My response to Michael Arrington’s ignorant story blaming the recently departed Blaine Cook for Twitter’s problems.

Criticizing Twitter and crucifying a departing Twitter engineer are two entirely different things. Taking one of his presentation slides out of context, conjecture, supposition, lack of any credible witnesses or evidence… This isn’t news, it’s a snipe at a guy who knows a hell of a lot more about his job than you and your 2 Rails buddies. What do you have to gain from attempting to soil Blaine’s reputation?

“Sitting next to” Rails developers does not equate to knowledge about scaling the highest-traffic Rails app there has ever been, any more than my having John Resig’s JavaScript book sitting on my shelf makes me a JS ninja.

This story is a blatant smear job, nothing more. We’ll see who looks a little dumb when Twitter’s problems - which you don’t understand - continue long after Blaine’s departure.

I particularly liked Jeremy McAnally’s well-worded responses in the comments. They sum up everything that is wrong with Arrington’s post:

Wow, this is the most unnecessarily vitriolic articles I’ve ever seen. Twitter and Blaine took Rails to places it hadn’t been before in terms of scale and traffic (just as other sites did with PHP, Java, ColdFusion, and so on), and so acting as if he’s some unskilled hippie that didn’t know what he was doing just makes you look like an idiot. Sure, they had some bumps along the way, but no one else had even gotten on the same road as them to encounter the bumps. Being forced to figure out things along the way because no one has done them before doesn’t make you an “amateur.”

Even further, what the heck qualifies you to criticize someone’s ability to scale a website or doing anything remotely technical for that matter? You’re out of your league. Please stick to talking about business or whining about someone not giving you ad money.

and later:

If you think your Rails guys or gals have their “fingers on the pulse of the Rails community” and they think that Blaine is Twitter’s problem, then they’re lying to you. People who, like, actually know Blaine and other Twitterers can offer you much better information rather than baseless, ad money driven drivel. I can put you in contact with them if you drop me an e-mail (or I’m sure that Coda would be very happy to offer you any details you want).

Of course, investigation probably isn’t your thing since you don’t know much about journalism.

Indeed, it’s totally unacceptable that this kind of tripe passes for responsible journalism. Oh wait – it doesn’t. Perhaps people like Michael Arrington are part of the reason more legitimate blogs don’t get their journalistic kudos.

I don’t subscribe to TechCrunch, and frankly, after this display, I’m not about to. There are plenty of people Arrington could have asked to get the straight scoop, like, you know, a real journalist would have.

Some would say that exaggeration and overstatement is necessary to make an impact. Perhaps, but at what cost? A person’s reputation? For what purpose? To infuriate conscientious geeks? To generate a few hundred extra click-throughs? To wield power great and terrible?

Do your homework, don’t stomp on people who don’t deserve it, and the blogosphere will be a much more civil and harmonious place.