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Comment by michaelnovati | Hacker News Reader

The author talked to numerous Codesmith staff and their cherry picked information provided for the article.

I got no request for comment, no interviews, sitting on a treasure trove of my own documents the guy should look at.

So yeah. I would love an actually neutral party to put together a timeline after talking to both sides fairly.

This expectation that someone should approach you for comment (and the suggestion that the fact they haven’t matters for neutrality) is misguided.

Huh? This is a strange take.

You're right, and thanks for the note - gave me a chance to reflect. I think what I mean is more along the lines that while a right to reply would have been polite, it isn't required of a blogger, and wouldn't change the substance of the post much, which is largely about a pattern of behaviour rather than specifics. Michael's attempts to dismiss/discredit the post based on a process which generally only applies to the press is what sits badly with me.

Thank you for acknowledging! Most people I know don't have the guts to. Keep doing this!

Also, I was defending Michael, because I'm not a fan of witch-hunts. I truly believe the article is exaggerated, even if there are bits of truth. The author himself is a master affiliate marketer, it's a grey area to say the least. It wouldn't be difficult for me to "spin" some things he's done in a bad way, and make a 10 page article out of it, but that would be wrong.

So why the sneaky shitposting and stalking over such a long period of time? Just release the documents and let people decide.

I call bullshit on the "treasure trove".

I have a lot of DMs that are there to protect me in making arguments. I don't think it's cool to share them - even anonymized, because people close to Codesmith leadership would be outed and it would impact a lot of people. I have to think about the right way to do that if I did and I might need to have a journalist with credibility go through and write it up.

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