Ethics

There has been a lot of discussion in the blogging community (or perhaps I should say, some discussion by some “major players” in the blogging community) about ethics in blogging. See this, this, and this over at Never Think, that over at Plasticbag.org, that there over at Anil Dash’s site, and finally, this great piece over at NSLog();. Or don’t, if you aren’t interested in this debate at all.

For those that have no idea what is going on here, it started with a campaign to allow bloggers to advertise in their blogs. There’s probably a referral system, where the writer gets paid whenever someone buys something from their site. And herein lies the controversy. Yes, it is commercializing the blogging world. Yes, it is someone making money from your money. They may even choose not to tell you about the fact they are getting paid. But I have to wonder if that really hurts your reputation. And if that matters. It’s probably clichéd by now, but I read in a Bujold book once that honor is what you know about yourself and your ethics and your morality (and your ability to hold yourself to those), whereas reputation is just some people’s opinions of their perceptions of your ability to hold yourself to what they perceive to be your morality and ethics. Or at least, that’s what I got from it. Notice my emphasis on the perceptions and opinions. My site isn’t popular. I don’t strive for popularity or attention. I strive for a haven where I can write freely about whatever comes to my mind, given that it doesn’t violate my principles. Am I overly concerned with my reputation among my peers? Not really. Likewise, do I care that other bloggers may think I’m a self-absorbed and narrow-minded bitch? Can’t say I do. If you don’t like what I write, either read it out of morbid curiosity or leave. It’s the same in person as it is on the web, I assure you. Does stating a list of what I will and will not do here change at all your perception on my posts, other than to make you more critical (if it even does that)?

With regards to money-earning from a site… Let them do it. If it bothers you, don’t click on their links, or if it bothers you a lot, don’t visit the blog. But if you randomly click on links and buy junk recommended by people’s blogs without doing additional research or reading other reviews anyway… well, whose fault is it that you just bought a shitty product on a questionable review? Not theirs. And every review is questionable, whether it is written for money or not. Everyone has their biases and prejudices and different interests and reasons for buying and trying a product. And all of those are hardly ever stated (there is even the thought that no one can possibly list all of their own biases and prejudices, as they are in their own heads; some maybe, but not all).

Maybe there’s something wrong with me for not seeing the horror-inducing aspect of referral links. Perhaps it’s because I’m so broke that I don’t buy much online anyway and thus I don’t care so much that some one else is going to get a slice of the money. Perhaps.

But the thing is this. Although ethics are not situational, they are personal. I don’t see anything wrong with these things. That doesn’t mean I’ll do them, because that’s not why I created this site (nor would I make any money from such links), but if someone else does, why should I criticize them? Is “buymyshit.com” my domain? Do I have any right whatsoever to shake a finger at the owner and say “Uh, uh, uh. You aren’t following what I consider to be the code of ethics…” I don’t think so.

Marcus over at Never Think also wrote an essay on how one develops trust in a weblog. I find it so amazing how we differ in our opinions here. I visit a new weblog. I check it for readibility in terms of language (coherence) and design (I find Chris Pirillo’s blog to be almost unreadable due to the font and color scheme, despite the fact that he has interesting content). Next, Marcus talks about checking the comments (“Next, I look at the number and type of comments a weblog has (assuming it has comments enabled). If it has a lot, from a variety of sources that don’t necessarily all seem to be the writer’s nearest and dearest, then that’s usually a good sign – obviously this blog has a readership that care.”). Comments have always been the thing I checked last. If I’m reading/visiting a blog, I care about the writer’s ideas. I care about his day, his opinions on this or that aspect of politics, or his feelings about the latest piece of software he’s talking about. The amount of controversy or debate or readership a person has doesn’t change that. Some of the more obscure sites I visit have no controversy, no debate, and only a handful of people as a readership, yet I still visit them, because they amuse me, or cause me to think, or evince emotion. Do they have less integrity? Does the fact that a person has comments turned off due to the fact that they don’t want to deal with the shit that comes with open forums for feedback reduce their integrity or their ability to be trusted? I would hope not.

Along the same vein of an unseen blog with interesting content to me, is the question of “how referenced is this weblog?” If a fair amount of people talk about it elsewhere, I have to ask, does this change the value of what the author says? Only one other blog I read references thebrotherlove.com. Yet I still read and like what he says. I guess my real question/confusion is this: what does trust have to do with it? It can’t be a trust that everything an author says is correct. Or even that everything the author says has integrity. Integrity is based upon ethics and morality and no one else is qualified to judge someone else’s ability to uphold their own ethics or morality (because you can’t know all of a person’s ethics). Trust doesn’t really seem to enter the equation for me. Am I missing something?

I feel that this applies to much more than blogging, of course, or else I would have posted this in my computer blog. Everything here can be applied to real life. This is how I like to think I judge (or don’t judge) people’s opinions and actions. It’s not too bizarre, I think.