Adopting the Blogger’s Manifesto

Technorati tags: Blogger's Manifesto, Responsible Blogging, Opinion

Despite Facebook and Twitter having dominance over the social media scene (disclosure: Walski has accounts on both platforms), blogging isn’t dead. Not by a long shot. It’s still the best avenue for expressing one’s thoughts more verbosely.

To him, each of the three – Blogs, Facebook and Twitter – are complementary, as each platform addresses a specific need. For someone like Walski who cannot afford to be a very active online participant (for time constraint reasons), he uses all three platforms regularly. Twitter’s great for spur-of-the-moment thoughts, Facebook is the avenue for posting news and articles that Walski doesn’t intend to elaborate too much on, and this blog is for him to rant profusely.

And then, of course, there’s Amplify, which acts as a hit-and-run type of blog platform. Sort of like mini-blogging, for lack of a better term. As you may have noticed, quite a number of posts on this blog came from Amplify, which comes in handy when Walski doesn’t have the luxury of time, but wishes to blog about a news item or something else of interest.

He reckons the same general opinion is held by other bloggers who are active on Facebook and Twitter.

A few days ago, Walski was alerted to the Blogger’s Manifesto, an initiative put together by Brenda Gaddi (who blogs at Mummytime), on behalf of Digital Parents Australia, an online community for blogging mums and dads.

Simply put, the Blogger’s Manifesto is a simple set of rules to promote responsible blogging, something that Walski personally feels the Malaysian blogosphere lacks. Despite what some people will try to otherwise convince you. 
(the 7-point manifesto, and more, in the full post)

Try browsing through the political blogs and you’ll see exactly what Walski means. Particularly those that are partisan to political parties. Even the members of Bloghouse Malaysia (set up to promote good blogging, among other things) are sometimes guilty of not blogging responsibly, because of their party partisanship.

On his part, Walski will try to adhere to these seven simple rules:

Of course, when it comes to satire, those posts will be identified as such. Namely, the HENN (Hell-on-Earth News Network) series of posts that appear on myAsylum from time to time.

Blogging responsibly doesn’t mean that one has to lose one’s sense of humor. And Walski, for one, doesn’t intend to turn unnecessarily serious.

So, what do you think – are these guidelines that form the manifesto reasonable ones to adopt? If you are a blogger yourself, would you adhere to these guidelines?

These question are probably some that can lead to further discussion, Walski’s quite sure. And if you have your thoughts on the Blogger’s Manifesto, feel free to leave a comment, and we’ll take it from there.