Openness and Transparency
A week ago Becky, of Becky’s Web, published what I thought was an amusing take on Trannie one-upmanship via her T&TV cartoon. This upset someone called Pia, and she left some comments that Becky didn’t like.
In fact, Becky was quite upset about it. As a result, Becky wrote a further post asking her audience to comment on whether her cartoon had over-stepped the mark or not. All this is fine. It shows Becky is “man enough” to ask for views that may not necessarily coincide with her own.
But what concerns me is her decision to remove Pia’s comments from the blog. Surely, in the interests of openness & transparency leaving those comments in would have allowed others to judge for themselves their relative merits or otherwise.
Also, although I can understand a certain nervousness about doing it, leaving Pia’s comments in would almost certainly have lead to the rest of the audience counter-balancing them thus providing a naturally balanced outcome of views on the subject.
I would like to have read Pia’s comments and made up my own mind - unfortunately, that was not to be the case, and I can’t help feeling somewhat deprived of the opportunity to do so.
In support of my point, it is well documented within the wider blogging community that Bob Lutz, vice chairman, of GM Motors came in for some severe criticism on his FastLane blog, and subsequently received 43 comments supporting him, and providing a much more balanced view - the original adverse comment remained, but the record was there for everyone to read.
In handling the matter this way, Lutz was seen to be being open and transparent. His credibility was enhanced and he didn’t even have to respond to the original adverse comment himself. Now I call that a result.
Speaking generally now, my advice (for what it’s worth) would be to trust one’s self and one’s audience - they will support you… unless of course you drop a bollock. :)