I really like Wesabe. I'd like it even more if the website worked reliably. Every time I go there I get constant timeouts and failed-to-loads and blank screens, even sometimes on static pages.

Maybe it's just me, but it makes the site almost unusable.

* Although Scroogled@40 is kind of obnoxious, he has a point. Does BoingBoing have a privacy policy? I can't find it. I'd like to know how long you keep my ip address, &c. (Or have I just missed it?)
* There appears to be a bug in the profile links in comments relating to display name vs. user name, at the very least when I click my own name. (my display name is not a valid username, so clicking it gives an unknown user error)
* I can't find a posted email address (or web form) to report bugs (such as the one above) to. This post in particular would be a good place to have posted one.

Here's what I want to know: are there any current or former professional editors in this discussion who don't understand why Mark Frauenfelder and Chris Anderson have this policy?

That's kind of a spurious argument, I think. I'm a programmer; I understand why Microsoft releases buggy code, and I understand the motivations behind their stealth updates a while back. That doesn't mean either of those things are good ideas, or that all of us shouldn't object to them.

That said... I'm not an editor, but I totally understand why Mark and Chris would have such a policy, and fully support their doing so. The thing a lot of these objections seem to be missing is that reading press releases is NOT their respective jobs. I'm not sure I could easily define what their jobs ARE, but it's certainly not sieving through stupid press releases.

Chipslug - I'm not seeing that as hypocrisy. Neither Mark nor Chris forbid PR people from sending things to their organizations, they're just taking a hard line on sending things to the wrong place within their organizations. Whether freebies bias coverage, and what boingboing's policy is towards freebies is an interesting question, but I don't see it as directly relevant to this discussion.

Can we get a correction on the FP post on Boing Boing? They're limiting the size of the discount, not putting a minimum on it. As of right now the post here says "demanding that they charge no less than 20% off retail price" which is somewhere between extremely confusing and flat-out wrong. Mayfair is demanding that retailers cap their discounts at 20%, or charge no less than 80% of MSRP. The way it is written here makes it sound as though Mayfair is enforcing a minimum discount.