Blogging Ethics and the permanence of the written word

The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
—The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Fitzgerald translation)

Earlier this year there was some controversy regarding two bloggers hired by the John Edwards campaign who were attacked by the leader of a right-wing political organization calling itself "The Catholic League" for blog posts they had written prior to their involvement with the Edwards campaign, posts which were critical of the Catholic church and its policies. While right-wing bloggers - who just a year before had trumpeted the vital necessity of defending the right to criticize, denigrate, and insult religious institutions - openly applauded this attack on freedom of expression, and the John Edwards campaign waffled in defense of the two bloggers, at least one of them undertook an effort to expunge her records of some of the offending material. This action was seized upon by right-wing bloggers as an admission of culpability - even by bloggers who themselves practice "redaction" as a matter of stated policy.

It has always been my belief that all bloggers, indeed all people who make statements of any sort, should carefully consider their words before they release them into the universe, and should be willing to stand by them once those statements have been made. If you are the sort of person who regularly retracts and revises statements, you eventually lose credibility with anyone who critically considers what you have to say.

A post on Gort's site pointed me to a post on Bernie O'Hare's site which pointed to this post on Rebecca Blood's site. It's an excerpt from Rebecca's book The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog, from the section called "Weblog Ethics". What really hit home for me was item #4, which I reproduce in its entirety here:

4. Write each entry as if it could not be changed; add to, but do not rewrite or delete, any entry.

Post deliberately. If you invest each entry with intent, you will ensure your personal and professional integrity.

Changing or deleting entries destroys the integrity of the network. The Web is designed to be connected; indeed, the weblog permalink is an invitation for others to link. Anyone who comments on or cites a document on the Web relies on that document (or entry) to remain unchanged. A prominent addendum is the preferred way to correct any information anywhere on the Web. If an addendum is impractical, as in the case of an essay that contains numerous inaccuracies, changes must be noted with the date and a brief description of the nature of the change.

If you think this is overly scrupulous, consider the case of the writer who points to an online document in support of an assertion. If this document changes or disappears — and especially if the change is not noted — her argument may be rendered nonsensical. Books do not change; journals are static. On paper, new versions are always denoted as such.

The network of shared knowledge we are building will never be more than a novelty unless we protect its integrity by creating permanent records of our publications. The network benefits when even entries that are rendered irrelevant by changing circumstance are left as a historical record. As an example: A weblogger complains about inaccuracies in an online article; the writer corrects those inaccuracies (and notes them!); the weblogger's entry is therefore meaningless — or is it? Deleting the entry somehow asserts that the whole incident simply didn't happen — but it did. The record is more accurate and history is better served if the weblogger notes beneath the original entry that the writer has made the corrections and the article is now, to the weblogger's knowledge, accurate.

History can be rewritten, but it cannot be undone. Changing or deleting words is possible on the Web, but possibility does not always make good policy. Think before you publish and stand behind what you write. If you later decide you were wrong about something, make a note of it and move on.

I make a point never to post anything I am not willing to stand behind even if I later disagree. I work to be thoughtful and accurate, no matter how angry or excited I am about a particular topic. If I change my opinion in a day or two, I just note the change. If I need to apologize for something I've said, I do so.

If you discover that you have posted erroneous information, you must note this publicly on your weblog. Deleting the offending entry will do nothing to correct the misinformation your readers have already absorbed. Taking the additional step of adding a correction to the original entry will ensure that Google broadcasts accurate information into the future.

The only exception to this rule is when you inadvertently reveal personal information about someone else. If you discover that you have violated a confidence or made an acquaintance uncomfortable by mentioning him, it is only fair to remove the offending entry altogether, but note that you have done so.

(Please see the linked post for even more information on Weblog Ethics.)

Rebecca Blood puts this better than I can ever hope to. And I must confess that I am not guiltless here: while I reserve the right to fix typos and grammatical and stylistic errors at any point, I have only ever rewritten one post to fundamentally change it after publication, in an attempt to preserve a personal relationship. (That attempt failed, and the relationship was apparently already doomed well before I wrote that post.)

Whether individual bloggers adhere to any such code of conduct is, of course, up to the individual blogger. But for me, whether or not a blogger is taken seriously depends, in part, on whether or not they adhere to such a code - particularly rule #4.

(Now, maybe I should get a copy of Rebecca's book. Hmmm...I wonder if I could use it as the textbook for my Introduction to Blogging course?)

(Heh. I misspelled "permanence" in the title. That's been revised.)