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?