Blog: April 2003 Archives

In the event of an actual blog entry you would have something more interesting to read.

After taking some time to think about the ethics of blogging as written about in my last post, I have come the following conclusions.

Blogging as a form of expression does not neatly fit into an existing category like journalism, editorial, fiction, diary, or non-fiction

Blogging is a super category or container for all other forms of expression, but with the attribute of linking and often an attraction to a sense of nowness.

If a blog is a written by a professional journalist and purports to be an accurate account of the facts it should be held up to the same cannon of ethics used by journalists.

If the blog is fiction, it should be held up to the same ethical conventions regarding fictional writing.

To regard blogging as a form unto itself with it's own conventions, i.e. don't edit later, always be perfectly self revealing is to limit the possibility of expression.

To make rules for blogs seems about as useful to me as making rules about what can be put on paper. We declare that all words published on wood pulp must follow journalistic ethics. Seems silly doesn't it.

Perhaps this diagram explains what I am trying to get across better.

Lately, I have been interested in the subject of the ethics of blogging specifically whether it is ethical to edit material after submission, how self revealing one must be, whether it is ethical to have an online persona, etc..

The first thing I realized is that people take this much more seriously that I thought.

• Essay on blogging ethics. This essay suggests that you shouldn't edit material later. This is fine if you want to be a journalist instead of a diarist.
• OnePotMeal: Learning to Read. Examines some of the boundaries between truth and fiction.
• Jonathan Delacou: Art's Emotional charge.
• mamamusings: honesty of a different nature
• Blogging, ethics, and moolah
• Washington Post takes on ethics and blogging.

Does it matter if the blog entry is true? To me, the answer is sometimes not.

For instance,these confessions are hilarious, entertaining and instructive even if not true.

• Hannah's confession
• Andrew's confession

However, if the BBC "blog" entries were false I would be peeved. It's all about context to me.

However, I think that really the issue is people want to understand the author's intent when they read. They don't want to get emotionally wound up over fiction, for instance.

On the other hand many blogs have the tone of an annual Christmas letter. Does anyone really argue over whether the Christmas letter account of the previous year is an accurate and faithful recording of the years events?

I have a solution to propose. I propose that people adopt a standard way of tagging their content. Here are some categories that people could use sort of like the Creative Commons license.

• Readers choice (Reader decides veracity)
• Author Editorial opinion
• First Hand Account
• News Commentary
• For Fun
• Self Revelation
• Speculation
• Fiction
• Plagiarism

Each of the categories above would exist in a "signed" and "unsigned" author state. The "signed" state would indicate that the author would be willing to swear in a court of law, stake their online reputation, or be willing to provide evidence of the "truthfulness" of the blog entry. The unsigned state would be less rigourous. For instance a "Self Revelation" entry that did not completely bare the soul and all the nuances would be "unsigned".

The readers would also be able to sign the material. In this way a web of trust" could be developed, so that others might have a frame of reference for the material.

Perhaps this would prevent a "journalist" in China from mistaking the onion for a real source of news.

I suppose some of the heat in this discussion is generated by people who see blogging as a means to creating a world dominated by peace, love, freedom, and democracy through a connected informed public.

mamamusings: stories i won't tell

Like liz, I find some events in my diary are not fit for public consumption, as described in "stories I won't tell." I have considered setting up a private MT server for these private entries, but that seems like overkill.

I find for myself that blogging allows me to journal events in a way that is much more comfortable than with pen and paper. I think that is because I can edit the entries (although that creates an ethical dilemma for some), I can use a keyboard & spellchecker(if I want to), and the result is just plain easy to navigate (no hyperlinks in a leather bound volume).

Likely, I could come up with a software solution if I thought about it a bit more. Currently, the private thoughts go into a text file, with date entries. Some entries have XML/HTML like tags for semantic markup, like <RANT></RANT>.

See subject. I am so happy, I have finally cleared this all important first hurdle. Next thing you know I'll be quoted in the NY Times as an outhority.

Here are a few links that provide some framework for discussing the term "social software."

• sylloge.com
• spiked-online.com
• radio.weblogs.com
• umontreal.c
• usemod.com
• Joel on Software

As I research the term, I am not sure I like it. Of course I didn't like the term blogging or weblog or weblication when I first heard them either. Some of the defintions try and make too much of "social software", turning it into a panacea that will spread democracy and peace on earth. I think that is asking too much of software.

It reminds me of the hype people spread about the internet in 1996 or so, before the bubble really started. There was a myth that the world connected by IP addresses would suddenly link arms in one anarchic but peaceful demonstration of techno libertarianism that would cause the ultimate revolution in world affairs. It didn't quite happen that way.

I'll have to keep thinking about this.

peterme.com: In a Quaker State of Mind, or Why I Had Stopped Blogging

I wonder if my blog entries are better than silence. That's a pretty high bar to jump over in my mind.

Why Blog?

I have been mulling over the question "Why should I blog?"

If you look at my entries over the last month you would notice the primary subject was the War in Iraq. No one is pestering me for interviews or position paper. As far as I can tell no one has linked to anything I have written. Why do I bother to write it?

Here are the reasons I came up with for blogging.

1. I like the technology and it give me an excuse to learn some new things. I have learned how to parse RSS feeds in Perl and how to write MovableType plugin and use the MT libraries.
2. It's trendy. I like being in on web trends.
3. I like web surfing, and I want to share what I find as well as keep a record somewhere where I can access it later.
4. I like writing, but don't have time to write a novel and don't think it's likely my opinions will be picked up in the paper.
5. Blogging give me a way to connect with groups of people who are writing about the news in different ways from different perspectives.
6. I have always liked the idea of having a web page, because self-publishing is just neat. I mean if we have "Freedom of the Press" in the U.S. it is meaningless if you don't have a press. The web let's me have a press without all the expense of ink and distribution.
7. Self-expression is a deep part of my psyche. I want to know and understand myself and others. Blogging is a social activiy to some degree as you interact with a larger community of bloggers.
8. Blog aggregation is serving to detect memes very quickly. I would like my thoughts to be part of this. I want my vote to count in the chaos and millieu of other voices.
9. It's anti monopoly. As Larry Lessig points out media is incredibly concentrated into a few owners now.

   "In 1992, 70% of prime time television was produced by independent producers; today, 75% is owned by networks. There are 91 "major" TV markets; 80% of them are owned by 6 companies. In 1947, 80% of newspapers were independent; that number is below 20% today. In the 1970s, 10% of first run films in theaters was foreign; that number today is less than .5%." Link

   My blogging is a voice of independant media, my voice.

But in the final analysis, does it really matter to anyone if I have a blog? I think the answer is no. It doesn't matter to anyone, except me.

Is this blog primarily driven by ego? I think the answer is yes. The only part missing for me is validation, that someone reads and actually cares about what I am writing. I mean, I can grep the Apache logs, but it's hard to know if someone simply crawled my site with a robot, ala google or whether a human stopped by to see what I was thinking.

What is a blgo anyway? Tom Coates has a pretty good explanation.

Here are other folks take on the why's of blogging.

• djuwudi.com
• PBS
• In a Dark Time

mamamusings

I mention this blog as it is one of a few sites using three column CSS with Movable Type and she makes the templates available on her blog.

She also seems to have an interest in "social software", formerly known as and/or "Computer Mediated Communication." Lots of good stuff.

I'll have to clean up my templates and make them available to the public. I sure think they would be more readable and editable with more includes.

Tima's RSS Scraper Plugin

I was going to ask for some brave volunteer to test my alpha RSS scraper, but someone has beat me to creating the plugin and the namespace.

Hat's off to Tima for writing an excellent story on how to write plugins and for creating some really nice plugins.

There is another way to scrape the RSS feeds. I created a plugin, that will take an argument of a file or http location and get an RSS feed parse it and place it on the page. I would love to share this code, but I have a bit of clean up to do. I am also a little concerned about error handling. It looks like it will work fine.

You may notice some RSS scraping going on the right hand column.

It took me a few minutes to put the pieces together, but here is how it works.

I modified the Main Index for MovableType to have an MTInclude for a file.

The I pipe the output from a modified version of rss2html into the included file

That won't trigger a rebuild, so using the MT interface, I trigger a rebuild.

Since I don't want to do that be hand, I set it up in cron to happen once an hour. For now I scrape the CSM, SlashDot, and Todd's blog.

Note to self

When editing the style-sheet it is faster to edit the file directly and then simply touch the index.html file, then refresh in the browser. MT should probably have that option. It seems smarter than rebuilding. But, be sure and make a backup copy it seems like some rebuilding might cause the style sheet to get over-written. That would not be helpful.

Note I switched to a 3 column (all CSS) layout. I used glish.com for inspiration on how to do it so it would work in most browsers. BTW, this is a great CSS layout resouce.

I notice more reader from .mil domains.

I just wanted to say thanks to the troops for doing the heavy lifting in Iraq.

I support the troops 100%. I want them to win the peace and come home in one piece.

aliensporebomb's LiveJournal -- Entries

Rejoice, Todd aka Alien Spore Bomb is blogging.

See also, the Orange of Grin.

Todd is (in)famous for his former association with the PressMate.