A blogger's disclaimer

[tinyjo]

I stumbled across this this morning (via plasticbag.org). It's a blogger's disclaimer, designed to be reusable and general. And some of it I agree with - particularly the first paragraph -

Do not assume that you know everything there is to know about a writer simply because you read their weblog on a regular basis. Any judgements you make will be based on the information they have provided you about themselves, which is probably vague, incomplete or embellished....

but some of it is just plain wishful thinking, particularly the section on people who already know the writer reading the blog. Basically the position taken seems to be that if the writer asks you to stop reading it then you are more or less obliged to.

View weblogs as online journals, no less sacred than a diary hidden between the mattresses.
...
If they do not want you reading it, or suddenly stop posting entries, ask them why and if necessary, stop going to the site. It is important that as a friend, relative, co-worker or whatever you may be to the writer, that your presence at their weblog not impede their ability to express themselves. Remember this is their outlet. They may not want you to read certain things they might write about you or others you care about, in order to spare your feelings, avoid drama or maintain their privacy. You should respect this and immediately stop going to the site, and never relay any information you gather at their site to others who might use it against them.
...
Ex-friends, lovers and estranged family members who have been cut out of the writer's life should refrain from reading their journal. If the relationship has ended, there is no reason you should get daily updates on the person's life.

I find myself amazed that it's even possible to take this view of a blog. The writer has chosen to publish these things about their lives into an open forum. They are implicitly accepting the right of anyone to read the material. They should be aware at the time of publication that anyone they know could stumble across it. Basically, if they've got something to say that they don't want everyone to see then a blog is not the place to publish it. If you're not using a tool like LJ which allows you to set security settings for your posts then be resigned to the fact that other people can read it. That's the whole point of online publishing. If you want to keep a private diary then keep it under the mattress.

Comments

[jinty]

Re the second part of the disclaimer: I agree with you that it's fundamentally pretty unrealistic for anyone to necessarily expect people to take any notice of that part of the disclaimer -- a blog is a public document unless specific steps are taken to make it private (and then it's still liable to cracking, just that in that case the reader is *clearly* doing something anti-social and wrong).

However, there is the point that people can make 'unexpected' or 'undesired' use of blogs/journals. brandnewgun put her journal as friends-only fairly recently because her workmates were taking the information in a different mode from the expected -- instead of reading it for a laugh, or a break from work, or a lively read (ie entertainment/thought provoking-type purposes), they took it seriously and treated it within a work context (ie references she made to disguised work situations were taken as the equivalent of leaks or complaints or accusations, not to be any more specific than that).

It seems to me that a plea to avoid this kind of reading of a journal should be taken seriously (though obviously it cannot be enforced and it is much easier to simply guard against it through privacy controls), and it is worth arguing for through channels such as the above. In the end, it's a cultural setting that might be able to be made either default or unusual through such arguments -- normally we wouldn't look through people's net curtains, normally we wouldn't know the intimate details of people's lives, normally we wouldn't look to see what stuff people keep on their computers, but if you're a neighbourhood watch member or a paparrazzo or work for a computer repair place, then it might be your calling (self-appointed or otherwise). Ie the way we treat the public and the private can change a lot as cultural norms and expectations change, and we can facilitate that change through arguments and propaganda.

So what I'm arguing, I think, is that a de facto public document can still be read in more than one way -- as an artwork, as information, as a proclamation -- and some of those readings might not be intended by the author and might actually be harmful to the author's (implicit) aims. I expect people to read the public entries I post; I would be hurt (though perhaps not terribly surprised) if people post insulting comments or pictures in reply, but this is still fair game so long as I haven't disabled comments; I would not (for instance) expect workmates to read the entries, copy them, and forward them to other colleagues with mocking comments to belittle and humiliate me, and if they did, it would feel to me to be pretty similar to raiding my work drawer (theoretically a fairly public space), writing obscenities on items found therein and sticking them up on the noticeboard for all to laugh at.

(Not that that's happened!)

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

Perhaps then the way to encourage/argue for this would be to make positive statements about what you're writing rather than the quite forceful (and unenforcable) negative ones about who is allowed read it in this disclaimer. I could fully support a disclaimer saying "This journal is intended to be . Please take it in that context and treat it with respect." Even then though, we should remember that we're still at risk of people not doing so. Meg at not so soft (http://www.notsosoft.com/blog/) had this sort of problem recently where one commenter persisted in reacting as if Meg was setting herself up as queen of the internet and arbiter of all moral standards when she was simply trying to start a discussion. In the end she found a way to prevent comments from this person (through some v. techy way involving IP addresses I think) but the risk is always there.

I think it's an issue which is easier for LJers to deal with because they can move to friends only whereas people using blogger et al can only be public or be silent. (I suppose they *could* use .htaccess to control readership but that would be very fiddly indeed and still not give the same kind of control).

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

oops - forgot to escape the angle brackets. This -

his journal is intended to be . Please take it in that context and treat it with respect.

should read

his journal is intended to be <whatever>. Please take it in that context and treat it with respect.

[jinty]

Perhaps then the way to encourage/argue for this would be to make positive statements about what you're writing...
Yes. The original author was a bit naive I think but there is still an argument worth making that comes out of that.