the Philippine blogging community has indeed grown a lot the passed few years. blogging has become a literary medium and an outlet. while some have made this a major source of income, unfortunately, a few IT PINOYs have discovered this as a venue to abuse others.
Margaux Salcedo of the Philippine Daily Inquirer reported that GEORGIA – a restaurant owner, was being exhorted of money by “The Firm” through a “Big Bad Blogger.”
As it turned out, “The Firm” offered Georgia promotion of her restaurant through blogs and social media, the said bloggers would come and later post their reviews online (for P120k/month for one year). the first review went okay (btw, did the review even helped the business? hmmm), the succeeding review didn’t sound well and “The Firm” claiming to be connected with “Big Bad Blogger” would assist in recanting the recent review (for the same price).
hmmm?
Margaux only has this to say, “This is sad because the blogging community was that one last community that we could rely on for the truth (aside from the Sunday Inquirer Magazine, of course *wink*). Now while this is solely Georgia’s story, resonated by others who have likewise been approached by The Firm, for us writers, and especially for bloggers, it is likewise tragic, because it gives writing, in general, and blogging, in particular, a bad name.”
Tim O’ Reilly (O’Reilly media founder) proposed the Blogger’s Code of Conduct, this is to help enforce civility (on blogs) by being civil themselves. the code came up after a certain blogger, Kathy Sierra received threats.
Tim later on stated, “I do think we need some code of conduct around what is acceptable behaviour, I would hope that it doesn’t come through any kind of regulation it would come through self-regulation.”
Tim and others came up with a list of seven proposed ideas:
- Take responsibility not just for your own words, but for the comments you allow on your blog.
- Label your tolerance level for abusive comments.
- Consider eliminating anonymous comments.
- Ignore the trolls.
- Take the conversation offline, and talk directly, or find an intermediary who can do so.
- If you know someone who is behaving badly, tell them so.
- Don’t say anything online that you wouldn’t say in person.
although regulating blogs might raise questions about freedom of speech, having these rules if it would help would be good esp to those who abuse this medium and thus give blog a bad name.
read more [oreilly.com]
set it good 