an article on blogging

[dragon wench]

I just had this article on blogging delivered to my inbox. It gets into some interesting issues. I have to admit, personally I don't read blogs, and I would never write one. I value my privacy too much, and I respect the privacy of others. (yes, I know, it's out there on the web, but I still think it is sort of like reading somebody's journal)
But, I find it an interesting phenomena even so.

Can Your Blog be used Against You?

Blogging is all the rage these days; it seems as if everybody who's anybody has one (or several). A blog, or Web log, functions as a high-tech version of a long-time tradition, the personal journal. It's a chronological record of one's thoughts, comments, opinions, or whatever else you want to write about that day. MSN, Google, Blogger.com and many other services provide free blogging space to anyone who wants to sign up.

Some blogs are information-oriented, such as the many tech blogs posted by IT professionals to share tips and how-to's about computer topics. Some are more editorial in nature, such as the many blogs that exist to promote the authors' political opinions and commentary. Others have more of a "dear diary" tone, relating intimate details of the authors' lives and feelings.

Some blogs are highly publicized. Celebrities such as Wil Wheaton of Star Trek fame (www.wilwheaton.net), singer Barbra Streisand (www.barbrastreisand.com/news_statements.html) and columnist Dave Barry (http://davebarry.blogspot.com) are high profile bloggers. But millions of "regular old people" also have blogs (estimates of the number of blogs online range from 10 million to 60 million or more world-wide). Note, however, that millions of blogs are started and then abandoned within weeks or months. The number of currently active blogs (those to which the author is posting regularly) is much lower.

If you want to attract strangers to read your blog, you can publish it to a blog directory such as Technorati (www.technorati.com) or Blogpulse (www.blogpulse.com). High traffic volume is a big plus if you want to make money off your blog by selling advertising space on your blog page. If your blog is more personal, you may choose not to publicize it, or even to put it on a password-protected Web site.

Who reads blogs? Last May, a Pew research survey found that about 25% of Internet users said they read blogs. That translates into over 30 million American adults. Of course, it's not just adults who author and read blogs. Blogging is also very popular with teenagers as a way to share their activities, thoughts and fantasies with their friends. But some of them have discovered, to their chagrin, that their friends aren't the only ones reading. Parents are finding that reading their kids' blogs is one way to find out what's going on in an uncommunicative teen's life. And unlike reading the child's diary, it's easier to justify. After all, the blog is out there on a public forum for anyone to see. Articles such as this one encourage parents to read teen blogs to better understand today's adolescents:
http://www.wxpnews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=...ED-CarolynJabs

School authorities are getting into the act, too. Last month, the Wall Street Journal ran an article about teens being suspended for inappropriate comments in their blogs:
http://www.wxpnews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=051220ED-Teens_Blog

But wayward (or sometimes merely imaginative) minors aren't the only ones whose blog posts can get them in trouble. Adult bloggers who rant about their marital problems, their neighbors or their jobs or who confess to less-than-legal doings may find themselves in hot water with their spouses, the folks next door, their bosses or even the police. Here's a list of some people who had been fired, as of December of last year, for things they posted on their blogs:
http://www.wxpnews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=051220ED-Bloggers

As a blogger, in effect you are a publisher. Although you have free speech protections under the Constitution if you're in the U.S. and some other countries, you can still be sued if you libel someone (publish untrue defamatory statements) or if you publish material in your blog that's copyrighted by someone else, without the owner's permission. You could also be fired and sued by your employer for disclosing trade secrets. For more information about legal issues that affect bloggers, see:
http://www.wxpnews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=051220ED-EFF

You can try to get around this by blogging anonymously, but subpoenas can be issued to your provider to compel them to reveal your identity or identifying information such as your IP address. Here's a technical guide to anonymous blogging that you might want to check out if you're trying to conceal your blogging identity:
http://www.wxpnews.com/rd/rd.cfm?id=051220ED-Cyber_Law

Of course, anonymity may take some of the fun out of blogging. After all, the reason you blog about personal matters in the first place is to share yourself with others. If those others have no idea who you are, that sharing may lose a lot of its appeal, on both sides. Thus even if you use a pseudonym and take steps to technically mask the origins of your blog posts, you may find yourself subconsciously dropping clues that can be used to determine who you are.

Remember, blogs are forever - or at least, they can hang around for a very long time. Public blog entries get indexed in search engines and those indexes remain even if you delete the post. Copies may be cached or archived on servers. Readers may make digital copies or print them out. Posts that seem fun and harmless at the time, especially relevations about your love life or drunken rants about your pet peeves, can come back to haunt you years later when a new love interest or a potential employer Googles your name and unearths your journal musings.

Thoughts?

[Xandax]

Blogging in its "pure" original form, I view as highly unneasecary, because it is basically intented as a diary sort of text. "What did I do today" - type of writing. This to me is very similar to all the "Hello, here am I and my family"-type websites which exists but was hugely popular back in the more earlier days of the Internet. Some usage for this could of course be if you are far away from familiy and/or friends and then use it as a means to communication across the distances and see what is up with each others lifes. However, besides this - I wouldn't ever utilize such a usage of blogs.

However, lately the booming of blogs used as a means to post some opinion about something, posting techincal articles or other areas of expertise - I find highly interesting. This is because blogs are often much more then mearly articles, they are a communication between the poster and his audience. I often use techincal/programming blogs to investigate elements which is usefull for my work, and I use just as much the comments made by readers as the actual blog itself. I see this as an extension of simply posting articles at some site, because it is now much more personal because it is grouped together with everything else you write about, whereas in an article database, each article is more "stand alone".

However, naturally in my view one has to be accountable for what you post, and thus people should indeed be careful about what they write. Blogs are in my view on the same level as writing coloums for a newspaper.

Anyways - my two bits.

[dj_venom]

Blogs. I hate blogs that are simply being saying an opinion with no logical thought process, no arguement backing it up, and no proof.

There are too many people just posting meaningless opinions, that frankly, no one cares about, because they've all heard it before. How many blogs have I seen where they say 'Bush is an idiot, the war in Iraq was a waste...' yeah, we get the point, so just get something new. Of course, blogs that have a purpose, like technical blogs are highly useful, but most people simply write whatever is in their head... which isn't much obviously.

However I must laugh at how the teens were in trouble by posting stuff relating to school. We had a couple of people expelled from our school because of what they had written on a website... and it wasn't even much.

@DW, I agree with you about not writing one. I don't write one because I like to stay private, but also, it just seems weird to me that I would say a heap of stuff about my life to a complete stranger. And what makes it worse, is thinking about why someone would look at it in the first place if they are a stranger... strange indeed .

[Aramant]

I have a Livejournal blog, myself. I don't generally use it to document my day to day activities or simply as a soap box, though. I'm something of a story-teller, and I like writing, so I type up things I've done or that have happened that I think are noteworthy. I post them online because telling stories is hardly effective without an audience, and this way I only have to post or send out my typing once and still reach a number of people.

I also prefer to type over vocally relating my derring-do's because I stutter. A key part of story-telling is timing, and when you fumble over words, that timing gets thrown off.

While my journal is mostly for story-telling, I do occasionally vent about things through it. Such as the fact that I stutter. I wrote a lengthy account of my life with the disability. But even though it was something of an editorial, it was still written with the intention to entertain and inform.

I'm a showman at heart, and a blog affords me another avenue through which I can achieve that.

[Aegis]

I have a 'blog', though you could hardly say it is personal. It use to write about politics, throw on some editorials I have written in the past, and make small comments from time to time. I think the thing gets updated maybe three or four times a month, but they are usually larger posts.

As for disciplinary actions being taken by schools towards what is written online, that is ridiculous. The school should hold not jurisdiction off their grounds, and claiming that they now have the authority to penalize something that was said online... Perhaps if a student was caught writing on school grounds, alright. Otherwise, it is much like a journal, and should taken as such. Quite often, these things are used to vent about what has occured to a person on a daily basis, much like a traditional journel does. The only difference, people can access the blog. Does it make any different? Not particularly. These people are, essentially, exhibitionists, and enjoy the attention.

Oh, for those interested, you can reach my little piece of the web through my signature.

[Magrus]

I have a place on Livejournal for my thoughts. I have a lot on my mind, all the time, which isn't suitable for disclosing in a conversation with others. Given I've only shared these things with girls I've dated, I started a journal through which we keep contact. It works out fairly nicely most of the time. We keep track of each other, and it is nice to have an outlet to rant with, or bring up controversial issues and discuss it there. I can lock down certain posts so only I can see them, so it can be private, or public. I can also seperate things so only certain people can read certain things. It helps me to organize my thoughts, and get some honest feedback on my ideas that I simply wouldn't get with most people.

As far as being sued, or fired, or arrested for my journal. Bah, I can get that kind of thing from walking down the street too. The government has the legal right to tap my phone and my computer anyways, it's already to the point if you mention something you've done being illegal, you are risk of being yanked out of your house for it. Anytime you put something down you shouldn't be doing is a risk of being caught. Anyone NOT realizing that obviously hasn't thought things through well enough in the first place when starting one.

I think it's such a big thing because it's an easy way to open up to other people. I'm not shy, so I don't mind babbling about odd things to people, as I'm sure most of you have noticed. Yet, there are things I've dealt with other people just would not understand unless they've gone through it to. There are on LJ communities and journals specifically for that purpose I've noticed. While not things I've dealt with myself, there are places where people can congregate and discuss things such as say, alcoholism, problems with your health, past abuse and such. I can rant about things done to me which shouldn't have happened but did happen, and people who went through the same thing will comment on it. I stumbled on a group of people who all went through a similar experience as I did, and now I can discuss that thing with people. It's not exactly something you can wander up to someone on the street and discuss, and otherwise, I'd have to pay some fool in a suit who has no clue what I'm talking about to listen to me.

Frankly, the child-parent situation with most families is a thing that's been bothering me. Too many handle communication the wrong way. I don't know any of the people I know of to have a blog/journal/etc. who would blatently put their "naughty" things up for everyone to see. A parent digging at journals to find out what their child was doing would probably have to lie, make a fake account, pretend to be someone else and get access to those entries. That, would be a huge breach in trust and respect and could very well ruin a parent-child relationship.

I have to say however, the logging of IP adresses in journal's can be dangerous. Someone close to me ranted about the abuse her ex put her through in her journal, he hacked through the server, found her IP address, found where she lived and had someone slash her tires in retaliation. That...is worrisome.

[dj_venom]

@Aegis:

I think it's probably got more to do with privacy and other stuff.

Though the people that were expelled that I mentioned earlier had simply grabbed teacher's heads, and placed them on other bodies... and let's not mention what the bodies were doing...

[Aegis]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dj_venom @Aegis: I think it's probably got more to do with privacy and other stuff. Though the people that were expelled that I mentioned earlier had simply grabbed teacher's heads, and placed them on other bodies... and let's not mention what the bodies were doing...

What does privacy have to do with it? Plain and simple, schools do not hold jurisdiction over the internet. Never have, and never will. To discipline a student because of something that has occured online is over stretching jurisdiction. As I said, unless the student was caught in school posting such stuff, there is absolutely nothing they can do about it.

[dj_venom]

But if a company can fire a worker for breaching privacy, why is it a school cannot expell a student for breaching privacy.

I understand what you are saying, however if the matters posted directly relate to them, and in a negative, untruthful way, then surely they are allowed a hand in the matters.

[dragon wench]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aegis What does privacy have to do with it? Plain and simple, schools do not hold jurisdiction over the internet. Never have, and never will. To discipline a student because of something that has occured online is over stretching jurisdiction. As I said, unless the student was caught in school posting such stuff, there is absolutely nothing they can do about it.

One thing I have found is that schools are generally overstretching their jurisdiction. My son's school is actively attempting to control what types of lunches the kids bring, and they are truly overzealous about "junkfood."
Now, we tend to be food 'purists' so we strictly limit the amount of junk our son is allowed anyway.
But, I frankly think that it really is not the school's business to stick its nose into kid's lunchbags.
And that is just one example..


So, sadly, the situation in relation to blogging does not come as any surprise to me.

[dj_venom]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dragon wench One thing I have found is that schools are generally overstretching their jurisdiction. My son's school is actively attempting to control what types of lunches the kids bring, and they are truly overzealous about "junkfood." Now, we tend to be food 'purists' so we strictly limit the amount of junk our son is allowed anyway. But, I frankly think that it really is not the school's business to stick its nose into kid's lunchbags. And that is just one example..

I agree with you completely about them not being allowed to do that.

What annoys me is that my school has reduced 'unhealthy' options, and tried to become healthy. That's okay with me, seeing as I rarely buy and am already 'healthy', but when it's cold and raining, I want a meatpie!

But that simply makes the people who want fat food to bring it in, and the people who occasionly buy it must suffer... so hopefully they won't take the next step of looking .

[Aramant]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dragon wench My son's school is actively attempting to control what types of lunches the kids bring, and they are truly overzealous about "junkfood."

Isn't that at least partially the result of PTA pressure? Parents who are concerned about the eating habits of their children putting the onus on the schools for providing unhealthy food?

[Aegis]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dj_venom But if a company can fire a worker for breaching privacy, why is it a school cannot expell a student for breaching privacy. I understand what you are saying, however if the matters posted directly relate to them, and in a negative, untruthful way, then surely they are allowed a hand in the matters.

A company is different than a school, especially when a lot of companies these days have a contract to be signed before employment. Because of contracts taken up with an employer, than it is well within the rights and jurisdiction of a company to release an employee if they can be connected to malignent statements, or breach of company privacy/contract.

Children sign no such thing when attending school, at least Public school. It is not a matter of privacy, especially if the blog is online. If defametory statements are being made online, no effort to make the statements private is used. And if you were speaking of privacy in terms of the school, well, you will really have to explain that one too me...

[dj_venom]

I love that.

The Parent:
It's the school's fault my child eats the wrong food.

The School:
Parents need to have their child eating correctly

The Child:
Chocolate makes me happy

Quote:

Children sign no such thing when attending school, at least Public school. It is not a matter of privacy, especially if the blog is online. If defametory statements are being made online, no effort to make the statements private is used. And if you were speaking of privacy in terms of the school, well, you will really have to explain that one too me...

Well for my experience, it's a private school (I got a scholarship, leave me alone). And we have to sign a contract each year relating to inappropriate behaviour. As such, these terms were breached, so they were liable to face the consequences... being expullsion.

I agree with you about the being able to say what they want, but I'm talking about these guys that were in trouble, it was because they breached the contract, and breached the school's privacy as part of that.

I would take a look at what we had to sign, however it has been the end of the year and I have ripped up the book containing that.

[Aramant]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dj_venom I love that. The Parent: It's the school's fault my child eats the wrong food. The School: Parents need to have their child eating correctly The Child: Chocolate makes me happy

Yeah. I didn't mean to sound as though I agree that the school should monitor eating habits. I was just making an observation.