Whenever I see a Steve Gillmor byline I always think back to the above cartoon (excuse the poor scan quality, I don't have the books with me right now and had to go off an old scan I gmailed to someone a few years back). 

For those who don't know Steve Gillmor is a man famous for posts that contain sentences like this...

Imagine (not for long will it be ephemeral) an information bus that orchestrates the signaling of text, rich media, calendar, communications, transaction, and group location status under a social graph umbrella based in part on user-controlled behavior aggregation (gestures).

Honestly, I'd kind of come to terms with the man.  Don't get me wrong, I still think its immoral to write in a way that purposely tries to make others feel dumb so that you can appear smart.  But people who I respect seem to like him so I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. 

Maybe he's doing it on a sub-conscious level or something. 

Which is why I decided to comment on a story he posted yesterday where he said...

As Bill Gates closed the door for the final time Friday on his ex-office (Ballmer takes over Monday) the rhetoric about continued one day a week doesn’t match the reality.

Now that looks a lot like he's saying he didn't realize Gates wasn't the CEO any longer but you have to assume he knows that.  But if he comes back and tries to defend himself its going to look like he's covering.

So I jumped in and tried to illuminate what I think he meant for him.  I said...

I’m going to give the benefit of the doubt and assume by “(Ballmer takes over Monday)” you meant to imply that Gates was somehow “shadow running” the company from his position as Chief Software Architect since I can’t imagine you’d be so stupid as to not realize Ballmer has been CEO for years now.

But something went wrong and the post didn't show up. 

Now I was on my way out the door at that point and didn't have time to retype it so I just let it go.  Then I checked back a couple of hours later and...it was there.  Not only that, there were no posts criticizing Mr. Gillmor's writing style.

That's when it hit me...he's moderating the posts.

Now I realize there are trolls on the Internet and if someone is posting just to cause trouble I have no problem with people moderating those comments.  But moderating for any reason (like in this case where the purpose is clearly to silence his critics) is rude and disrespectful.  The people commenting that his posts don't make sense have the right to their opinion and don't deserve to be treated as undesirables because of it. 

I always thought Mr. Arrington (Techcrunch founder and CEO) had a little more respect for his audience and its disappointing to find that he doesn't.

P.S.  Just to end on a bright note here are a couple other comics that I sent in the same e-mail.  I'm a big Calvin and Hobbes fan and these two are my personal favorites...