Blog News Watch

Social Networking and Blogging has got quite a pace these days, every minute somewhere a new blog is popping up. Technorati alone track nearly 63.2 million blogs. Blogosphere has been source of valuable discussion and news assessment and developed into a wonderful democratic form of technology, where everyone can express what they have to say. Over the years lots of tools, software and applications has been developed in advancement of blogging. But still there is lack of trust around New media. why? since we do not have any standard code of conduct, unlike the mainstream media. Good bloggers follow their own code of conduct, some don’t even care. That’s the reason why blogosphere often become ground of ego war and criticized for lacking standard.

Why we need standard for code of conduct?

We need standard code of conduct to build trust among social net workers, bloggers. Every profession has their own code of conduct and ethics, except bloggers. For example-

• A lot of blogger consider deleting a comment left to blog is unethical on the other hand some don’t.
• Growing number of blogger do not disclose source of information/media or conflicts of interest, affiliations, activities and personal agendas.
• Most blogger do not distinguish between advocacy, commentary and factual information.
• A lot of blogger never recognize that gathering and reporting information may cause harm or discomfort. They should understand pursuit of information is not a license for arrogance.
• How many bloggers have you seen admit mistakes and correct them promptly. Even a lot of high flying bloggers have this problem.
• When criticizing other bloggers for their action, a lot of we blogger forget professional manner and use vulgar words. Remember you are criticizing his action, you should not hold personal anger/agenda behind it.
• Since blogging is democratic, so each and every commenter should get similar treat, i have observed bloggers make fun out of commenter when commenter is nobish (not famous).
• Growing numbers of Content theft & design theft from blog or RSS feed(content only). Most writers & designers in blogosphere use Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 license for their contents (Which is similar to GNU GPL), means its all yours as long as you say where you get it from. A link back won’t do any harm, does it? As for content, no one says you can not write on same topics, so why not put your own thought. That’s what all blogging is saying your own thought.
• Favored treatment to advertisers/business allies and special interests and their influence to content.
• Arrogance and ego warfare. Very common among a lot of high-flying bloggers.Example- few months back an A-list blogger said people linked to him and write about whatever he write to get traffic boost. You can see hundreds of similar incident around blogosphere.

There are so many anomaly in blogosphere, i can write a whole book with this list. All these imply one and only point, i.e. we are bunch of lawless baboons. So how you expect the world/crowd to consider blogosphere as a credible source of information? Some top bloggers like -Darren Rowse, has shown us integrity and transparencies in blogging. But as a whole, bloggers are failing to show integrity, due to lack of Code of conduct and Ethics. Successful in business doesn’t really imply successful in gaining credibility.Without a standard code of conduct or ethics we will never gain integrity, transparency thus credibility.

How we can establish standards for code of conducts/ethics?

Mainstream journalist has their own code of conduct/ethics. Since not all bloggers are journalists and the blog form is more casual, blogger shouldn’t be expected to follow the same ethics codes journalists are. But responsible bloggers should recognize that they are publishing words publicly, and therefore have certain ethical obligations to their readers, the people they write about, and society in general. Integrity is the cornerstone of credibility. Bloggers who adopt code of principles and standards of practice not only practice ethical publishing, but convey to their readers that they can be trusted.There were several attempt by few folks in blogosphere to set a standards of code of conduct/ethics, but none of them really make it out to the surface. As some of the readers of those folks only adopted those code of conduct, and also different folks suggested different ethics which isn’t same. So what we need is an organizations backed by certain trusted party to develop a standard set of code of conducts/ethics, which will be adopted by every blogger in blogosphere.

Who can be more trusted then W3C on the web, no one i guess. In an attempt to build a standard code of conduct across the web (not limited to only blogosphere, instead whole social interaction community) W3C is backing Content Labels (The web site will be operational in new year). You may ask that where is the democracy in there? since an organization will set some rules and you and I have to follow it. That’s the point, it is not like that at all, in Content Labels you , me, the bloggers will contribute our thoughts, suggestions and findings about these code of conduct. All Content Labels will do is refine and aggregate those in democratic form and set the final code of conducts. That means we are the one setting our own code of conduct/ethics.

That is why Content Labels is inviting each and ever blogger to contribute your thoughts/opinions and support this mission. Contribute in Content Labels, for making the web trusty and transparent. Get in touch and participate.

Affiliation: I am a contributor of Content Labels.