I'm quotable

[redbird]

A few months ago, the person who runs elliott.org (a travel/consumer advocacy website) used a web poll to ask for opinions on whether Uber etc. counted as mass transit. I gave mine, and a week later was asked to approve a quote. I OK'd the quote and offered a quick copyedit on the article, which was accepted.

Then I waited for the article to appear, and then I forgot about it. The article is now on the website, with my quote at the very beginning, so everyone who gets the newsletter will see my name and "an editor who lives in Arlington, Mass." (Spoiler: he quotes my opinion as a lead-in to disagreeing.) Not exactly SEO, but I am going to wait a bit and then google myself.

Comments

[bibliofile]

Okay article reporting new uses of ridesharing, but I still agree with you. And I think you likely had more to say than the words they used.

(It bothers me some that ridesharing is replacing/supplementing taxis, and yet no one talks about using (or having used) taxis back when they were the only option. It's rather all more complicated. Did those sorts of programs arise only when ridesharing became a thing? I doubt it.)

[redbird]

I did have more to say, about why I thought it was different, but I don't remember what—this was late last year—and I did okay the quote as used.

One thing that occurs to me, with regard to it all being more complicated, is that taxis take cash and can be called from a landline or even hailed, which means that they're available to people without credit cards or smartphones. (These days they also take plastic, but that's the only way to pay for Uber.)