A Pox on All Their Rules
I love Elizabeth Lane Lawley’s post on her weblog mamamusings, rules? i don’t need no stinkin rules
Everywhere you look these days, bloggers are writing policies and rulebooks. For themselves, for others, for everyone. With calls for accountability, integrity, consistency, appropriateness, and ethical behavior, it seems that every blogger I know is publishing their own set of guidelines for blogging.
Feh. A pox on all their rules, that’s what I say.
I find her posts interesting reading….good food for thought. I have been bothered about all the calls for rules for weblogs, too. Weblogs are not about control and rules! I can see guidelines if you are setting up some type of classroom weblog but for everyday weblogs that come from such a wide variety of sources and from such good thinkers. If you find a blog offensive, just don’t read it! I want the dialogue to continue and the voices to be heard!
She went on to say
I’m not sure I think of (or want to think of) webloggers as a “group”,any more than I want to think of “writers” or “poets” or “programmers” as a group. My weblog is simply a tool that allows me to publish thoughts, questions, and ideas online. It’s not an application for citizenship in “Blogaria” or “Blogistan” or any of the other geographic metaphors people use to describe the diverse collection of self-published websites that blogs have enabled.
I’m not sure I agree with her here. Yes, it’s a tool. But I think it does build online communities who have a sense of common goals, a respect for each other and a supportive free thinking spirit among themselves. There’s something about the instant publishing and ability to comment so quickly that builds a learning community. You navigate to those blogs with similar interests. Yet, I find myself reading all sorts of weblogs. Some of them are totally opposite of what I believe, yet they make me pause and really think. I like that.
Yep, food for thought. I love those kind of posts. Thanks to Elizabeth Lane Lawley. Keep it up!
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