I realize that sometimes my mini-reviews and first reactions to products/services/events on the web can be critical; sometimes very critical. My position, as a web developer, webmaster and small business owner for years, is that it doesn’t provide folks like me with any real value receiving a bunch of flowery praise and/or generic: “this is cool” comments. Instead, these folks require real, honest feedback to make their products/services better. I look for and encourage the same thing when I publish something. Just don’t bash things though, try to give some sort of fix or solution.

So one of my primary objectives when I look at anything new is not to pull any punches just to be nice but when possible to also provide suggestions/solutions. Also, this way if I do respond favorably to something, it actually means something. If I like something I will say it (as I’m about to in a second), but I’m not trying here to spin my commentary to be positive, but ask myself: would I use this either for business or personal use? If I would use it, how much? What would cause me to use this more? Would I pay for this? How much? Is there value?

Quid pro quo.

Suffice to say, most people do handle this professionally but there have been a couple who do not handle this well, like this guy who started out being receptive to the feedback and later turned ugly. At one point he believed I was somehow out to get him and his business for simply giving my honest opinion. In that particular case, I was confused (and a bit concerned) how the guy was trying to patent something that wasn’t altogether original (though I’m sure he’d disagree). Too many patents being registered these days, IMO, that have no business being patented.

But enough of that ugly story, let’s examine a positive one.

Last week I took a detailed look at the Q & A service: Wondir and was happy to see that my comments were taken as they should have been: constructively.

One of my questions had been where was the Wondir blog and the answer is not on the Wondir site, but on a Typepad-powered site here (which seems a bit odd, marketing wise, but hey, maybe there’s a good reason).

In particular I found this comment from the official Wondir blog useful:

Btw, we’re absolutely fine with people promoting their product, service or cause (and even making money doing so) through Wondir, as long as it’s done as part of legitimately answering someone’s question.

This comment alone made me add Wondir back to my ‘keep a closer eye on this’ list. This sounds like they aren’t against affiliate links in posts as long as the answer is relative, nor are they against suggesting solutions on your own websites. Now that’s progressive.

Maybe I can live with those annoying frames after all, which BTW, they had an answer for too:

It’s a necessary evil. In order to have the Jabber IM-presence automatically available to all users (so that you can IM someone with a response or get a response yourself by IM) we have to use frames, at least for now.

Sounds like an exorcism is in Wondir’s future. Well done, Wondir!

• Wondir Q & A and Java
• Hooters Casino Hotel blog “not appropriate” place for customer service issues
• Ugly sites sell better
• MyBlogLog bans outspoken customer from service
• Cocomment red x syndrome?
• Site comments and contact update, removed Reuters TV player [site news]