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It seems like this public apology will actually do you more harm than good. The best strategy is probably to say nothing (i.e. delete this) and wait for it to

by palish 18y ago

It seems like this public apology will actually do you more harm than good. The best strategy is probably to say nothing (i.e. delete this) and wait for it to blow over. In a week, nobody will care. The problem is that apologizing like this will draw more attention to the initial act. People are more likely to think "man, that really was horrible" than "well, that was horrible, but he apologized, so it's okay". Basically, the less exposure, the better. Also, don't worry about it. I've found that when I (frequently) mess up, it's optimal to make a mental note of what I did wrong, adjust, and then not think about it again. It would be a bad use of time to worry about every little mistake. Personally, I understood where you were coming from by making that joke. I don't care about political correctness. If I kill myself, I really hope that people joke and laugh about it. Being "all serious" about situations like that is what makes people cry for reform, legal action, etc, and behavior like that is almost always detrimental. But most people's beliefs are aligned with the social norms (by definition), so it will tarnish your reputation to publicly say alarming things. So again, in this instance, it's probably best to not draw attention to it. (For evidence of this, check out unalone's comment in this thread -- he hadn't seen your initial comment until you posted this.)

drusenko 18y ago
That reasoning is true until it isn't. If you sweep things under the rug, the public eye generally moves on to the next thing quickly, and nobody cares or realizes it happened a week later. If you apologize prematurely, then you draw attention to it, and people remember. But if you don't apologize, and it actually is a big deal, then people do remember and you look like a horrible person. It's the same debate that centers around when you should write a blog post about downtime. After 10 minutes? Probably not because you've draw attention to the downtime, that wasn't really that severe. 1 hour? Maybe not, people will probably forget about it, and the Internet will have no record that it ever happened. But never post about downtime and users feel ignored, and people get really, really mad at you...
- palish 18y ago
  I agree to an extent. The problem is that it's not possible to determine whether the "correct" course of action is to publicly apologize or to downplay the initial act. But to make that decision, we can look at how each strategy has worked out for other companies. Remember that hosting company that had major downtime, then made a followup blog post that made jokes ("whoops! we have butterfinters!") etc? The internet came down pretty hard on them. On the flipside, we have Apple, who almost never makes public statements like that, and it works out for them because it allows them to avoid the backlash from a mistake, and it buys them time to objectively decide what to do about it.
  - drusenko 18y ago
    i think you have to play it by ear. you certainly don't want to over-apologize or under-apologize. that hosting company apologized with the wrong apology. a good, sincere apology explaining what happened and why it's not going to happen again can go a long, long way to gaining devoted customers. somewhere in marketing 101 we read this study that showed that customers of a company that makes a mistake and handles it well are actually more loyal than customers of a company that doesn't make any mistakes. if that hosting company had made no apologies at all and ended up with a techcrunch article about their downtime, with "no comments" from the company, you bet they would be worse off than had they posted a quick status update and then made a sincere apology with extended analysis after a certain threshold had been met (say, 2 hours of downtime). look at amazon and ec2 for an example of why silence isn't always the best option.
    - palish 18y ago
      Yeah, that's valid. It seems like we're talking about two different issues though. And you're completely right about having to play it by ear. This situation is unique because Davis is a founder of a company and his comment could possibly impact that company. It's not a case where the company has made a mistake in its service. In other words, if someone decides to not use Ticketstumbler over this, it's because they hated his comment, not because Ticketstumbler failed them. So in this scenario, there's no reason to draw attention to the initial act with a public apology because it's not likely to happen again. Whereas if Amazon EC2 went down, that would (by definition) have an impact on customers, and it might happen again in the future. So in that case, it would be valuable to reassure the customers that it won't happen again, to provide reasons why it won't, and to communicate the measures being taken to prevent downtime in the future. So the situations seem similar, but they're actually very different.
tlrobinson 18y ago
In fact, a lot of people already don't care. I disapprove of this front page submission more than the original comment that was tucked away at the bottom of a comments page.

by palish 18y ago

drusenko 18y ago

That reasoning is true until it isn't. If you sweep things under the rug, the public eye generally moves on to the next thing quickly, and nobody cares or realizes it happened a week later. If you apologize prematurely, then you draw attention to it, and people remember. But if you don't apologize, and it actually is a big deal, then people do remember and you look like a horrible person. It's the same debate that centers around when you should write a blog post about downtime. After 10 minutes? Probably not because you've draw attention to the downtime, that wasn't really that severe. 1 hour? Maybe not, people will probably forget about it, and the Internet will have no record that it ever happened. But never post about downtime and users feel ignored, and people get really, really mad at you...

palish 18y ago
I agree to an extent. The problem is that it's not possible to determine whether the "correct" course of action is to publicly apologize or to downplay the initial act. But to make that decision, we can look at how each strategy has worked out for other companies. Remember that hosting company that had major downtime, then made a followup blog post that made jokes ("whoops! we have butterfinters!") etc? The internet came down pretty hard on them. On the flipside, we have Apple, who almost never makes public statements like that, and it works out for them because it allows them to avoid the backlash from a mistake, and it buys them time to objectively decide what to do about it.
- drusenko 18y ago
  i think you have to play it by ear. you certainly don't want to over-apologize or under-apologize. that hosting company apologized with the wrong apology. a good, sincere apology explaining what happened and why it's not going to happen again can go a long, long way to gaining devoted customers. somewhere in marketing 101 we read this study that showed that customers of a company that makes a mistake and handles it well are actually more loyal than customers of a company that doesn't make any mistakes. if that hosting company had made no apologies at all and ended up with a techcrunch article about their downtime, with "no comments" from the company, you bet they would be worse off than had they posted a quick status update and then made a sincere apology with extended analysis after a certain threshold had been met (say, 2 hours of downtime). look at amazon and ec2 for an example of why silence isn't always the best option.
  - palish 18y ago
    Yeah, that's valid. It seems like we're talking about two different issues though. And you're completely right about having to play it by ear. This situation is unique because Davis is a founder of a company and his comment could possibly impact that company. It's not a case where the company has made a mistake in its service. In other words, if someone decides to not use Ticketstumbler over this, it's because they hated his comment, not because Ticketstumbler failed them. So in this scenario, there's no reason to draw attention to the initial act with a public apology because it's not likely to happen again. Whereas if Amazon EC2 went down, that would (by definition) have an impact on customers, and it might happen again in the future. So in that case, it would be valuable to reassure the customers that it won't happen again, to provide reasons why it won't, and to communicate the measures being taken to prevent downtime in the future. So the situations seem similar, but they're actually very different.

tlrobinson 18y ago

In fact, a lot of people already don't care. I disapprove of this front page submission more than the original comment that was tucked away at the bottom of a comments page.