It’s the difference between going into a town square and yelling “look everyone, I found a treasure map!” And going on a treasure hunt.
They found comments that were commented out for a reason. These commented out sections aren’t a good look for the author. Usually commented out sections are either funny, notes, or provide some extra context.
He could have attempted to share this with someone in the industry of sharing information (like a reporter) who could validate it, and ask Microsoft for a comment — who will now be on the defensive instead of (potentially) forthcoming with more context about why those sections were commented out. This is a pretty fucked way of doing this.
Doesn't this sort of invalidate your point? Microsoft is going to know they accidentally leaked their comments and start stripping them.
It's not possible to perform journalism here without revealing where you got the information you're reporting. Seriously, how do you write this story without making it obvious that your big scoop is the comments from the paper?
The issue is that the twitter thread makes it out that leaving comments is “amateur” or “wrong” without giving the author a fair chance to rebut them. Anyone seeing this is going to start stripping their comments so they don’t get framed this way.
They found comments that were commented out for a reason. These commented out sections aren’t a good look for the author. Usually commented out sections are either funny, notes, or provide some extra context.
He could have attempted to share this with someone in the industry of sharing information (like a reporter) who could validate it, and ask Microsoft for a comment — who will now be on the defensive instead of (potentially) forthcoming with more context about why those sections were commented out. This is a pretty fucked way of doing this.