Regardless of the decision (although incorrect) this is a travesty of the way standards should be constructed.

and least we shall forget that not all “mobile” webkit implementations render the same!

it sucks!

Regarding Zeldman/Irish: It would probably have been wiser for me to not involve myself at all instead of taking one party at his word without discrete examples to validate his statement. I believe he is being truthful (at least in that he believes what he is saying), but I admit that without more substance, that doesn’t leave a lot to examine.

Regarding the tweet: I do feel evangelists are given more attention due to their position, and should have more care in speaking as a result. I’ll agree to disagree on how much burden she should have on separating her forms of correspondence.

Regarding my post: My intent was that I felt (and still feel) that 3rd party bystanders in the community have a responsibility to rebuke bad behavior when we see it, instead of defending it simply because of the voice. I understand why some would feel that rebuking furthers the drama, and would prefer it simply be dropped. I can only say that I feel that when people are rushing to patch things up, they can’t equally paint the original offender with the same brush as the party attacked or the people who called the offender on their actions. There’s different levels of responsibility. My post was negative, because I was very mad at this trend, and I didn’t think we could fix it by simply white-washing. I acknowledge that it stirred things up and made people more upset, but I can live with that.

Regarding the comic: It’s not Divya. It’s a viking. It’s a metaphor for a way that people behave and not a specific person. It’s an Opera-marked character because it’s my opinion that people need to think about who they represent when they talk. It’s also not accusing people of murder, it’s a metaphor for hasty antisocial behavior. I also don’t believe that Jeff Croft is literally a werewolf, or that Hixie actually called Lary Masinter a cannibal or that Elliot Jay Stocks is a gun-toting vigilante who shoots people up. I understand your objection, and I’ll politely agree to disagree with interpretation of intent.

Regarding drama: I didn’t expect my post to stop the drama. I knew I was writing something that people might take offense at. I just wanted people to think, and for better or worse that did happen. But I’ll agree with you that less drama is better than more, and I’m grateful that you took so much time to express your reservations about what I said and how I said it. If you thought I was crossing a line, then I encourage you to call me on it (and you did).

@Frank P – I don’t think all the logos would fit on the helmet. I chose a generic entity (the viking) to represent any “child”, and included a corporate logo to make it clear that I felt that our actions do reflect on our employers. Opera got the honor because Divya’s tweet was the motivating comment that got me fired up to write the post. I’m sorry you feel I was acting like a child, but thanks for being honest with me.

@Everyone – I’m going to close this thread since I think the post and commentary have served their purpose. It’s not my intent to get the last word in, or stop people from talking. If you want to continue to talk with me in private you can email me via my contact form (which is on the bottom of my About page). If you want to publicly respond, feel free to write your own blog post and point it back here.

But all that said, I’m going to take a cue from Brian and wrap it all up. This conversation has survived well past the event that sparked it. And although I feel like it was a good discussion to have, it’s likely a good time for us to move on.

Regarding “[if ]the company doesn’t call them on it, they might as well be endorsing it,” could you please update your comic to include the logos of Google, Happy Cog, Clearleft and whatever company you work for? In my opinion all these other individuals are acting like children and need to be lumped in with Divya.

Proving that Zeldman lied isn’t something that I’m looking to do, and arguably, not really anything that can be done. I’m just saying that such claims on his part should really be backed up, and taking anything like that at face value is a bad idea. Unless presented with a public example, I struggle to believe that Irish has said a single negative word about Zeldman in a public forum, outside of the one post, which since been cleaned up.

Regarding the tweet specifically, I am not defending it, and I suspect Divya would not either at this point, given that she’s removed it. I’m defending her right to say personal things on her personal account that does not saying “I am speaking for Opera on this account”. This is one of those “agree to disagree” points, where I don’t see her personal account as a representation of her employer, even given her evangelism role.

Also, you are misinterpreting my position. As presented, you would be correct. That would be very inconsistent. Here would be a summary of what I have been going at here.

Your approach here is well within your rights, and I have never stated otherwise. This is your blog and comic. You pay for your hosting. You have freedom to say what you want. However, as an individual with some status in our community, publicly shaming individuals is in very poor taste, and has only served to exacerbate the situation.

For all I can see here, it seems like you’re simply stirring shit and making it worse, and that’s the issue I take with it. You were not the slandering party or the slandered party in either case. You’re a third-party observer who could have used your soapbox to try and push positivity, but instead, just added more negativity into the mix, which helps absolutely nobody and only serves to further divide. If your goal is to somehow stop drama or negativity in the community, this comic and post has failed miserably.

I would also argue that your portrayal of her employer as a homicidal viking is far more offensive than a statement regarding one’s work as drug-induced bullshit, but like pretty much everything here, that’s just another opinion of mine that is different from yours.

I am all for stopping the drama. I just fail to see how this comic or post helps anybody out or does anything good for our community.

I’m thinking that if your job includes community evangelism, outreach and networking, and that if you use your social networks to undertake these job-related tasks that it would be at least prudent to note which social channels represent you and not them.

If she chooses not to do so, so be it. But at that point I think it would become problematic for readers to know to what extent she’s speaking for Opera, or by extension, knowing how much of her view Opera condones.

I’d say it comes with the job of being an evangelist.

It’s my opinion that suggesting she be fired for her statement is extreme. I personally don’t think that needs to occur here. I do believe, however, having that opinion is a valid response for some people to have. She didn’t make an off-color statement. She made a public, callous insult.

After she apologized I saw no further such calls. Which seemed appropriate.

With the Irish/Zeldman issue, I chose to take Zeldman’s statements at face value. I don’t believe there’s any reason for him to lie in such a situation, nor get away with it if he did, and Irish had multiple opportunities to refute that and did not (he only instead refuted the character of his snipe at Zeldman during the post in question). I don’t believe that a negative result in Google/Bing searches  refutes Zeldman’s claims, although it obviously doesn’t support it either. However, if evidence appears that indicates that Zeldman is lying, I’ll publicly apologize for believing him. I doubt I’ll need to, though.

Regarding editing my post: I believe that people who visit the site later will benefit from viewing the conversation that it created from start to finish, and see the rebuttals and changing views as they occur in the order they appear. The commentary, as attached, is part of the post from here on out and quite accessible to anybody that comes along.

Regarding “dragging Opera into it”: Divya dragged them into it, by making such a publicly offensive statement on an account that indicates her relationship to them. Others on Twitter and elsewhere then continued that connection by commenting on how they felt her action reflected on the company. My comic and post reference those connections. It’s a commentary on what occurred with my opinion. Ignoring the Opera connection that was already well established would have been ignoring a large part of the situation that I was commenting on.

The position of yours that genuinely confuses me is your assertion that Divya was in her rights to brutally insult someone, but then state that I don’t have a right to comment on her behavior with a nuanced response. Furthermore, it wasn’t inappropriate for her to say what she said but it was inappropriate for me to comment on it? And she gets to choose when things started (by beginning the whole affair with an insult) but also gets to decide when it ends?

I’m sorry, there’s something very inconsistent with that stance.

I believe she and I have every right to say as we feel. However, I believe she crossed the line of propriety by saying what she said. And I don’t believe it was wrong to state that it was improper.

She publicly called someone’s work out as drug-induced bullshit. By failing to publicly rebuke that sort of behavior, or worse yet by defending it as somehow acceptable, we effectively endorse it.

If you think that rebuking her behavior makes me a dick, then so be it. But if you won’t defend me for being a dick, I see no reason for you to defend her. She was far more insulting than I, furthermore with no logic or explanation to her reasoning.

For the record, I don’t think anyone should be a jerk, regardless of who they work for or if they work for themselves. I do believe that people with elevated importance should think more carefully about their words due to the much larger audience they have and importance given to what they say. Whether it’s Divya, Andy, Jeffrey or Paul.

But I don’t apologize for calling people out for being jerks. Everyone wants everyone to be nice and positive, but the fact is that the drama didn’t spring out of the ether with no source. People caused it through their actions. And if it’s wrong to rebuke that behavior, I don’t want to be right.

@Shi Chuan – Thank you for your constructive contribution.

“Web Opener at Opera · Open Web Vigilante · HTML5 Boilerplate · HTML5 Readiness”

That is it. It specifies her job title and her employer, much like my profile (and I’m sure hundreds of others). Her position is one wherein she interacts with our community, but her Twitter feed is not marked as anything like one of the @ComcastWhoever type accounts, wherein it is very clear that “This person is representing the company”.

You say that she should mark her profile as not representing her employer’s views, but I seriously doubt that would have made any difference here. I’m confident that Andy Clarke still would have called for her to be fired, which is a ridiculous response to an offhand and off-color tweet that was very quickly removed and repeatedly apologized for, and being “cantankerous” does not excuse that behavior, regardless of employer.

Also, you mentioned that Zeldman was, to quote, “constantly being snubbed, belittled and insulted by [Paul] Irish in public while he was offering the man opportunities and assistance in private”. Obviously the private communications are unverifiable, though I would assume that they did happen. However, I have been following both Zeldman and Irish’s blogs and tweets for years now, and I have not seen any public instance of snubbing, belittling, or insulting, at all, outside of the one paragraph on the MTWF blog post, which has since been archived and removed.

I did some searching about via Google and various site searches, and I can uncover all of one mention of Zeldman’s name on Irish’s blog. It was far from belittling or insulting. Can you (or Zeldman) produce any evidence of any of these accusations? If not, it seems way more slanderous of Paul Irish than anything said about Jeffrey Zeldman.

I suppose that one could make an argument that since Irish has not contributed content to anything ALA, perhaps that is a form of snubbing, but those communications seem to have been private, and so we can’t really infer anything there. Paul has not once said anything in any public form that I can find that is negative against Happy Cog or any ALA type properties.

If you genuinely regret not saying something about Andy Clarke’s bad behavior, or Zeldman’s, why have you not edited the original post? The web is not set in stone. I suspect you could very easily add in Clarke and Zeldman to your callouts to point out that there was negative behavior on both ends. By not being fair and balanced in that fashion, you’re handing out some of those free passes you seem to dislike, and really just making things worse.

Additionally, you say you’re not trying to drag Opera into it, while in the same post you acknowledge that you intentionally illustrated a murderous viking and clearly call it “Opera’s viking” with an approximation of their logo on its hat? Do you not see how incredibly conflicting these statements are?

Divya’s comment stirred up some drama, but she did what she could by quickly repealing it and repeatedly apologizing to various people. By creating this comic, and repeatedly defending your seemingly weak position, not only are you adding more drama into the mix, but you are taking it well above and beyond any appropriate context. It was a tweet that was very clearly of a personal nature and it was quickly removed, and that should have been the end of it.

The past week has generally just been quite awful for negativity on the ‘net, and frankly, this comic just proceeds to fan the flames. It also seems from your various replies that you seem to think that it’s okay to be a jerk to people if you’re freelance, which makes little sense.

I lost a lot of respect for people I held in very high regard this week, but I’m not going to call them out on it in any public fashion like this, because that helps *nobody* and only makes it worse, as arguably demonstrated by this very comment thread.

I feel like this post and comic would have better served our shared community if it hadn’t directly called out anyone by name, but simply pointed out the amounts of negativity going around this week, and called upon us all to treat each other better.

Really, it shouldn’t matter who anyone works for. There’s no reason for us to be jerks to each other. Ultimately we all want the same sorts of things. Divya cleaned up her negativity. Paul did too. Will you? I hope so.

@Brian Arnold – Divya is a community representative for Opera and her twitter feed is marked accordingly. As a public representative, her words carry the legitimate risk of being taken as a viewpoint of her employer. She is entitled to free speech as an individual, of course. Including mean-spirited or hateful statements. But if she’s going to go that route, she should at least mark her profile as not representing her employer’s views (instead, it only mentions her employee title).

Andy “is” crantakerous. Like Divya, he also has the right to say mean-spirited or hateful statements. As a self-employed man he’s immune to the issue of misrepresenting a company, but I do not attempt to say he gets a free pass at being nasty. If he does so, then just like her he’s being a problem for the community and not a blessing to it. I did not catch all his commentary on Divya’s SM piece, but I bet that he did cross the line. I regret not saying something about that. Right to be badly behaved aside, it shouldn’t pass without notice.

Zeldman’s language to Paul was hostile and profanity-laced, but it also represented the last straw of a man that was constantly being snubbed, belittled and insulted by Irish in public while he was offering the man opportunities and assistance in private. As politely worded as Irish’s statements in his post were, they were still a divisive “calling out” of Zeldman, in public, during an announcement meant to bring the community together. Bad form. Maybe Zeldman should have used different words, maybe he should have used a private venue. But anyone who is being repeatedly attacked and belittled has the right to refute lies that are being told about them and has every right to be very angry at being treated so poorly.

@Louis – Paul’s comments were part of a long-lasting trend of attacks and snubs on Zeldman which were uncalled for, even as Zeldman consistently reached out to him with opportunity and offers of support in private. The tone of his latest action was mild, but it was clearly a snub and divisive action, and additionally contained untruths.

@Colin S – My comic featured a viking, not Divya. It intentionally used a generic adversary as a corporate mouthpiece. It’s artistic license that’s well within the cultural context of comic-based commentary on hot-button topics. It was also a metaphor. I don’t think Divya is a bearded, bloodthirsty warrior who murders people, and the attached blog post doesn’t even come close to implying otherwise. But, Divya is a superstar in the Web world, and she did cause drama.

@Thierry – I’m a humorist and cartoonist of the Web community that uses this blog to discuss hot-button topics of the day and provide my own view on them. I don’t think addressing the long-standing issue of bad behavior in the Web community lately through the lens of Divya’s recent example of that behavior on the very day it occurred is “going on and on”. I suspect by next week I’ll be discussing HTML5 element drama or poking fun at Chrome.

@tom jones – Unfortunately one of the biggest currencies in our community is attention and acknowledgement. I’m not going to stop supporting painting, to use your metaphor. I’m going to not support (publicly) the wall she painted. Although, honestly, why the hell did we bring Hitler into this thread? That means we’re officially off the rails and down to just throwing crap at each other.

I am not trying to drag Opera into this. I am, however, saying that as a community messenger for Opera she very badly needs to mark which of her communication channels are personal opinion. Right or wrong, corporations can are held accountable for what their spokesmen say unless we have a clear filter between opinion of hers and opinion of theirs. Bruce Lawson’s material is marked as such, and so the issue has never come up with him. We know when he’s being ranty, he’s on his own.