Irony #1: blogging about blogging

Over the last month much discussion has been taking place over conduct within and around blogging. Days after Tim O’Reilly suggested his Draft Code of Conduct with Jimmy Wales he pretty much knocked it on the head in an interview with Wired and wondered if it was not such a good idea after all. But by then it was too late. The idea was out.

Unfortunately no one told Tessa Jowell MP (UK Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media & Sport), who this week decided to put her two penneths worth into the debate over at the Guardian firstly in a Comment is Free posting where she “welcomed and supported the initiative by web pioneer Tim O'Reilly and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales”, and secondly in a live online chat.

Adding insult to injury (considering the topic), the Guardian had to close comments on the Comment is Free posting completely, and one can only presume (judging by the comments left on the live chat page, where Jeff Jarvis steps into the ring at one point) that this was because they were too rude, and did not abide by the standards that Jowell was advocating.

But I digress, and I promised Alan that I wouldn’t get too political.

So even though O’Reilly has pretty much retracted his ideas we are still left with a muddle of a debate, some of which is down to a misunderstanding about blogging as a medium.

When I first came across blogs, and specifically Blogger, back in 2002 (the blogging bronze age) I and my colleague looked at it and went “it’s just a CMS innit”. Back then using blogging software to put up regular content easily onto the web was still only being done by a few tens of thousands of people, if that, and Technorati was still a twinkle in David Sifry’s eye. My colleague and I launched our own corporate ‘blog’, using our in-house CMS (originally developed around 1998/9) and it looked and felt (we thought) just like a blog. There were a few little features it didn’t have, such as pingbacks, but back then this wasn’t really a problem. We were simply putting up regular content that people could easily comment on.

But what was different, of course, about blogging software was that it was free, or really cheap, available to everyone, instantly gave you a web presence and enabled you to put up indexed content, with a separate page/URL per entry, plus an automatically created archive, all without the need to know any php, mysql or any other languages. In fact, Blogger's strapline was "push-button publishing for the people". But basically, it was all very exciting and a great improvement on Geocities.

But, blogging software is not much different to a printing press. It is a tool. A mighty popular tool, but it is still a tool, much in the way that pen and paper is mighty popular and used to all sorts of devastating and mundane effects.

Therefore when people talk about Blogging Codes of Conduct they are actually talking about People Codes of Conduct - sometimes also known as ‘manners’ or ‘etiquette’ or ‘law’ or ‘commandments’. These codes of conduct are usually highly complex systems enforced by great aunts, teachers, religious leaders, policemen, governments, regulation bodies and the like. And such enforcers come in a range of colours from liberal to dictator, radical to conservative, democrat to authoritarian.

Bloggers in the west take for granted that the place where they put their ramblings using blogging software is theirs, to do with as they will (including what comments they do or don’t allow). Whilst on the surface this may be true – other than ensuring that the content stays within the law and within the terms and conditions of the host – it should not be presumed that this will always be the case.

The Chinese and Iranian governments have become notorious for clamping down on bloggers - not only through arrests but also by blocking access to specific websites and services by controlling of the telecommunications networks and backbone. [Note: for people interested in blogs focussing on China in the English language there is a great list here.]

But nearer to home, in the US, Josh Wolf (an independent journalist and blogger) was recently released after being arrested for refusing to comply with a subpoena on journalistic principles. He was held on a charge of civil contempt in an effort to coerce him to testify and turn over video out-takes to a federal grand jury investigating a July, 2005 anti-G8 demonstration.

On 16 April a party was held to celebrate his release “in solidarity with all others who remain imprisoned and oppressed” and also as a benefit for Prisonblogs.net and Free the Media.

As support of this last organisation indicates, blogging isn’t a stand alone agenda requiring its own codes of conduct it is (for good or ill) part of the bigger world of the media, which in itself is part of how communications occur within society.

Since his release Josh has questioned whether bloggers are journalists. Similarly, I'd like to ask, how and what might people who use blogging software learn from – for want of a better term – the mainstream media?