all of the bile and hot air is because people want more attention and links, but I was also thinking it was because people don’t know how to give critical feedback to others without sticking in the knife once or twice.

My model for constructive feedback is a toastmaster, toastmasters is an international organization for public speaking and as it turns out polite criticism of other’s work. Toastmasters recommend you always complement the speaker’s presentation, and then provide facts as to how they might improve their speaking next time.

Therefore elements that would go into making the curmudgeon meter would be:

-Sticking to facts
-Level of personal attack
-Level of importance of the incident"

Kevin Dugan from Strategic Public Relations made a great comment on the original post,

"Another metric might be comments from the attacker on the attackees blog in the past? If there are some, do they show a pattern that shows they clearly tend to disagree with the blogger?"

Greg Jarboe of SEO PR recently gave his opinion on why so many curmudgeons inhabit the blogosphere.

"Lack of face-to-face contact. People find it easier to flame someone if they don't have to look them in the eye. If they are on the same panel, then "flaming" often turns into "a light roasting."”

I think Greg is right, would you say what you write online about people in person? If not, then you need to notch up your curmudgeon rating a point or two.

There is also the question of do curmudgeons get something out of the exercise? Perhaps links, traffic, more friends? If so, are you fueling the curmudgeons in your community, and who is your favorite curmudgeon?