Ethical Blogging: Not Good For Blogs
Charlene Li posts a Sample Blogger Code Of Ethics which includes the following. As a new blogger, I find that her code of ethics leaves a lot to be desired. Blogging isn’t always that clear, as I’ll elucide below:
1. I will tell the truth.
Telling the truth is often *far* less interesting than a spicy story or two. Mild exaggeration and hyperbole are the perfect flavorings to enhance your writing. Make your readers salivate over each sentence.
2. I will write deliberately and with accuracy.
Writing with accuracy appeals to me, as a scientist. I don’t know about deliberately, though. You should write with a passion–for example, I am writing this early in the morning because I am too bored to go to bed. And that’s how blogging should be–spontaneous!
3. I will acknowledge and correct mistakes promptly.
A mistake is in the eye of the beholder. On my IE Suffices post, there are 20 people telling me I’m wrong. I’m a Computer Science major at Cornell University, and if I say a software product is good enough, I’m not wrong.
4. I will preserve the original post, using notations to show where I have made changes so as to maintain the integrity of my publishing.
I often will correct and enhance original posts. If I left something out, I’ll add it later. It’s better for me, because I have a better finished post in the end, and it’s better for you, too. Using notations to indicate these revisions would be obtrusive, especially if I had to notate each and every revision cycle.
5. I will never delete a post.
Here is the big one. Sometimes I need to delete posts.
For example, I just removed a post which complained about my old high school’s web presence after I received a telephone call from a teacher telling me that the school was in the middle of a grant proposal and did not appreciate having my post rank high on a google search for their name. I told them I’d remove it until the quiet period was over. I’ve also removed content about people who didn’t want their names on my blog (3) and posts complaining about another blogger (1).
Is that the right thing to do? Not in terms of journalistic ethics, but for the people who wanted that content off, it sure mattered.
6. I will not delete comments unless they are spam or off-topic.
Don’t laugh, but a blogger deleted a trackback of mine and complained about it in my blog. I deleted his comment. Aside from that, this is an excellent policy.
7. I will reply to emails and comments when appropriate, and do so promptly.
I’ve gone above and beyond here. Everyone who posts a comment gets subscribed to the comments–with an unsubscribe link in the email, of course. That way, we keep an active dialogue here. Comments that I think are ridiculous get a scathing rebuttal, don’t worry.
8. I will strive for high quality with every post – including basic spellchecking.
Sometimes you miss that, in which case you have to violate (4).
9. I will stay on topic.
What’s on topic for a blog? Anything that catches my eye gets posted here. I’m a human being with a brain–can I think, please?
10. I will disagree with other opinions respectfully.
I must differ with Ms. Li on this one. I will disagree with other opinions with a degree of respect proportionate to my expertise in the area of conversation and the ludicrousity of the other opinion. See these IE comments where the degree of respect is approximately 0, and the other opinion insane.
11. I will link to online references and original source materials directly.
Actually, it’s bad style to link directly to media resources like images. Rather than writing <img href="http://some.other.server.com/cool-image-to-post.png"/>, just inline the image on your page and give an attribution link.
12. I will disclose conflicts of interest.
It’s hard to disclose conflicts of interest. Do I have a conflict of interest when writing about Microsoft products because I want to work for them someday? How do I know what’s a genuine conflict of interest? Do posts about Cornell University, which I am attending, bring up conflict of interest issues?
13. I will keep private issues and topics private, since discussing private issues would jeopardize my personal and work relationships.
This is first and formost a personal blog. Private issues will be discussed here at will. Of course, my livejournal usually hosts the personal musings.
All in all, Charlene’s set of ethics are an excellent set of guidelines for a focused corporate blogger. If you’re already sold your soul to a specific topic or corporation, it’s good to behave in a predictable fashion. The same goes for you A-list bloggers. Scoble’s already got it, since I ran into this off his link blog. Kudos! Following these rules will give your readers a familiar experience that they can return to, day after day.
But if you’re an edgy student like me, blogging rules are out. It’s not to say that I don’t have a sense of ethical journalism. I just find specific rules to be cumbersome. When I get more than 10,000 hits in one day, I’ll write out a policy. That’ll be in 4 years & 300 days, so don’t hold your breath. Until then, this blog is for me.
| This entry was posted on Monday, November 15th, 2004 at 5:41 am and is tagged with eye of the beholder, google search, grant proposal, cornell university, code of ethics, quiet period, web presence, flavorings, telling the truth, hyperbole, google, exaggeration, charlene, telephone call, software product, computer science, revisions, blogging, blogger, scientist. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback. |
7 Responses to “Ethical Blogging: Not Good For Blogs”
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Political correctness for Bloggers? **** that! My blog. My rules. My ******* insanity!
I have a much simpler blogging policy: ‘I will write whatever the hell I want and hope that people read it’
A bloggers code of ethics?
How to be good-like as a citizen of the blogosphere.
Well the idea is to make it easy to find what your looking for and bloggers are the worlds aggregaters the rest is just conjecture.
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