When I was the editor at my college newspaper, I got tons of hate mail. (OK, most of it wasn’t directed at me personally, but at a particular news story or — more often — an opinion column or editorial.) I sometimes had to write retractions or corrections, and they appeared in both the print version of the newspaper and online.

When I was the opinions editor at the same newspaper, I received even more “hate” mail. The Opinions section was one of the most widely read sections (second to Sports) and it was also a pretty polarizing one. My university was home to 35,000 students with diverse opinions and backgrounds, and often a column or editorial would stir up the masses. It was always my goal to publish columns on both sides of an issue, and I loved having point-counterpoint columns on the Opinions page.

Opinions columns are similar to blog posts; they share the author’s opinion with facts to back it up, but not every reader has to agree with every word.

Because of this background, I was extremely interested in Tuesday’s Association Chat (#assnchat on Twitter), which discussed the Acronym blog’s decision to remove a post from last week titled “Consultant Wasteland.” (Check out the transcript here.)

Just like you can’t delete something from a newspaper once it’s been put into print, you can never truly delete something from the Internet once it’s been posted. You can, however, publish an official apology, a column (or blog post) reflecting a different viewpoint or letters to the editor (blog comments) disagreeing with the original post.

I always made an effort to publish letters disagreeing with columns (yes, even columns I had written), or columns responding to previous ones. It creates a dialogue in the community, pure and simple. It lets people know their opinions are appreciated and their contributions are welcome.

Of course, at the top of every opinions page, there was a disclaimer: “The views expressed here do not represent the views of the newspaper.” Although not all readers understood that and I often got letters asking how I could publish certain columns and if the newspaper had any standards, there was nothing I loved more than starting a good healthy discussion on a controversial topic.

However, the Internet allows everyone to be a columnist and espouse views on whatever they’d like. Now more than ever, it’s crucial to allow a dialogue and conversation to take place. By deleting the post about consultants, ASAE unintentionally conveyed that it is not willing to stand by what it publishes. Will people think twice now before submitting a comment or blog post? Perhaps.

I hate to use ASAE as an example because I truly think the Acronym blog is a wonderful resource for everyone in the association community. And I don’t know the conversations that took place in its offices or all of the complaints they received about the posts. But I do know that now, after the post has been deleted, even more people are talking about it, and not in a good way. I’m willing to bet that wasn’t the intent when the post was deleted.

Like the true journalism geek that I am, I have a bumper sticker from the Newseum (located in Washington, D.C.) on my car that reads, “Talk is cheap. Free speech isn’t.” Some may say that’s just the idealistic journalist in me, but I don’t want to live in a world where we can’t speak out freely and (politely) disagree with others in an intelligent conversation.

What do you think? How would you handle criticism of a blog post? Or, how have you handled criticism in the past?

Last week’s UnTech10 Un-Conference was an amazing, real-life case study of what can happen when volunteers, vendors and attendees put their minds together and start acting rather than just talking.

I loved the virtual nature of the event and think it opened up a lot of possibilities and gave other organizations new ideas. No matter how small your association, there’s always the possibility that technology can enhance the experience.

The un-conference opened with a fishbowl-style discussion about social media, content curation and how to reach members on any device they may be using.

Some of my key takeaways:

• Social media doesn’t have rules; it has religions. Everyone has different belief systems when it comes to how much to share online and how much to blend his or her personal and professional lives online.
• Organizations need official policies for staff social media involvement.
• Information needs to be device-agnostic. Members need to be able to get to it via whatever they’re using.
• Boards and staff must change their culture to allow for innovation. Embrace change.
• Fail, but fail fast so you can move onto something that works faster.
• Innovation is only valuable if it solves a member’s problem. Ask, what are your members’ problems, and then solve them.
• Stop making members jump through a million hoops to do transactions – use “one click to pay” as a model.
• If you don’t get out and participate, your brand is now being defined for you.

There was also a great discussion about free or low-cost tools associations can use to enhance their membership experience. Google Analytics and Crazy Egg jumped out as the two highlights. Each will give you better insight into the behind-the-scenes of your Web site. (And MemberClicks just happens to offer Google Analytics within our solution!)

I think the most important takeaway from Thursday is that your members are already conversing, so the organization should help facilitate their conversations. Of course, most small-staff association executives already have a lot on their plate, so it can be difficult to devote extra time and resources to this. Start slowly – if you aim small, you’ll miss small, and have the opportunity to move on more quickly.

To keep the UnTech10 conversation going, head over to the community and start talking, or check out the Twitter transcript here.

Photo credit: Flickr (Reggie Henry)