Even though we, here at DominoPower, disagree with the assertion, we've felt it was important to run those commentaries anyway. On one hand, they've provided something of a steam release valve for business partners, letting them get their biggest concerns off their chest and into public discourse. Even though Lotus has been remarkably resilient, complaints from business partners presented in the form of DominoPower editorials have also helped move the industry forward.

Back in the day, Notes had poor Internet support. We ran some business partner editorials about, you guessed it, "Notes is dead" because it had poor Internet support. Now, I'm not going to claim those editorials alone moved IBM to add excellent Internet support, but I'm sure they had some influence. It's always been my belief, reflected in our editorial policy, that a community that can talk out its tough issues is a stronger community.

And that's why we ran Ron Herardian's article last week. We knew it'd touch on some raw nerves, especially in a tough economy, but we also know the Lotus market is strong and can take some criticism. Many of our advertisers are doing better than they've ever done -- hmmm, perhaps that's because they're adverting in DominoPower -- and many of the Lotus aftermarket suppliers tell me that even though the overall economy's down, their Lotus business is quite good.

Had the sturm und drang been limited to the publishing of Herardian's article last week, I wouldn't be writing this editorial and, most likely, the Lotus community wouldn't have exploded into a tropical storm of activity.

What went wrong
I've known Ron Herardian for more than a decade. He's written 20 articles for DominoPower. I first met him when he wrote for The Insider for Lotus cc:Mail, which I headed up back in the mid-1990s. His wife used to work for me six or seven years ago as our sales manager. When we sent her down to a Lotusphere, she met Herardian, and later married him, moving away to California. I even went to their wedding. Herardian got a wife and I lost a great sales manager. Such is life.

Although, in my opinion, I've always known Herardian to be a bit arrogant, I've also always known him to be quite professional. I've always valued him for his insights and editorial contributions (his last was about why choosing Domino over Exchange was a good idea).

And that's why his actions after we published last week's article took me by such surprise.

At his request, I fast-tracked the article, bumping other important editorial I'd intended to run. My understanding was he had a presentation coming up and wanted to be able to reference the article. In the previous month, Herardian had launched a new migration product, and to many readers, it seemed like this article was a misguided attempt to support that product launch. He assures me that was never the case, never his intent, and that the article stood on its own.

And that was Herardian's first big mistake. We often let business partners write editorials and even reference their products. Most Lotus business partner products are quite valuable to the Lotus community and their developers know them best. But it's always an editorial decision and firing off missives behind my back is not a way to win either reader or editorial favor.