I’m stealing a page (three actually, but only the headers) from Guy Kawasaki’s “What the Plus!” to post a short list of good practices and “rules” to increase trustworthiness online.
I’m not so hot about rules – you have to have some, you have to be smart enough to know when to bend or ignore them.
But you need standards, too.
I’ve tried to stick to many of these instinctively – they are not that different from what my mother taught me.
But I’ll repost them here, because they are useful in many situations – from blogging to self-publishing, to interacting with other human beings.
This is not the post I was planning.
But something happened, and while my common sense tells me it would be wiser to shut the hell up and keep going my way…
Ah, you know I can’t, right?
So, let’s call this a pork-chop express, shall we?
What happened?
Here in my sector of the world wide web, twice, in the past seven days, two digital publishers reacted in a highly counter-productive way – in my opinion, of course – to what amounted to simple instances of people (a customer in one case, a writer in another) expressing their legitimate concerns online.
Mind you – I’m not siding with one or another.
I don’t care if the opinions vented by those guys were legit or preposterous.
This post is not an attack on somebody or a defense of someone else.
I’m just trying to put down what I think failed here.
And I am convinced that failing is not bad in itself – it’s bad only if, failing, we do not learn from failure.
The idea is – if you work through the web (say, as a publisher of digital books), you cannot blame the web if things do not go the way you planned it.
It would be like cursing the hammer because you hit your thumb.
I know it smarts.
I know we all try to project an aura of infallibility, and of high professionalism.
It’s the way to go.
But then, we cannot allow ourselves to spin out of shape when our infallibility and professionalism are questioned.
Because that way, we give definitive proof of our lack in both fields.
And I know it’s hard going, publishing books – digital or otherwise – in the European country with the lowest number of books bought per capita, but reacting with a siege mentality, in which anything but the highest praise is to be interpreted as an attack and a potential damage to sales, is suicidal.
The people out there – customers, writers, bloggers, facebook punters, innocent bystanders – are not your subjects.
They are not there to do your bidding.
And when they express ideas or opinions that you do not like, they are not rioting.
So there’s no need to read them the riot act.
It’s called communication – and by reacting with rants, menaces or general aggression, you fail at communication.
And that’s not good, because writing (or publishing, or selling goods) is communicating.
In these cases, the good old hypocrite way is probably the best course – you thank your counterpart for pointing out the problem, promise you’ll get the guys (it’s always “the guys”, btw – never make it personal) to fix it, and then, in the quiet of your offline world, you curse them for a fool, scream and thrash a bit to release your pent-up anger, and then forget about the whole thing.
Or maybe, you look into the thing – because maybe the problem that was pointed out to you really is a problem, and fixing it might make your work easier and your counterparts happier.
Just being aggressive, in these cases, is counterproductive – you loose customers if you publicly thrash a customer.
And huge, sarcasm-loaded scattershot rants are certainly a great way to get an endorphine rush and feel cool and badass, and probably will gather a few accolades from the usual bootlickers, but in the long run, they feel like the time Xerxes had the sea flogged for disobeying his orders.
The problem with GoogleTranslate of course is, it can’t handle complex texts.
But let’s proceed with order.
As mentioned in an earlier post, I was contacted by some phishers whose hook letter was so good in terms of content and form, and so riddled with grammar and spelling errors, I offered them my translator services.
Well, they got back at me.
Offering me a translation job.
The cheeky bastards!
And so I was contacted by a noted and well respected American author – whose work I translated in the past – offering me the urgent translation of a 12.000 word document.
And to tell you the truth, the first mail seemed legit.
OK, it came through a gmail.com account and sounded like a template job, but that’s ok – for all I knew, it was a preliminary thing sent to me and a dozen other colleagues…
So I replied, quoting a figure for the translation, proposing a standard contract, and asking for details.
I was sold.
After all, translating stuff is my job – currently, my main paying job: it is what puts bread on my table and keeps the light on (and the web connection going!)
So, ok, I mailed back my proposal.
This morning I got a message from a pretty generic “services firm” handling the security for my email provider.
Due to some unspecified troubles, I was asked to send them my account details. All of my account details.
Including my date and place of birth.
Including my password and the answer to my secret recovery question.
Only, they called it my “secernere” question.
“Secernere”, in italian, means “to secrete” – like in glands and stuff like that.
It was the most glaring in a variety of spelling and gramar errors.
Now, some phishers are so naive they ar almost cute.
But these guys were quite professional – had it not been for the bad Italian, I might have thought about… phoning the customer service of my email provider.
So I thought, why not?
And I replied to that mail. Like this
“Gentlemen,
your phishing attempt was one of the best I’ve seen so far, but your decision to use GoogleTranslate sank any hope you had of getting my personal data. The language is sluggish and wooden, and translating ‘secret’ with ‘secernere’ makes me wonder if your primary language is not, after all, French.
Just in case, should you need a professional translation, drop me a line – I’m sure we’ll be able to arrange some way for you to pay me.
Cheers!”
Who knows, maybe I’ll get me a job as a freelance translator for the mob.
This is – almost literally – a pork chop express.
Yesterday (while travelling on a train) I was told that writing or reading adventure stories is a cheap form of relief for those that are not moneyed enough to pay and live actual adventures.
Teaches me to try and write on a train.
But apart from this obvious lesson, the attitude of my conversational partner got me thinking.
And no, not just thinking about getting me a pointed stick.
And it did not even get me thinking about adventure reading/writing (not directly, at least).
No, what I started thinking about is – are there really out there people so stupid they think they can buy an adventure package and live an honest-to-goodness, planned adventure?
There’s a thing I do on my Italian blog, which I call the Pork Chop Express – yes, like the Big Trouble in Little China thing (I love that movie).
Pork Chop Express is the tag I use when I want to inflict my admittedly dubious wisdom on the innocent surfers.
When I want to play Mister Know-It-All.
And I thought – why not on Karavansara, too?
The world gotta know, right?
So, here it is – the first Pork Chop Express of my English-language blog.
And it goes more or less like this… Continue reading →
I’m stealing a page (three actually, but only the headers) from Guy Kawasaki’s “What the Plus!” to post a short list of good practices and “rules” to increase trustworthiness online.
Karavansara 