As of late, Reddit has been my favorite online community. \u00a0It has a similar feeling to the forums I frequented in the late 90\u2019s and early 00\u2019s. \u00a0Which having contributed\u00a0more than 20,000 posts as both community member and \u00a0moderator of music, tech and gaming boards growing up \u2014 I have a soft spot for.<\/p>\n
Anyway there was a thread recently that caught my eye: a\u00a0Q&A\u00a0between Microsoft IE 9 developers and the Reddit community. \u00a0Naturally that would spike drama so I\u00a0do<\/em>\u00a0offer kudos to Microsoft for being willing to open themselves up to Reddit. \u00a0But their product team took a bashing not so much for the product as much as their responses.<\/p>\n As Reddit community member mrmojorisingi\u00a0pointed out:<\/p>\n \u2026the whole IE9 affair was pretty ridiculous\u2026on Microsoft\u2019s part. They came to an unabashedly geeky, techier-than-average site, and when asked technical questions they replied with marketing BS. What did they expect?<\/p>\n Edit: For those who missed the thread, it\u2019s\u00a0here. This is the particular answer I was thinking of:<\/p>\n Redditor:<\/strong><\/p>\n Would it have killed you to have included a built-in spellchecker?<\/p>\n IE9 Team:<\/strong><\/p>\n Appreciate the feedback. We will continue to listen to feedback from users and developers like you to deliver on the most important scenarios. For IE9 we really focused on what customers, partners and developers told us mattered most, their sites. Developers wanted the ability to create richer and more immersive experiences on the web, and so we invested in fully HW accelerating HTML5 through Windows. Check out the WebVizBench site on beautyoftheweb to get a sense for what\u2019s now possible with GPU powered HTML5 enabled by IE9. Web sites partners and their users wanted their experiences to feel more like native apps in Windows, so we focused on how we could make those sites shine and seamlessly integrate into your Windows 7 experience. Pinning, Jump List, snap, clean new UI are all reflects of that focus. There are \u201cn\u201d number of browser features to do, but at the end of the day it\u2019s the sites you use that matter most and that is where we put our focus.<\/p>\n In terms of extensibility developers can build add-ons to fill gaps that they are passionate about. A quick search on\u00a0http:\/\/www.ieaddons.com\/en\/search\/?search=spell\u00a0turns-up a couple of options for spell-checking.<\/p>\n Reddit, collectively:<\/strong><\/p>\n You\u2019ve got to be fucking kidding me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Indeed. \u00a0As user phathiker\u00a0pointed out\u00a0in the original thread:<\/p>\n is there a\u00a0tl;dr\u00a0version? there is WAY too much fluff in there and I can\u2019t be bothered with getting the actual answers to the questions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n To which user ironchefpython\u00a0replied\u00a0with a tl;dr version (with answers to all of the questions, but here is summary of just the spellcheck question):<\/p>\n Redditor<\/strong><\/p>\n Would it have killed you to have included a built-in spellchecker?<\/p>\n IE 9 Team<\/strong><\/p>\n We don\u2019t feel that spell check is an important feature.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Communications pros \u2013 don\u2019t do this. \u00a0If you bring your marketing speak to any social channels and try to provide a response which includes\u00a0everything\u00a0<\/em>simply to\u00a0cya, you are disrespecting that community and their time.<\/p>\n Either chat with them honestly or don\u2019t at all. \u00a0To do anything else makes you seem like a jerk and that you don\u2019t care even if that\u2019s not the case.<\/p>\n Finally: why not\u00a0simplify\u00a0your message so this doesn\u2019t happen to you. Longer form content is\u00a0still highly relevant, but it has to be done strategically and you have to build permission for it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As of late, Reddit has been my favorite online community. \u00a0It has a similar feeling to the forums I frequented … <\/p>\n