December 21, 2004

Curious ethics from the NYTlink below: "honor among bloggers"? Where do you find that guidebook? With anyone having a blog or website being lumped in one big label, what would this be beyond anyone's personal sense of ethics?

Many of the bloggers I talked to thought so. ''I would never reveal the identity of a date -- it violates the honor among bloggers, which resembles honor among thieves,'' i think i could see this in the beginning when blogging was first automated, because that was a certain group of people, but now isn't it just anyone?

posted by ethylene 20 years ago
  • some people do see blogging with a certain "journalistic responsibility" but most people randomly blogging don't even think about the ramifications of it beyond "personal therapy." so what would bloghonor be?
  • here's an answer for anyone watching bakiwopwop it's like a shooting star
  • Actually, I can believe the vast majority of bloggers have enough sense of honor \ right & wrong that they wouldn't, say, post the personal details of a dinner date. Very few people do nasty things just for the hell of it; the problem is that they get all of the attention when they DO. A lot of rumors and misinformation makes its way into blogs, yes - but the majority of it is posted by people who believe it to be true. To cite an easy example - it only takes ONE person to take a fascist rant written by some random person and stick Andy Rooney's name on it. Then hundreds forward it around without realizing it's fake. So the trick is to learn to sort out A)the outright liars, B)the misinformed, and C)the cognizant. (I have a personal corollary to Sturgeon's Law which I think applies - "90% of everything is well-intentioned.")