I Love Dave Winer

I really do. It’s almost a cer­tainty that at least once a week he will grind out a blog post that amuses me. The lat­est case in point is this one. In the post, Dave explains that he wants some “no-frills” host­ing and gives a laun­dry list of the fea­tures that he requires. The funny part is that the way that he presents the list is exactly like a cranky old man try­ing to buy any rea­son­ably mod­ern prod­uct. “I don’t want a tele­vi­sion with that new-fangled ‘High Definition,’ my old set worked just fine.” In other spots he just comes across as need­lessly pissy. Seriously:

Don’t hype me. All the ser­vices I see adver­tised on the web are long on hype and clos­ing the deal, but I usu­ally can’t tell what they’re offer­ing. Ridiculous.

Yes Dave, we’ll be sure to find you a provider who does no marketing.

But the real fun starts in the com­ments. Of course, a slew of nim­rods show up offer­ing solu­tions that don’t exactly match Dave’s lofty cri­te­ria. So, Dave being Dave, he gets all cranky and starts wax­ing Scoble-like about the good old days:

This isn’t per­sonal because I think most peo­ple don’t bother to read the

post before responding.

They just read the head­line and maybe skim the body and then start writing.

Makes it really hard to ask a ques­tion that might be even slightly off the

beaten path.

It hasn’t always been this way.

And if you read the other com­ments in this thread, you’ll see almost

every­one else has been doing it, even peo­ple like Stan and Hanan who have

been long­time con­tir­b­u­tors here. They didn’t answer the ques­tion I asked.

They told me what they do. But what I’m try­ing to fig­ure out is how far we

are from ser­vices that can actu­ally solve the prob­lem I’m pos­ing. Creating

an archive of our work that’s inde­pen­dent, afford­able, and long-lasting.

So like I said, this isn’t about you — it’s about *us* — how are we ever

going to work together if even a sim­ple ques­tion can’t be heard.

Oh Dave, don’t ever change.