Survey of Bloggers

MIT has produced a survey of bloggers, amongst its findings:

- when blogging about people they know personally: 66% of respondents almost never asked permission to do so; whereas, only 9% said they never blogged about people they knew personally.

and

- the frequency with which a blogger writes highly personal things is positively and significantly correlated to how often they get in trouble because of their postings; (r = 0.3, p < 0.01); generally speaking, people have gotten in trouble both with friends and family as well as employers.

This touches on an earlier post about the new problems created by bloggers. Unlike reporters, there are no editors and legal departments to clue us in on what the rules are.

Unless someone is presenting to a public gathering, you need their permission to write about them in your web log. Writing about children (those under the age of 18) is not acceptable, because children cannot reasonably predict what the consequences of appearing in a blog would be.

It is unacceptable to publish e-mail in your web log without prior permission, including e-mail in group discussion lists.

Most of all, try to think about how you would feel, treat others as you would like to be treated.