When Tech Bloggers Attack

Dave Winer's last blog entry ever ever ever has been postponed from the end of the year to April 2007.

In the movie SoapDish, Sally Field plays a soap opera diva in New York who has a surefire method of cheering herself up when her esteem tank is running on fumes. She goes to a mall in Paramus, N.J., and basks in fan adoration. "Give my best to Paramus!" another actor sneers.

Blogging is Winer's Paramus. If you're a person who needs to be reminded occasionally that you're the smartest kid in the class, a high-traffic blog is a big red you like me, you really like me button.

When Winer said he'd quit last March, he raised the possibility of selling his site to admirer Mike Arrington:

Mike Arrington says I can't quit blogging. ... Mike it'll be good for you. Maybe I'll write for TechCrunch. Maybe I should sell Scripting News to you. Maybe I'll do other things (I will). When a big tree falls, even a small big tree, it creates room for other things to grow.

When Winer unquit this week, one of his reasons was harsh criticism from Mike Arrington:

... there's some other stuff I can't write about at this time, but I'll want to have a platform and a pulpit. Someone is picking a pretty ridiculous fight with a guy who buys his ink by the barrel, and I want to be sure I got all the tools I need to fight back.

Arrington, whose rage against the New York Times now extends to Winer and any other blogger who likes the paper, is enjoying Winer's hollow promise to quit more than I did. Winer commented yesterday on Arrington's blog that they "used to be friends."

I haven't had this much trouble picking sides in a fight since the Iran-Iraq War.

2006/12/14 · 10 COMMENTS · Link

Comments

So who's the egomaniacal dictator and who's the angry mullah?

I think Dave Winer rules as a "soap opera diva".

He needs a new scriptwriter, though.

#1 · Vince Williams · 2006/12/14

It's all numerology:

Winer is so "Blog 1.0"...
Arrington is MSM 2.0...
Java is 6.0...
Windows is not 2007... It's Vista.
Apple OS is X as was Malcolm in the 60's... tho' you shouldn't call him Malcolm "Ten" but you should say OS "Ten".

Winer and Arrington need to go skiing together and talk about commericalizing "Share Your OPML"... which still doesn't... share... it just harvests.

I remember a site that actually collected and shared the OPML.

#2 · visitor · 2006/12/14

Winer and Arrington need to go skiing together and talk about commericalizing "Share Your OPML"... which still doesn't... share... it just harvests.

How does Share Your OPML not catch hell for hoarding OPML? It isn't hard to write a PHP script to create an OPML version of each user page. The one I wrote for the "Sue Your Ass" edition of Share Your OPML took around an hour.

#3 · Rogers Cadenhead · 2006/12/14

The OPML top 100 has been the basis for a regression test of mine for Planet development some time now. Sometime in the past 24 hours it seems to have been noticed by spammers. Look at the top meme:

planet.intertwingly.net

Hover over the link to see a list of splog entries which reference it.

#4 · Sam Ruby · 2006/12/14

"I haven't had this much trouble picking sides in a fight since the Iran-Iraq War."

Henry Kissinger reportedly said about that: "Too bad they can't both lose."

#5 · Seth Finkelstein · 2006/12/14

"How does Share Your OPML not catch hell for hoarding OPML?"

Dave has essentially trained most of the b'verse to cut him an incredible amount of slack because it's just not worth arguing with him
about anything.

He played "rope a dope" to the point that you can end up looking ridiculous for hitting him. Betsy Devine will ask you why you're ganging up on poor Dave... and there is no good answer, really.
Not one that would mean anything to Betsy.

I check back with the "Share.opml.org" comment section to see how many times people will ask for an export of OPML function. It seems to just be dying a slow death from neglect. I did see Dave post another request for a PHP programmer recently but the site still seems dormant.

Sam Ruby was kind enough to post piece of Python that would take the HTML pages and create an OPML file from that source... but he was vary of waking the caretaker's ire.

#6 · McD · 2006/12/15

Here's where you can find a link to the Python code

Amusingly, earlier in that same thread, there was somebody named "McD" that suggested that everybody cut Winer some slack.

#7 · Sam Ruby · 2006/12/15

"Henry Kissinger reportedly said about that: "Too bad they can't both lose."

I think that's the joke Cadenhead was making.

#8 · Lawrence Krubner · 2006/12/17

Looks like Arrington has edited the post since he first posted it. It used to have some scathing comments, but he deleted them.

#9 · Lawrence Krubner · 2006/12/17

Sam,

Thanks again for the code... I've used it to get an aggregator view similar to Scott Adams and a few others.

That was indeed me that suggested "giving Winer some slack" (on the behavior of share.opml.org).

I firmly expected an export function to be added in a few days... I was wrong.

The site should be labeled:

donate.opml.org
roachmotel.opml.org
all.your.opml.are.belong.to.us.opml.org"...

but...

It's coded in PHP and for that Dave needs a willing partner. I suspect
Dan MacTough has lost interest in coding for Dave.

If it was coded in Usertalk... we'd see changes... it just wouldn't scale... tradeoffs.

#10 · mcd · 2006/12/18