For now, it's an easy way to get traffic. People like it when you're willing to call it like you see it and skewer the mediocre things that surround us. As an

For now, it's an easy way to get traffic. People like it when you're willing to call it like you see it and skewer the mediocre things that surround us. As an alternative, what's a forceful way to critique the central problem Zed discusses in his rant, namely the practice of blindly copying a (questionable) UI metaphor from another application category, email, without resorting to ranting? In general, lengthy writing on the web works best when you have a story with a conflict and resolution -- Zed is frustrated by all the products he encounters, and he finally finds one that matches what he wants. Joel Spolsky uses this heavily. The way to promote a product these days, I guess, is to make the story about you, the potential customer, who has a problem the product solves (hooray!). An angry rant fits into that well enough that it's a tempting, easy route.