Dealing With Attacks
As a professional writer, I've been attacked on numerous occasions. In the days before blogs, I'd occasionally get emails or letters from irate readers who had disliked or disagreed about something I had written. And I noticed a general rule to this: the more vitriolic the attack, the less likely they were to respond. People who accused me of being in the pay of Microsoft/Dell/Intel/Whoever I had been writing about wouldn't bother replying to me, while people who just disagreed with my conclusions in a review would usually respond after I replied. I try and respond to emails or comments about my work when I get them--if someone has taken the time to email me, it only seems polite.
The new world of blogging makes this process more complex, though. These days, people don't email and complain; they post snarky comments about things in their blog or on sites like Digg and Slashdot. So how do you deal with this? Darren Rowse at ProBlogger has some good tips on how to deal with criticism in the new age of interactive mediums like blogs. The bottom line of his article is to do the same thing I've been trying to do all along: respond reasonably. "All it really involves is joining the conversation in the place where you're being critiqued." Good advice, indeed, but it does require some moderation: sites like Slashdot can quickly become a timesink when you leap on every comment about something that you have written.