Thursday, June 2, 2005

mark cuban part 2

...I truly never expected MC to respond to my email criticizing the handling of his blog comments so when I got a response, pretty quickly I might add, I was quite surprised. I mean surely billionaire Mark has better things to do than respond to my email. He's sure not going to make any money trading verbal jibes with me. In any case, here is the email exchange with MC verbatim with Cuban's responses in italics.
My original email to MC:

Mr. Cuban, I'll start by saying that I've been an avid reader of your blog for some time now and enjoy your openness in expressing your thoughts and ideas and allowing others to provide their comments. However, I'm troubled by what I saw happen the other night. Shortly after your post "Some Thoughts..." about the end of the Mavericks season, myself along with several others left comments in response to some of the items in your post. Not 30 minutes after leaving a comment, mine along with anyone else's comment that might have had an opinion differing from your thoughts regarding the Mavs were removed. What was left was only a few comments that praised everything about the Mavs and you. How hypocritical and misleading is that? Why bother to allow comments if you're going to pick and choose the ones you want to show based on your own views and opinions? All the comments were relevant to the topic and none were there just to bash the Mavs in any way, but as anyone with a brain can see, the Mavs have several issues that need to be addressed if they are to win it all. Expressing those thoughts and ideas in response to your post shouldn't cause the comment to be deleted. If the intent of your blog is to ensure that only your opinion is represented then I no longer desire to read your commentary, I can get the same from the media.

MC responded with:

I cut off all comments . I have no problems with discussions and people who
disagree with me, but name calling and childish comments aren't the goal

So rather than editing comments every day, I just shut them off

There are lots of sites where you can discuss the mavs all day long and
express your opinion. Mavtalk.com and lone mavs forum are 2 of them

m


I replied:

Mark, you intentionally deleted already posted comments, you didnt just "cut off" the comments. You left 6 that completely backed you and the Mavs while several comments that brought up some valid points/concerns, but not necessarily backed your views, were deleted. Other posts on your blog have up to 100 comments, why cut off this one? and why delete already posted comments if they were relevant to the topic and not malicious? Leaving just your cherry-picked comments is misleading (which you harp on the media for doing all the time), you should have deleted them all.

He replied with:

I cut off all basketball related posts

All of them


My response:

Does "cut off" mean "stopped accepting new comments" or "completely removed all comments"? I assume it to be the former, as 6 comments still exist to the original post we're discussing. It seems you're missing the point I've been trying to make which is that you intentionally deleted certain comments that you didn't like while keeping a few you agreed with. The comments that are still shown were not the first 6 posted. As I stated before, its misleading and flat out incorrect for people to read that post and believe those were the only comments submitted as they have been the only comments allowed to be shown after several were removed that night. Why did you delete some and not all?

To which I received:

Cut of all comments

I gave up after that. It was disapointing that he took the time to respond but didnt really address my concerns. Obviously, MC didnt want to comment on the main point of my email. Being known as a man who has come to demand the media be 100% accurate about anything thats written regarding the Mavs, for Cuban to cherry pick a few comments to keep and remove the rest seems quite hypocritical to me. Maybe I'm just pissed that he deleted my comment? I mean it is his blog and he can delete what he wants, right? But more likely though it seems that MC, like most people, just didnt want to have to admit what he did was wrong. That or he really does have better things to do than to actually put some thought into his response when there's no money involved.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cut Mark some slack! He probably gets tons of email every day!

zam said...

Wow. That's surprising and incredibly disappointing. I expected more from him.