Yes. Or at least be specific so people can tell whether you are providing commentary or reporting on concrete facts.
Even subjective commentary needs to provide context, if it's meant to be useful.
Take the case with Joel (or at least the headline): Joel is saying, basically, "Yahoo Answers suck". It misses context: why does it suck? Does it always suck? Apparently it doesn't always, given that most upvoted comment here is PG giving a reasonable counter-example.
The thing is, objective statements are boring and don't make the headlines. If Joel went to an interview only to say "Gee-whiz, actually SO is doing well because we managed to provide a decent alternative to EE, but for non-programming topics people are still being served by more established players like Yahoo Answers.", there would be no headline for Techcrunch, and we wouldn't be wasting our time discussing about this.
you're right. but that's the kind of thing that got techcrunch where they are, right? it's easy to point back at your accurate predictions, and not remind anyone of the wrong ones.
Even subjective commentary needs to provide context, if it's meant to be useful.
Take the case with Joel (or at least the headline): Joel is saying, basically, "Yahoo Answers suck". It misses context: why does it suck? Does it always suck? Apparently it doesn't always, given that most upvoted comment here is PG giving a reasonable counter-example.
The thing is, objective statements are boring and don't make the headlines. If Joel went to an interview only to say "Gee-whiz, actually SO is doing well because we managed to provide a decent alternative to EE, but for non-programming topics people are still being served by more established players like Yahoo Answers.", there would be no headline for Techcrunch, and we wouldn't be wasting our time discussing about this.