To quote or not to quote (an email)
October 26, 2010 4:57 AM Subscribe
I'm considering writing a critical review of a popular online service - what are the ethics regarding the quoting or summarizing of email messages?
I test-drove an online service a few months ago and ended up being displeased with it. I took a very close look at the technical architecture and decided that they were doing things wrong and in a way that would require more work on my end.
I informed support of my concerns, and one of the company's founders responded to me via email. In his email, he agreed with some of my assertions, but said the company wouldn't make changes in the "problem" areas (for reasons I find anything but compelling).
I'm thinking about writing a critical review of the service on my company's blog, detailing the technical problems I found. I'm trying to decide whether it would be OK to quote or summarize the company founder's email in my review.
What's the general rule in a situation like this? Does the founder have an expectation of privacy? Would it look sleazy for me to quote or summarize the contents of his email to me? The founder was polite with me at all times, so there's no personal animosity involved, on either side.
I test-drove an online service a few months ago and ended up being displeased with it. I took a very close look at the technical architecture and decided that they were doing things wrong and in a way that would require more work on my end.
I informed support of my concerns, and one of the company's founders responded to me via email. In his email, he agreed with some of my assertions, but said the company wouldn't make changes in the "problem" areas (for reasons I find anything but compelling).
I'm thinking about writing a critical review of the service on my company's blog, detailing the technical problems I found. I'm trying to decide whether it would be OK to quote or summarize the company founder's email in my review.
What's the general rule in a situation like this? Does the founder have an expectation of privacy? Would it look sleazy for me to quote or summarize the contents of his email to me? The founder was polite with me at all times, so there's no personal animosity involved, on either side.
Without reading hjd's linked responses above, I think doing what you are planning would be a bad idea. You cannot easily foresee or contain the repurcussions, and including the quotes presents a significant downside risk with questionable upside.
At the minimum you'd need his or her permission to quote their messages. But usually this is done before the conversation takes place so that the respondent can decide whether or not to let the worms out of the can.
posted by Sutekh at 6:33 AM on October 26, 2010
At the minimum you'd need his or her permission to quote their messages. But usually this is done before the conversation takes place so that the respondent can decide whether or not to let the worms out of the can.
posted by Sutekh at 6:33 AM on October 26, 2010
Response by poster: Notice, "quote or summarize."
Would it even be wrong to say something like, "I brought up my concerns with support and an official company representative acknowledged the validity of those concerns, but stated that the company did not have any plans to address them"?
In this case, I'm not mentioning any names - it's mostly anonymous and highly summarized.
I feel like there's some point here where this crosses from not cool to acceptable, and that a the "correct" answer to my question will be a little more nuanced than a blanket "yes" or "no."
There are quite a few possible degrees here.
posted by syzygy at 6:43 AM on October 26, 2010
Would it even be wrong to say something like, "I brought up my concerns with support and an official company representative acknowledged the validity of those concerns, but stated that the company did not have any plans to address them"?
In this case, I'm not mentioning any names - it's mostly anonymous and highly summarized.
I feel like there's some point here where this crosses from not cool to acceptable, and that a the "correct" answer to my question will be a little more nuanced than a blanket "yes" or "no."
There are quite a few possible degrees here.
posted by syzygy at 6:43 AM on October 26, 2010
Is the "company official" unwilling to give you permission to quote? Did you ask?
posted by Obscure Reference at 6:45 AM on October 26, 2010
posted by Obscure Reference at 6:45 AM on October 26, 2010
Some thoughts (though probably repeated elsewhere)...
A) A professional of this century is well-aware that e-mail is easily shared with anyone, so it is unlikely that s/he would send information to you that they wouldn't send to anyone else. Then again, the e-mail may have been sent as a nod or sign of respect from one person "in the know" to another.
B) I would ask before quoting, because I would like to be asked first. I would even offer the person an opportunity to give the same information in a different way.
C) I don't think there is anything wrong with summarizing by saying "An e-mail from a representative informed me that there were no plans to adjust these items that I see as problems."
A tangential question: does it matter that you find the reasons un-compelling?
posted by jander03 at 6:49 AM on October 26, 2010 [1 favorite]
A) A professional of this century is well-aware that e-mail is easily shared with anyone, so it is unlikely that s/he would send information to you that they wouldn't send to anyone else. Then again, the e-mail may have been sent as a nod or sign of respect from one person "in the know" to another.
B) I would ask before quoting, because I would like to be asked first. I would even offer the person an opportunity to give the same information in a different way.
C) I don't think there is anything wrong with summarizing by saying "An e-mail from a representative informed me that there were no plans to adjust these items that I see as problems."
A tangential question: does it matter that you find the reasons un-compelling?
posted by jander03 at 6:49 AM on October 26, 2010 [1 favorite]
In general, I consider correspondence between a customer and company fair game. You see cases all over the internet and newspapers where people post about the positive and not-so-positive responses they get to their customer service enquiries. If this is an established service and you were a regular user, then I think it would be fine to post about what happened.
On the other hand, there are some details that weren't clear in your question. These could effect the ethics of the situation.
You said, I test-drove an online service. What do you mean by "test-drove"? Were you an official beta-tester? Had you signed any beta-test agreement or other non-disclosure agreement? If this was a closed beta-test then you should limit what you say publicly. You obviously shouldn't violate any agreements you made. But even if you didn't make specific agreements, I think it would still be best not to quote from a correspondence that took place in the context of a beta-test where you were one of a small number of testers.
But maybe you meant something else by "test-drove". Is this a commercially available service that has launched? Did you mean that were "trying it out"? Is it widely used? In that case, your correspondence is just standard customer/company support material and I think it's fair game.
posted by alms at 6:52 AM on October 26, 2010
On the other hand, there are some details that weren't clear in your question. These could effect the ethics of the situation.
You said, I test-drove an online service. What do you mean by "test-drove"? Were you an official beta-tester? Had you signed any beta-test agreement or other non-disclosure agreement? If this was a closed beta-test then you should limit what you say publicly. You obviously shouldn't violate any agreements you made. But even if you didn't make specific agreements, I think it would still be best not to quote from a correspondence that took place in the context of a beta-test where you were one of a small number of testers.
But maybe you meant something else by "test-drove". Is this a commercially available service that has launched? Did you mean that were "trying it out"? Is it widely used? In that case, your correspondence is just standard customer/company support material and I think it's fair game.
posted by alms at 6:52 AM on October 26, 2010
As an academic, I summarize and even directly quote people with whom I correspond all the time -- it's the reason there's a citation format for "personal communication." However, they generally know what I do for a living and why I'm talking to them -- so although I might not explicitly ask, there's a general awareness that my goal with most things I do is to publish, and if I'm talking to them about my research, they might be cited.
The simple solution seems to be to email the person and say, "I'm writing a review and would like to characterize your opinion as "[quote from your text that summarizes their attitude]," based on your email of [date]. Is this accurate?" That way, you've done due diligence.
Having said that, he's the founder of the company and should expect to be a public-facing figure when discussing company-related issues, unless an expectation of privacy has been explicitly documented. So I think you can summarize to your heart's content, and if it wasn't embarrassing grammatically or stylistically, I'd even feel comfortable quoting, if I were you.
posted by obliquicity at 6:55 AM on October 26, 2010
The simple solution seems to be to email the person and say, "I'm writing a review and would like to characterize your opinion as "[quote from your text that summarizes their attitude]," based on your email of [date]. Is this accurate?" That way, you've done due diligence.
Having said that, he's the founder of the company and should expect to be a public-facing figure when discussing company-related issues, unless an expectation of privacy has been explicitly documented. So I think you can summarize to your heart's content, and if it wasn't embarrassing grammatically or stylistically, I'd even feel comfortable quoting, if I were you.
posted by obliquicity at 6:55 AM on October 26, 2010
A tangential question: does it matter that you find the reasons un-compelling?
I had the same reaction that jander03 had-- does this correspondence relate to the review itself?
That might seem like a stupid question-- I am in a different field, and some of the details in your question were unclear to me.
But there might be a zillion reasons why the company doesn't want to address the problems you found. Even though you know what the founder guy told you-- and that is just what he wanted you to know in one context, who knows the real story-- that does not necessarily make his communication relevant to your review. Just ask him if you want to use it, but also think about whether the e-mail actually matters to what you want your review to achieve.
posted by vincele at 7:12 AM on October 26, 2010
I had the same reaction that jander03 had-- does this correspondence relate to the review itself?
That might seem like a stupid question-- I am in a different field, and some of the details in your question were unclear to me.
But there might be a zillion reasons why the company doesn't want to address the problems you found. Even though you know what the founder guy told you-- and that is just what he wanted you to know in one context, who knows the real story-- that does not necessarily make his communication relevant to your review. Just ask him if you want to use it, but also think about whether the e-mail actually matters to what you want your review to achieve.
posted by vincele at 7:12 AM on October 26, 2010
My feeling here is that, unless you were conducting an e-mail interview, the person you were e-mailing had at least some expectation of privacy in their correspondence. Ask if it's ok to quote the previous e-mail. If they say no, then just go with something along the lines of "if they can correct problems A, B, C, this might be a good service, but I found no evidence that they're workiing on that."
posted by Gilbert at 7:55 AM on October 26, 2010
posted by Gilbert at 7:55 AM on October 26, 2010
Response by poster: alms: What do you mean by "test-drove"?
I signed up for a free trial, then a paid account for a publicly available commercial service, to evaluate whether it would meet our needs. No beta test and no confidentiality agreement.
jander03: does it matter that you find the reasons un-compelling?
Good question. The matter has to do with the company choosing to ignore W3C standards and do things their own way. I'm generally pro-standards, unless there's a very compelling reason to circumvent them. The founder's reasons were anything but compelling (they want to be able to potentially support a feature that no customers have asked for at some time in the future, while hobbling their product and adding unnecessary complexity to it - again, this is summarized straight from the founder's words - he agreed that the problems I pointed out were the drawbacks that they'd decided to accept so they could potentially support a feature that, as he admitted, no one had ever asked for).
In my (professional, experienced) opinion, the company's made some bone-headed architectural decisions, ignoring standards, with drawbacks for customers and without a good reason to do it. I'd like to point this out to potential customers who may not have the required experience, knowledge or time to examine the service at the same level of detail I did.
posted by syzygy at 8:02 AM on October 26, 2010
I signed up for a free trial, then a paid account for a publicly available commercial service, to evaluate whether it would meet our needs. No beta test and no confidentiality agreement.
jander03: does it matter that you find the reasons un-compelling?
Good question. The matter has to do with the company choosing to ignore W3C standards and do things their own way. I'm generally pro-standards, unless there's a very compelling reason to circumvent them. The founder's reasons were anything but compelling (they want to be able to potentially support a feature that no customers have asked for at some time in the future, while hobbling their product and adding unnecessary complexity to it - again, this is summarized straight from the founder's words - he agreed that the problems I pointed out were the drawbacks that they'd decided to accept so they could potentially support a feature that, as he admitted, no one had ever asked for).
In my (professional, experienced) opinion, the company's made some bone-headed architectural decisions, ignoring standards, with drawbacks for customers and without a good reason to do it. I'd like to point this out to potential customers who may not have the required experience, knowledge or time to examine the service at the same level of detail I did.
posted by syzygy at 8:02 AM on October 26, 2010
In light of your clarified explanations, syzygy, I think you're completely justified in writing your review and quoting from the emails; you were a customer and found the product lacking. People review products and services online all the time and since the person you corresponded with was acting in his capacity as founder of the company (and not in a private, off-the-record conversation at a party or something), I don't see a problem here.
The only thing that's a bit iffy to me is why you find it necessary to write this review on your company blog. That might expose your company to some legal trouble (IANAL). Is it possible to write your review as simply a dissatisfied user?
posted by LuckySeven~ at 9:24 AM on October 26, 2010
The only thing that's a bit iffy to me is why you find it necessary to write this review on your company blog. That might expose your company to some legal trouble (IANAL). Is it possible to write your review as simply a dissatisfied user?
posted by LuckySeven~ at 9:24 AM on October 26, 2010
Response by poster: LuckySeven~: why you find it necessary to write this review on your company blog.
It's central to what my company does. Part of what we do is evaluate online (SaaS) business services, review those services, consult with customers about which services they should use in their businesses, help customers set up and implement the services, implement custom API integrations between the services and write reviews about the services on our company blog.
This is a tough call. I may drop the negative review on this one and just do positive reviews competitors who are doing things the right way.
posted by syzygy at 9:46 AM on October 26, 2010
It's central to what my company does. Part of what we do is evaluate online (SaaS) business services, review those services, consult with customers about which services they should use in their businesses, help customers set up and implement the services, implement custom API integrations between the services and write reviews about the services on our company blog.
This is a tough call. I may drop the negative review on this one and just do positive reviews competitors who are doing things the right way.
posted by syzygy at 9:46 AM on October 26, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
Particularly, raf's excellent answer.
posted by hjd at 5:25 AM on October 26, 2010