CSM Commentary:

The messy relationship between bloggers and politicians. This is a teaching moment, I think.  Perhaps I am not the best to do so, but I’ll try anyway.

In the earliest days of weblogging, the weblog communities themselves [ETP, Blogger] softly enforced ‘best practices.’ When I first began, I remember posting a somewhat sensational link, and making an idiotic snark to force commentary into my empty discussion area.  A cascade of webloggers showed up to say, “Look carefully at what you said.  Imagine the kind of reader you’re attracting.  Is this the audience you want?  Is this all you want to do with your weblog? Do you ever want to be taken seriously?” I believe Jason did me this favor six or so years ago by phrasing it in such a way that it got through my thick skull.  My early discussion archives are long gone, unfortunately.  Whoever did me the favor, I will always be grateful for that comment. 

We’re too big a universe now to be able to encourage good behavior in this fashion.  Even a middlingly popular weblogger, in today’s high traffic terms, will have faithful defenders to fend off even the most well-meaning critique.  A good example is about the only tool with which we can teach, and because of this, many of the current crop of leading lights leaves me dispirited.  There’s a responsibility with being popular, and linking other blogs ... a responsibility to first and foremost, reinforce good weblogging habits.

Snark is a stage of climbing the learning curve of being a good weblogger.  Too many are stuck in it permanently and consider it their ‘style.’ It’s not a style. The road leads beyond this attention-seeking limbo, with greater rewards ... rewards not calculated by mere hits alone.  Snark is like a bird flu in the metacosm, and everyone would be better off without catching the malady.  Reinforcing stereotypes is not biting commentary, name-calling increases noone’s understanding. Vulgarity really has no place, except perhaps in extremity of circumstance. And purposely increasing the magnitude of the false dichotomy between conservative and liberal for personal gain is doing humankind injustice; most of us hold many opinions that cross the lines between Republican and Democrat, and spread across the spectrum of religions.  Does this unappreciated but very real majority have room in your weblog, or the weblogs you read, weblogs groaning under a load of snarks?  Are you feeding a desire for knowledge, or merely playing the role of another jester of sensationalism?

Bottom line, If you want weblogs taken more seriously, take your weblogging seriously.

Never erase your archives.  If you’re frightened, take your site offline instead, letting your audience know why, and take a breather.  We ‘old schoolers’ always had the rule, after you hit ‘post’, you never change the post.  People read it, link it, comment upon it in that original state.  If you change it afterwards, you are destroying your integrity as a weblogger. That rule has gotten looser as more writers hit weblogs; revision is an essential tool for good writing.  This is an important sea-change in weblogging philosophy, that affects our accountability, and we need to have a metacosm-wide discussion about how to deal with this issue. 

In addition, too many of the newer webloggers have no recognition of our common history, the archetypes of their particular style of weblogging.  This too needs remedying.  There are clear stages of weblogging, and we need to get the newbies over the dangerous humps as smoothly as possible.  We also need to educate the readers, so they know a good weblog when they see it, how to dig through archives to find whether a particular weblogger is being consistent in opinion, or not.

I see this as being ‘our’ problem, not the Edwards’ bloggers’ problem.  They took the route to Dictionopolis ["The Phantom Tollbooth"], and found they had to eat their words.  Everyone who writes a weblog eventually eats their words.  We need to make sure everyone who starts and maintains a weblog understands that fact.

Now we’re all telling these webloggers, “You should have chosen a tastier speech.”

Yes, but perhaps we should have shown them how, much earlier, by making our process crystal clear, pointing out the detours and potholes, describing our history, and recording it all for posterity.

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