This blog is relatively new but the idea for it goes way back.  I'd always wanted to start a blog but my concern was that I'd get angry over something and post something I'd regret later (and be stuck with it). 

The reason I bring this up is because I just read an interesting item over at TechCrunch which reminded me of the dangers of flying off the handle.  Here's the quote...

Anil Dash, Six Apart’s Chief Evangelist, took aim at Wordpress users in a blog post today. Instead of upgrading to the new version of Wordpress, he says, consider moving over to their platform.

Now, it’s generally fair game to target your competitors, and Dash’s blog post was so tame that I can’t even find a good quote to pull into this post. But that didn’t stop Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg from going for blood. In a Twitter message, Matt says “six apart is getting desperate, and dirty.” Anil fires back almost immediately with “@photomatt desperation is resorting to name-calling and slander instead of substance — if there’s a factual error, i’m glad to fix it.”

We all fly off the handle on occasion and one of the great benefits of the offline world is that most of the time there's no one around to see it.  The digital world on the other hand gives us the ability to publicly blow our stack in the time it takes to type 160 characters and press a button.

This is something that's existed in the corporate world for decades.  Almost everyone's been part of at least one "e-mail war" that got started because people shot off a series of e-mails before they took the time to cool down.  Things escalate quickly when you don't have to hunt down a person and look them in the eye to attacking them.

But Twitter takes that problem and multiplies it a thousand times over.  Now you don't even need a computer to blow your top and as an added bonus its all in public!  Next thing you know your private moment of annoyance is showing up on TechCrunch...

The bottom line here is a simple rule that follows through every form of digital communication.   Don't E-mail/IM/Post/Tweet angry.  This should be the first rule that anyone with an online presence follows. 

If you can't wait to cool down before saying something than, on some level, you already know you're going to regret it later.

(All that said, this is probably the best thing that could have happened to Six Apart from a promotion perspective)