Here is a massive failure story of mine and a how-not-to-do-it.
Browsing through my feeds I noticed a blog post I thought I had seen somewhere else. I looked into it. I had. I looked into it some more. I went into the ‘offending’ blog. More blog posts I had seen before. Granted, I have bad experiences with people copying work that’s not theirs. But I managed to tell the blogger off big time without noticing that they were quoting all their sources. I did so publicly.
EPIC FAIL!
So what did I learn?
Check your facts
The first time doesn’t count. Check some more.
Check your facts again
Trust me. I speak from experience. There will be a link, or a small icon, or something that you haven’t noticed. We are so accustomed to browsing instead of looking carefully on the net that we miss things all the time.
Trust the network
My network corrected me immediately. People came back to me telling me off (quite rightly) and I listened. Trust the people you broadcast to – they probably have noticed something you’ve missed. And that’s the good thing about the social web. People will tell you when you are right but they will also tell you when you are wrong. Accept your mistakes.
Damage limitation
I deleted all my updates regarding this issue and apologised to the blogger (three times).Why didn’t I issue a correction? Because my updates were online for about 20 minutes and I thought I would do more damage by pressing the issue.
Ask before you speak
I could have avoided the whole thing if I had just sent them a message and asked what’s up. Especially before you publish something somewhat antagonistic check with the people concerned. You’ll thank me later.
Be honest – learn – grow – move on
I thought about it for about 2-3 hours. I honestly thought about never mentioning it again. But that’s the old way and I am always the first that shouts out “this is new media – we do it openly and honestly here”. So there you have it. I messed up. I learned ways to not do it again.
Have you ever had an epic fail like that? What else should we remember?
