Sunday, January 16, 2005

You Link It, You Own It

Since blogger ethics are all the rage, let me clue the conference participants into an unwritten but well-understood blog issue - you link it, you own it. And, more importantly, the less something you link to has the stamp of official authority, the more you've taken responsibility for it. That is, if I link to the paper of record, then I own the responsibility for it 10% and they own it 90%. But, if I link to "some person on the internets somewhere" who has no established institutional credibility (or lack of) then I own it 95%. In other words, the less likely it is that anyone would have heard about something without my bringing it to their attention, the more I've taken the responsibility for verifying the information.