Monday, April 9, 2007

Blogging Guidelines?

The New York Times has a very interesting article discussing universal guidelines for bloggers, which "would be voluntary, relying on the community to police itself ."

The guidelines would call for the banning of anonymous comments and the ability to delete "threatening or libelous comments without facing cries of censorship."

As communications professionals, I'm sure we can understand the value of guidelines and the ability to control messages posted to our blogs, but wouldn't this somewhat defeat the purpose of a blog? Shouldn't the blogosphere play by the golden rule? If you posted an anonymous comment on a blog, would you want the blog editor to delete it? Or, would you make a nasty un-called for comment on a blog if the company/individual didn't deserve it?

Read the entire article A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs

1 comment:

Andrew Graham said...

The regulations and norms related to traditional journalism is one of the reasons people started blogging in the first place. There are plenty of reasons to post commentary anonymously, just as there are plenty of reasons to ignore those anonymous comments.