David - I feel he has a weak grasp on many fundamentals of modern technology[1]. His grammar and spelling are the subject of widespread mockery[2].
I must respectfully disagree with your conclusion that he has a strong grasp of the industry, market forces, or direction. I have a good deal of respect for both Arrington and Malik, and I cannot say I have one iota of the same for Siegler.
He is a writer, and he is paid to write. But the same can be said for the people producing articles for Demand Media. MG's prolific rate of content production doesn't inform its level of quality.
[1] A trivial example is this article: http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/17/twitter-just-ui-puked-on-my... where MG fails to differentiate between Twitter's CSS files failing to load and new features. I could find more if you'd like, but this is one of the more egregious from recent memory.
In regards to the poor grammar -- I've no doubt they prioritize posting speed in exchange for a more liberal writing style policy.
In regards to his grasp of tech -- I see nothing offensive about your example. He says it's probably a bug, and it was. I think his ability to grasp the implications of tech is pretty solid.
Apparently we disagree, and perhaps I even hold the contrarian viewpoint in this community. At least you can cite your criticisms which is more than I expected. :-)
His ability to grasp tech is missing the instinct that sees those numbers (re: the Twitter UI "bug") and immediately thinks "Oh, duh, ordered-list tag is showing numbers when it shouldn't be. CSS file error. Happens a lot when I use Facebook and static files don't get loaded properly. Not worth writing about."
Not saying that means he shouldn't write, but as a webdev it's easy to see what's wrong with that article.
Comments
David - I feel he has a weak grasp on many fundamentals of modern technology[1]. His grammar and spelling are the subject of widespread mockery[2].
I must respectfully disagree with your conclusion that he has a strong grasp of the industry, market forces, or direction. I have a good deal of respect for both Arrington and Malik, and I cannot say I have one iota of the same for Siegler.
He is a writer, and he is paid to write. But the same can be said for the people producing articles for Demand Media. MG's prolific rate of content production doesn't inform its level of quality.
[1] A trivial example is this article: http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/17/twitter-just-ui-puked-on-my... where MG fails to differentiate between Twitter's CSS files failing to load and new features. I could find more if you'd like, but this is one of the more egregious from recent memory.
[2] http://plankhead.com/blog/1146/mg-siegler-destroys-the-engli...
In regards to the poor grammar -- I've no doubt they prioritize posting speed in exchange for a more liberal writing style policy.
In regards to his grasp of tech -- I see nothing offensive about your example. He says it's probably a bug, and it was. I think his ability to grasp the implications of tech is pretty solid.
Apparently we disagree, and perhaps I even hold the contrarian viewpoint in this community. At least you can cite your criticisms which is more than I expected. :-)
His ability to grasp tech is missing the instinct that sees those numbers (re: the Twitter UI "bug") and immediately thinks "Oh, duh, ordered-list tag is showing numbers when it shouldn't be. CSS file error. Happens a lot when I use Facebook and static files don't get loaded properly. Not worth writing about."
Not saying that means he shouldn't write, but as a webdev it's easy to see what's wrong with that article.