Robot Loves Kitten

So, this is actually the first time this has happened to me, but I suspect it’s already happened to others.

You email someone a question, and instead of replying to your email, they choose instead to blog a response — veiled enough that it apparently addresses not only your question, but those of others as well.

Now, I’m assuming a lot here: I don’t know the person I emailed except through their blog, I don’t know what other questions this person gets asked throughout the day. I do know that I had established an email conversation with said person, and I feel that I was polite and professional in my dealings. The question I asked was an entirely separate matter (based on said person’s domain expertise), but I feel that if you want to know something, you ask someone who knows.

The problem with email being impersonal, of course, is that said person could have inferred just about anything from my question, though I tried my best to phrase it properly. And so, the blog post, which I have to assume was in response to my email (the timing was uncanny), ended up pretty flip and dismissive, in my opinion.

This pissed me off, since I believe that it was rude not to respond directly, and it didn’t answer my question at all.

The fact is people, Google is not some all-encompassing panacea that can answer all questions. Some questions demand an informed human opinion. I had researched my question extensively on the Net and through friends, and hadn’t found a suitable answer.

So I had the opportunity to ask someone who might actually have a good answer, and they blogged me. I have to admit, I didn’t see it coming.