Edit: Go here to recover your account: https://support.live.com/eform.aspx?productKey=wlidvalidation&ct=eformcs&scrx=1

About time to close comments on this one I think, that or put some bleach in the gene pool.

Luckily there are a few sensible comments, but the rest…

Firstly, I “scrambled to post” because it was apparent people were coming to pastebin and had no idea what it was. Aside from the extra traffic bringing the server to a crawl, pastebin was getting stuffed full of posts with requests for the list. This wasn’t about getting attention or hits. I’ve answered only basic questions with print journalists via email, and have refused television interviews.

Neither was the longer post intended to repair self esteem or reputation, both of which are fine, thankyou. I am more than happy to take criticism, and as you’ll note in my longer post, next time I may do things differently. However I do reserve the right to poke fun at people who can’t string coherent thoughts together. You don’t fall into that category

As for reposting the list because its “already out there”, the answer is no. I don’t need or want the traffic or publicity. If you find it on one of the thousands of other pastebin services, feel free to post a link.

Your comment was of excellent length, grammar perfectly adequate, and I’ve no doubt you have a rich and full life

You need to drop the attitude and get some common sense.
Clearly you scrambled to post about the story in order to get attention/hits. Then when you get the attention you wanted you start complaining because you are being criticized. (by the way Midge, that may be the reason the readers aren’t up to the usual standard..surely an intelligent person would have realised that?)

That is what happens when you put yourself out there. Do something NOT QUITE PERFECTLY and you are judged. If you can’t handle that, and feel the need to write huge follow-ups trying to get repair your self esteem or reputation.. well..you should not have a blog frankly.
I don’t see the big deal with reposting something that is already on 100 other sites (the list)
All censoring the list achieves is the poster bragging that they have the list, but they’re not going to let anyone else see it. Of course you’re going to rile people up doing that!
People naturally want to see the list, mainly to calm their anxiety over being ON the list.

Like someone else said you could have posted the email addresses WITHOUT the passwords.
That seems like the most sensible approach for all blogs and people reporting it to take…

Not just talking to you but to everyone who chooses to post stories like this without thinking it through properly.

I appreciate that when moderating comments you may have genuinely deleted the list before you realised that it would have been helpful to people coming upon your site, but common sense would tell you that the emails alone would help people immensely without exposing..well.. anything.
It is also highly unbelievable that you didn’t save the list or at least look through it yourself, so most people would assume that you are purposely withholding helpful information from them, and that DOES NOT go down well.
Fact is, people are coming to your page NOT to read about the story, but to look at/for the list. So don’t be surprised when people start bitching at you when they don’t find it. Maybe call this a lesson learned ?

It will be interesting to see if I get a smart ass comment next to my post (if it is published at all) presumably it will mention something about length, grammar or ‘getting a life’.