BloggerCon III: Core Values on the Web


Wow, the little fascists in us all came out in this one

So, I get a little nervous when trying to agree on "values." Maybe it's a little worse right around now because according to the media a bunch of folks in the middle of the country think they have more valuable values than those of us on the coasts.

Whatever the reason, I'm not sure a group of people in a room with an inflated sense of our own importance and significance should be telling everyone else what values to uphold on the Internet.

Some issues that were discussed included monetization of blogs, transparency and anonymity and what is the social contract between a blogger and his or her audience. One interesting topic that was raised and then swiftly ignored was the lack of democracy so far in podcasting.

If you read my post on the podcasting session you know that I found it rather off-putting the way we were expected to slavishly admire (and applaud) some of podcasting's stars. So someone brought up (it might have been Bob Wyman, but I'm really not sure) the fact that you can search text in text blogs, so you can find anyone writing about a certain topic, but you can't search podcasts in the same way...you must search by person...by fame as it were.

Now, that could have led to an interesting discussion about whether blogging is really democratic at all. If I see the same 10 or so blog gurus reference each other's posts re: BloggerCon one more time, I'm going to scream. Mostly 'cause the posts are all "cool event", "saw my friends", "great unique un-conference concept." Blah Blah Blah.

Anyway, what shocked me was the discussion of whether someone "enforcement" agency should be punishing bloggers that don't meet some yet-to-be-determined values test. Whoa! What?

Maybe I'm overly influenced by my S.O. waxing nostalgic about the early frontier days on the web, but it seems to me (and so I commented in the session) that the internet is supposed to be free, that information wants to be free etc.

There will always be bad people wanting to do bad things. There will always be fraud. We certainly need people who perpetrate crimes online to be stopped...but I'm not sure most blogs need to become regulated. If you're giving financial advice in a blog, you better have a disclaimer statement. If you're talking about your opinions about politics, or technology or the latest movie releases...then why?

I also found the discussion of linking interesting and a bit of a mystery to me. In my humble opinion, links do NOT equal authenticity or popularity or credibility or transparency.

People typically exchange links because they like what the blogger is doing. That's about it. Sometimes you like their opinion. Sometimes you merely like their writing style. Sometimes you like the links they provide.

At one point conference organizer Dave Winer said he felt bad, "dirty" even, if someone asks him to link to a post...he reads it, likes it and does post it...and then finds the person asked 20 other people to link to it too.

I was truly flabbergasted by this perspective. Dude, you liked the post. Why shouldn't you link to it? You need to be so special that you're the only one whose opinion and link matters?

I've never been comfortable asking anyone to post to anything. But lots of bloggers are link whores. Get over it. It's part of the culture.

Moderator Mary Hodder, who I really enjoyed talking to further at Saturday night's dinner was different than the other discussion leaders I saw....she was calm, measured and didn't feel the need to inject her opinion in response to every comment uttered from the crowd. Bravo.

In the end the crowd turned against the idea of policing blogs (good!) but did come up with a list of Generally Accepted Values:

Good:
Disclosure, if not transparency
Innovation & Creativity
Accessibility & Connectedness
Personalization
Independence & Democracy
Reasonable Attribution

Bad:

Lack of Attribution
Wuffi Hoarding (whatever?)
Links for Money
Slavish adherence to power laws

Yeah...we weren't as good as clearly articulating the anti-values...I agree.

Posted: Tue - November 9, 2004 at 10:59 AM       EmailFeedback

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