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It happens to the best of us - the day when you’re faced with the issue of dealing with criticism. Maybe you’ve spent hours researching and writing up your work of word-art, yet within the first few days of it being posted and online your comment area is inundated with both constructive and hurtful criticisms. Maybe you messed up a point or two in your article, or maybe you just completely missed the plot. If this has ever happened to you, I’m going to offer a few tips for bloggers out there on dealing with both kinds of criticism on your blog in a way that displays healthy maturity, but also in a confident and non-confrontational way.
Dealing With Criticism On Your Blog
Author criticism is something that many people on the Internet are not very good at. As a professional writer, you may be used to the sort of criticism you receive in college level courses where the professor or your peers lay out both the good points and the bad points of your writing, and then offer helpful tips on how to improve. While you sometimes get such mature and helpful feedback on your blog posts, just as often you’ll also receive comments along the lines of, “This post sucks, you didn’t do your research” or, “This is complete garbage.” It’s not exactly helpful, and the comments themselves are garbage - but since you’re the professional blogger here, you need to approach such comments in a way that validates the good commentators and invalidates those that are useless, irritating and immature (also known as “angry troll” comments).
Tip 1: Reward thoughtful and helpful criticism.
A perfect example of the various types of critical comments you may receive was a recent post I made on MakeUseOf, a large computer and technology blog that I write for. The post was actually a very simple topic - how to tweak Vista so that your Internet connection works better. The motivation behind the post was related to issues I had when I purchased a new Vista laptop that couldn’t communicate with my Linksys router. I decided to share some of my lessons learned with MUO readers. Let’s just say that when you’re writing for a technology crowd and you plan to do an article on tweaks, you better be ready to lay out the evidence for whether your tweaks work. Here are a few examples of the sort of comments I received. After the comment I’ll show you how I responded. This first comment was critical, but at the same time it was very positive and polite - clearly an emotionally balanced and kind individual.
Now, while the comment is pretty critical of the article, the commenter at least provides solid and valid points and does so in a non-confrontational way. Dealing with criticism of this type isn’t difficult, in fact it’s helpful. You’ll notice the last paragraph even offers some great advice as to how the article could have been better. In response to this comment I countered each of the points listed, however I absolutely took that last paragraph to heart - it was useful and true advice. It’s important as a blogger to take this kind of input and incorporate it into your future posts. Everyone makes mistakes and everyone has a bad day when it comes to articles - don’t let the mistakes get you down. Read these sort of comments carefully and use them to improve your future articles.
Tip 2: When a know-it-all commenter tries to make you look stupid, turn it around.
Especially if/when you are writing for a technology/computer audience, you’re going to be dealing with a lot of folks who think they know everything. I’ve been working in the computer industry for over 15 years now, and I’ve yet to work anywhere where at least 50% of the professional staff doesn’t consist of guys (usually) who think they know everything about everything - and they’re never wrong. Inevitably you’ll get some of the most spiteful and annoying comments from these folks. Nine times out of ten, they’ll also be wrong. Dealing with such comments is simple - turn it around on them. Go after the simplicity or error of their comment - and they’ll most likely leave you alone. From the same article above, here was such a comment.
Here, you’ve got a guy who clearly has all of the answers, and starts drawing conclusions without having all of the facts or information. In the computer field, this can be fatal because you spend 90% of your time convinced that one aspect of a program or system is what’s failing, and you fail to search through and verify all of the other points because you’re so convinced that it can’t possibly be that. Here was my reply.
Was it too harsh? It simply pointed out the error in the logic and the points that the commentator didn’t even consider in his quick dismissal of all of the hardware/software issues that can cause communication problems between old network hardware and newer computer systems. So long as you aren’t too harsh or confrontational - this approach is fair toward these kind of commentators.
Tip 3: Don’t feed the trolls.
Finally, you’ve got the trolls. Beware of the trolls. Or, the more common saying is this - “Don’t Feed The Trolls!”
This sort of comment is best described with an example. You’ll get these sort of comments no matter how well you write. In fact, sometimes the better you write, the more likely you are to get attacked by such anonymous trolls. You have two options - just make good use of your blog’s delete key. Or - have some fun. Here was a troll comment received in the article example provided above.
Isn’t that a riot? Is it possible that a grown man or woman would sit at their computer and, feeling protected by the anonymity of the Internet, type such silly and immature drivel? Personally, I doubt it - this was likely a teen or pre-teen just going off half-cocked and without thinking. While such a comment would usually get deleted, you could also just have a little fun, like this.
Unfortunately, this is called “feeding the trolls.” But sometimes, it’s just such a perfect setup that it’s very hard to resist. Gauge your responses to your blog comments upon what your general readership is like and what they can tolerate. While you don’t want to alienate your readers, you should also keep in mind that most of them are just as annoyed by the trolls as you are - so while you probably shouldn’t go at it with them all the time, every now and then a zinger or two can be fun.
How do you handle especially spiteful or immature comments on your blog? I’d love to hear your opinion!
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Whenever I search for articles to write on MakeUseOf, I look for topics that are provocative, informational and current. I also search for what a majority of people are hunting for on the Internet. To my amused surprise, I discovered that every month thousands of students are searching for how to bypass firewalls and proxy servers. Does this mean that there are thousands of students who are out to hunt for porn or other sites that could be harmful to network security?
With the explosion of the Internet through the 90s, and with the advent of the terrorist threat in 2001, you can see the explosion of IT egotism following suit. Many of us who have moved on in the IT field into applications and support are finding that our own jobs are far less productive because the computers that we install our applications on are constantly changing configuration and “breaking” our apps. The answer is always that the “patches” are for the sake of security. In most cases, when we (the apps geeks) look into that security patch, we learn that the danger does not even apply in our specific case - but the patches are applied across the board. Corporate doesn’t know any better, they believe what they are told by the IT security manager - and IT security thrives on the Internet “fear factor” regarding the potential security threat of viruses, malware and spyware.
