So, I don't actually disagree with the brunt of what you have said here (that if someone has an issue with something that it might be valuable to tell other people in the communities you are a part of who might care); however, it doesn't really apply to this article: my response is attempting to directly answer the question posed in the bold text at the end about "how to get things resolved".
Now, that said, I actually do believe people "rallying troops" is often knee-jerk and incorrect vigilante justice masquerading as valiant. It isn't always the case, and there may be places where such behavior is legitimate (although I think figuring that out is an interesting and horribly long off-topic discussion). It certainly, though, isn't always positive.
As an example, there person claiming on HN a couple days ago that Apple must be storing passwords in plain text because of a 32-character password length restriction[1]; I doubt that was actually the case, and much more argument and research should have been made before trying to incite such panic.
(edit: Hell, I didn't even notice that you did it yourself here until I saw the response from Fargren, but you just did it, too: there is no reason to believe that 1&1 "stores these user passwords in plaintext". It is much more reasonable to believe that they have a box on their end for "customer password" that verifies it using the same mechanisms the website does. It is not at all reasonable to "rally the troops" over assumptions.)
Again, however: that is not what this article was about; this article was not attempting to "rally troops", this article was asking for help making progress with an account they have at a vendor because the OP "make a point of never, ever, ever giving [his] password out to anyone" (emphasis his).
After all, you can still "rally the troops" after you get your job done: you can change your password afterwards, you can even change your password beforehand as borlak indicates (although that implies your password was important, which is already a mistake), you know this person is a real representative to within any reasonable margin of error; the morale stance here was just stubborn. :(
I'm not trying to "rally the troops" as it were under the assumption that they're storing passwords in plain text. That's not the issue, though it would obviously be an issue if it <were> the case.
I just wanted to make sure people were aware of this kind of practice at 1and1, and hopefully (but probably not) drive some change in the practice.
Now, that said, I actually do believe people "rallying troops" is often knee-jerk and incorrect vigilante justice masquerading as valiant. It isn't always the case, and there may be places where such behavior is legitimate (although I think figuring that out is an interesting and horribly long off-topic discussion). It certainly, though, isn't always positive.
As an example, there person claiming on HN a couple days ago that Apple must be storing passwords in plain text because of a 32-character password length restriction[1]; I doubt that was actually the case, and much more argument and research should have been made before trying to incite such panic.
(edit: Hell, I didn't even notice that you did it yourself here until I saw the response from Fargren, but you just did it, too: there is no reason to believe that 1&1 "stores these user passwords in plaintext". It is much more reasonable to believe that they have a box on their end for "customer password" that verifies it using the same mechanisms the website does. It is not at all reasonable to "rally the troops" over assumptions.)
Again, however: that is not what this article was about; this article was not attempting to "rally troops", this article was asking for help making progress with an account they have at a vendor because the OP "make a point of never, ever, ever giving [his] password out to anyone" (emphasis his).
After all, you can still "rally the troops" after you get your job done: you can change your password afterwards, you can even change your password beforehand as borlak indicates (although that implies your password was important, which is already a mistake), you know this person is a real representative to within any reasonable margin of error; the morale stance here was just stubborn. :(
[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4376029