4 ms·

Relevancy?

by ralph 19y ago

Relevancy?

nostrademons 19y ago
It's a good example of how to handle a PR crisis. If your site gets popular enough, you will face one. The natural reaction of an executive is usually one of two: 1.) Ignore the problem, eg. Intel with the Pentium bug. 2.) Blame the user, eg. most customer service reps nowadays. Stewart didn't do either of these - he took full responsiblility, explained why the action was taken (no matter how misguided), and enacted policies to prevent it from happening again. And you can see that the result is even more customer loyalty. We had several of these crises situations when I was at FictionAlley. They're much more difficult to handle than they seem from the outside, because there are always considerations that your users don't see (legal issues, other constituencies, privacy considerations). Users really appreciate you being honest with them, though, and if you make a good-faith effort to communicate what you can without defensiveness, you'll usually get their understanding if not their support. Also, a random observation - these crises always seem to occur when the people in charge are away. I remember having one erupt right after my laptop had died and having to deal with it all from the university computer labs, and then another blew up while the site owner was returning from her brother-in-law's funeral.
- ralph 19y ago
  Thanks. It would be nice if the site allowed comments to be submitted along with a URL so that readers know what they're meant to get from the article.
  - nostrademons 19y ago
    Oh, that's my fault: I could've posted a comment on it immediately after submitting. I've done that with a couple other submissions that weren't immediately obvious. For this one, it was late at night, I wanted to get some hacking done on my startup, and I was curious if people would understand the point without an explanation. Evidently not. Mea culpa.
    - ralph 19y ago
      I still think the site should allow a comment with the URL otherwise, with popular threads, the initial explanatory comment can be pushed down into obscurity. http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=1149 http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=1149

Relevancy?

by ralph 19y ago

Relevancy?

It's a good example of how to handle a PR crisis. If your site gets popular enough, you will face one. The natural reaction of an executive is usually one of two: 1.) Ignore the problem, eg. Intel with the Pentium bug. 2.) Blame the user, eg. most customer service reps nowadays. Stewart didn't do either of these - he took full responsiblility, explained why the action was taken (no matter how misguided), and enacted policies to prevent it from happening again. And you can see that the result is even more customer loyalty. We had several of these crises situations when I was at FictionAlley. They're much more difficult to handle than they seem from the outside, because there are always considerations that your users don't see (legal issues, other constituencies, privacy considerations). Users really appreciate you being honest with them, though, and if you make a good-faith effort to communicate what you can without defensiveness, you'll usually get their understanding if not their support. Also, a random observation - these crises always seem to occur when the people in charge are away. I remember having one erupt right after my laptop had died and having to deal with it all from the university computer labs, and then another blew up while the site owner was returning from her brother-in-law's funeral.

ralph 19y ago
Thanks. It would be nice if the site allowed comments to be submitted along with a URL so that readers know what they're meant to get from the article.
- nostrademons 19y ago
  Oh, that's my fault: I could've posted a comment on it immediately after submitting. I've done that with a couple other submissions that weren't immediately obvious. For this one, it was late at night, I wanted to get some hacking done on my startup, and I was curious if people would understand the point without an explanation. Evidently not. Mea culpa.
  - ralph 19y ago
    I still think the site should allow a comment with the URL otherwise, with popular threads, the initial explanatory comment can be pushed down into obscurity. http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=1149 http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=1149