January 11, 2006

Observations on Blogging

I subscribe to Planet Case, Blog@Case Comments, and various RSS feeds from Case blogs and other blogs from several subject areas (library & information science, technology, engineering, etc). I am surprised by some of the activities I have seen on some blogs.

• Copying word for word materials written by others, which would be a violation of copyright
• Copying all or a portion of a material written by others without citing the original source
• Posting an item, allowing extensive discussion to occur in the comments section, and than changing the original post so the commentators look like idiots
• Allowing commenting to occur, than deleting comments you do not agree with
• Not linking to the source that you are commenting about, so others can form their own opinions
• On and on...

Many bloggers probably do not think of actions like this, because it is so easy to cut-and-paste or press a delete button. Actions like this happen on web sites all of the time, but unless cached by Google, the WayBack Machine, or other services it might not be visible to the casual reader. Email holds more accountabilty, because once you send an item you cannot recall it. The blogosphere falls in between these two realms. Changes, deletions, updates, etc. on blogs probably go unnoticed all the time, unless the blog owner makes a statement in their entry. RSS feeds though increase the level of accountabilty of blogs. Once a subscriber receives a RSS item in their reader or aggregator, it is no longer in control of the original blog owner. If someone follows a certain blog closely, especially by utilization of RSS, the writer's habits, changes, or style of writing now have gained a history outside of the blog owner's control.

I like the Bloggers' Code of Ethics that was created by CyberJournalist.net. And in a related note, CyberJournalist shared the New York Times view on blogging.

Categories

Copyright Intellectual Property RSS & Readers