What is the etiquette of blogging and what are the ethical considerations?
For example, should people always be quoted by name and sources cited in full or is it acceptable to quote someone anonymously or allude to what they’ve said? Does it depend on whether one wants to praise or criticise?
How public should something be before its bloggable?
And although a blog is publicly available, isn’t rather like saying something behind someone’s back in many situations? When is this wrong?
And is there a sinful desire to have the last word that blogging serves?
What of plagiarism and copyright?
And is blogging a godless waste of time?
Not wanting to waste too much time, I made a quick search for blog etiquette on line.
Although some helpful stuff is included (e.g. remember your blog posts might follow you!; get your spelling right!), surely we can do better than Bella Online with its advice that one shouldn’t lie as you are likely to be found out and discredited.
More of a start is perhaps some blogging principles.
Posts
9 comments:
I think the 'living room' principle is quite a good one. If you wouldn't say it in normal conversation (or if you would but would wish you hadn't) then don't say it on your blog. And I think something similar pertains to sources - these aren't academic journals, but obviously it's wrong to just nick stuff and pass it off as your own, and it's helpful for other people to know and be able to check out your sources sometimes.
If I didn't just nick stuff and pass it off as my own i'd never have anything to say - whether on my blog, or in the living room. Or pulpit for that matter... Perhaps a vow of silence...
btw Marc, now Ros has called her blog "i have a question", are you going to retitle this one "Moses Seat"?
And will yours be 'Words from the Deacon'?
PS - very impressed Matthew that you are clearly the only Christian whose managed to post on my blog. I'm hoping for some support in doing internet evangelism
Yes, I wish I'd given rather more thought to the branding of my blog. But it seems a bit late to think of a change now that the word is spreading and sure a fine corpus of timeless posts has been accumulated.
Yes, I rather like "Moses Seat" but I think I might be haunted in the small hours of the morning by Don Carson's interpretation of Matthew 23:1ff: that its all meant ironicly and that Jesus doesn't really expect any kind of submission to the Pharisees' teaching from his followers. That can't be right, can it?
Did you pair notice that one of bloggers' principles was deleting off topic comments?
I understand that Jeffers has been hanging out here to hear what you two are saying too!
Sorry - in what way are we off topic? I thought all truths were related.
Ros
No. Mother Kirk is suitably pretentious for me, I think. btw, I've enabled comments on it, as I was feeling left out! Paranoid that no-one reads it!
Marc
Yeah, all truths are related, so you can't delete anything!
Neil
When are you getting a blog?
Just to expand on the 'living room' principle (and thus return to the topic, Marc): it seems to me that quoting from someone else's blog should be undertaken very cautiously. Someone's carefully considered word in print and their spur of the moment thought in general conversation or on a blog are quite different levels of evidence of their overall position on something.
Basically, what I'm saying is that I don't want all my heresies to come back to haunt me.
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