Getting things right--or not

There's concern in some circles about a serious security breach at Absolute Poker. This appears to go beyond the usual "online poker is rigged" conspiracy theories, though I freely admit I don't have enough expertise to render a useful opinion on whether the hypothesized problem is possible or probable. You can read more about it here: http://news.parttimepoker.com/2007/09/16/rumors-continue-to-circulate-regarding-suspicious-play-at-absolute-poker/

Anyway, a spokesperson for Absolute Poker recently posted the company's official response in an online forum. I was struck by how poorly composed this post was, for a formal corporate announcement. I wrote and posted my thoughts about how the carelessness of the writing reflected on the substantive issues involved. This is the kind of post that an online forum, if heavy-handedly moderated, might take down, because some will see it as a personal attack on the author (a woman named Danielle, about whom I know nothing). So I'm reproducing it here, since it is definitely in keeping with this blog's general critical approach to everything that's wrong in the poker world. The original thread can (at least for now) be found at http://www.pokeraffiliateworld.com/forums/general-poker-affiliate-discussion/11817-what-happened-absolute-thread.html

First, here's the Absolute Poker message:

Hi All,

Thank you for your patience in this urgent issue.

Let me start off by stating in 100% confidence that, fair play and security is of paramount importance to Absolute Poker. We have temporarily frozen accounts that have been brought to our attention while we perform an extensive investigation.

While we are continuing with our investigation, we have yet to find any evidence of wrong doing. Our game client only receives data regarding the individuals hand and no other players hole cards, except in the event of a showdown.

The player’s and their respective actions that are in question, all come from a small sample of Hands. We have researched their play exhaustively and have found no proof that they had any knowledge of other player’s hole cards.

There were hands that were played poorly -- from a poker strategy perspective -- and these players did receive a fortunate result.

So far we have no evidence that substantiates claims that any of the players were involved in chip dumping, or any other improper activity.

Because of the seriousness of these allegations, we have not closed the investigation and are continuing to look very closely into this matter.We will notify you if we obtain any new information regarding these claims.

Kindest Regards,

Danielle


And here's my reply:

Undoubtedly some readers will think I'm just nitpicking here--but there is a larger point to it.

There are at least ten obvious errors of grammar, spelling, and punctuation in Danielle's post, which is pretty remarkable in a message of only 11 sentences--pretty remarkably bad, that is.

I fully recognize that, for the most part, online chats are highly informal. I certainly don't proofread and rewrite as carefully for such posts as I do for, say, business letters or for things intended for publication. Hell, there may be little errors left undetected in this very message (though I'll try to eliminate them).

But when one is posting a formal message in one's capacity as a representative of a company, one presumably uses one's utmost care in getting things right. This presumption implies, then, that Danielle's very best writing as a spokesperson for Absolute Poker means about one orthographic/grammatical error per sentence, a level of carelessness--or outright ignorance of the basic tools of the English language--that one might expect in, say, a sixth-grader.

Here's the larger point: Danielle proves beyond any serious doubt by this post that she doesn't care one bit about getting details right. We can also assume that nobody checks her work (or that whoever does check her work is just as careless as Danielle). If she can't be bothered to care about the *form* of her official response, on what possible grounds can a reader be convinced that she pays any more attention to getting the *substance* of it right?

In my experience, people either pay attention to details or they don't, and either way it's not a phenomenon that is limited to grammar and punctuation, isolated from everything else that they do. A person who makes a large number of such errors when trying his or her best to get them right probably makes lots and lots of other kinds of errors in his or her work, too.

I know nothing about Danielle other than this one post, but I think it's a highly revealing window. To me, the message is that neither Danielle personally nor AP corporately can be trusted to care about getting things right. This isn't to say that either she or the company is deliberately dishonest, but it *is* to say that she is probably not the kind of person who would really be sure to know enough detailed facts about the situation to be reliable.

Naturally, just because a post is perfectly constructed by a bevy of skilled PR people and lawyers wouldn't mean that the claimed underlying investigation was thorough, or that the facts reported in the post were correct and honest. You don't even need a high school diploma in order to compose a short letter with good grammar, spelling, and puncutation. But the *lack* of those things pretty clear implies, to me, a general lackadaisical approach to things, at least by Danielle, and very possibly by the AP staff generally. This is not a good thing when one is attempting to convey an image that everything has been looked at in intricate detail, and all found to be in order. All is *not* in order, quite clearly.

A clean restroom in a restaurant doesn't necessarily mean that the kitchen, too, is spotless. But if the restroom is filthy, there's a good chance the kitchen is, too--because if they don't care about uncleanliness where they know you *will* see it, they can't possibly care about uncleanliness where they know you *won't* see it. AP doesn't care if we see egregious sloppiness in public missives; why should we assume that there isn't egregious sloppiness behind the scenes as well? If they won't even bother to proofread the official, public response to these rumors, on what basis would I conclude that they bothered to do a careful investigation?

Danielle's post sounds, to me, suspiciously like a bedbug letter--and a very poorly written one at that. (Google "bedbug letter" if you don't understand that term.)