I’ve already written my seven point guide to hacking off a blogger, and it seems that Gartner wants to create an eighth clause.

8. Depersonalise the blogger: Don’t use their name in any communication regarding an infringing post.

It seems that I annoyed Gartner yesterday by allegedly taking a Marketing Week article out of context. According to Gartner, I’ve wrongly interpreted their “Analysts sink teeth into Apple over iPhone bungle”, attributing general statements and my own opinion to that of Gartner’s analyst Carolina Milanesi.

Now, I never knowingly or maliciously post information as fact without either providing the source of that information, or making it clear that there’s an element of rumour within it. I personally believe that I interpreted the Marketing Week interview in good faith.

Actually, I don’t have a problem with being asked to remove or edit an article if someone mentioned in it disagrees — providing it’s fair, of course — even if it does take up time which I could have spent working on other projects, or simply relaxing.

What I do object to is when the person making that complaint doesn’t even have the courtesy to use my name, when it’s clearly published beneath the article.

Yes, I can understand if a company is annoyed at a supposed misrepresentation, but it only takes ten seconds to work out that I had written the article:

That’s fairly obvious, I’d say.

Why, then, is the email addressed “To Whom It May Concern” and state that “Carolina has not been interviewed by the author of this blog”?

How much more work would it have taken to write “Dear Mr Merrett” (formal is fine, I have no problem with that)?

Even if the dreaded “you” word wasn’t to be used, at least write “Carolina has not been interviewed by Mr Merrett”.

Even better than that, perhaps learn that blogging is a more personal medium, and respond accordingly. I won’t think less of your company if you write more personally — in fact, I’d think more of you.

The fact that you’ve inferred that I’ve quoted one of your analysts, when in fact I didn’t, is something I could take issue with, but won’t.

There’s something ironic about a research company that doesn’t do basic research.

A little irritating.

I can’t remember how I found BlogRush (non affiliate as I’m not sure I can recommend them to anyone at present) but I think it was a direct email invitation.

They must have been desperate to begin with, because they accepted one of my blogs.

I say this because, despite having jumped through hoops to ensure that the blog met the new quality criteria (which I agreed with), such as moving the widget above the fold, and such like, when I submitted a new blog with the same level of content, the same template layout, and three to four times the number of visitors, it was rejected.

And I didn’t get any explanation as to why, despite the FAQ saying there’d be an email sent to me.

The stupid thing is that, despite a lot of people saying how pathetic Blogrush is, I decided to stick with them as Phase 2 sounded interesting. That’s precisely why I added (or tried to add) a second blog, of equal if not better quality, to the first.

It seems that’s not welcome, and the lack of courtesy which couldn’t even run to an automated response makes me wonder if my first blog is very soon going to be for the chop.

I don’t know, but as someone who hasn’t written anything negative about Blogrush, and who doesn’t run spam blogs, it’s actually a little insulting.

Yeah, sure, they say not to take it personally, but when it’s supposedly being human-checked now, it’s hard not to.

Come on, Mr Reese, if you want this to be a success you need to look after the people who ARE sticking with you. Or are you too big to really care? After all, you’ve made all of your money, haven’t you?