May 3, 2008
Ethics and the post I wasn’t going to write
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Don’t you hate it when it starts to get personal?
Ok - so Meg Tsiamis a long time ago created the ‘Top 100 Australian Blogs Index’ (her naming, not mine).
As I have pointed out before, it is only ONE way of ranking websites, or blogs to be more specific, and therefore should perhaps be renamed ‘A Top 100…’
Let me state categorically here: I have no beef against Meg herself! This is not an attack against her.
By Meg’s own admission her ranking system is flawed, and so I again called into question whether her list, by way of unconsciously proclaiming itself to be definitive, should be renamed “A…”
To assist Meg in creating a list of any sort (as far as I know her’s was the first in Australia) I offered to not only let her spin her cunning webstats via a deeply flawed and, in 2008, I argue largely irrelevant, statistical engine called ‘Alexa’, but added a call to the other members of her list for them to let their subscriber and visitor statistics be known.
I have since, in response to her post, added my Technorati ranking and Technorati ‘Authority’ number (see my comments on her post).
I again point out that this is NOT a flag-waving exercise in willy-waving, as Snoskred (what a silly, childish name, doesn’t she have a real, human one, or is she too scared to publish it?*) suggests.
This is a call to find a robust, sensible way of ranking blogs, non-blog websites (remember those? Well, my Web1.0 ‘articles’ website still out-pulls my blog and generates more revenue), podcasts, vidcasts and the overall web presence of someone hailing from Australia.
The ethics problem
So here is where my ethics problem kicks in…
Meg took some material that was part of a conversation in Facebook and posted it on her blog.
Facebook is a ‘walled garden’ and whilst many of us have long expressed reservations about its restrictive terms and conditions (basically, you sign over all content you create to them and have to ask them if you can repurpose it outside of Facebook), as business communicators there is no doubting the fundamental shift that Facebook has created in the workplace/lifespace and therefore we need to recognise and be there in it.
Meg took material from inside Facebook and posted it outside of it. As I said on Meg’s blog, I truly don’t know what I would have done in that situation were I Meg, but I have a sneaking suspicion I wouldn’t have used it, but instead replied to the comment stream inside of Facebook itself.
I am very blessed to have a number of photographs of Danish doctors who have dined at BetterComms Towers on a number of occasions as part of a cultural acclimatisation programme; these photos graphically report a slide from complete sobriety to something less over a number of hours, courtesy of a selection of Adelaide Hills and New Zealand wines (Mrs BetterComms and I were trying to educate them in the finer distinctions of fine white wine, noblesse oblige).
I would no more consider posting these photos up on Facebook or Flickr without each person’s express permission than I would of rogering^ Lord Archer**
But Meg took something from one domain and posted it to another. As I said on Meg’s blog, my own jury is out on this one and I was prepared to let it go. But then it got personal.
Now it gets personal and childish
As Snoskred’s two comments (as I type this) relate:
Methinks someone is compensating for small body parts, Meg.
You’re more than welcome to start your own top 100, Lee.
Of course it is a given that any real top 100 would have your blog at number one. The rest of us are mere amateurs in comparison to you.
Meg, I speak for all of us on the top 100 list when I say that you should immediately fix the error of your ways and catapult Lee’s blog to the number one spot. Because he is clearly a blogging GOD. And your ego can be seen from the international space station - oh hang on, that might be the sun shining out of your…..
Oh sorry, did I type that out loud? Oops.
I have posted her fatuous comments here. Enough said.
I repeat: all I am trying to do is bring even more transparency into ranking systems that has me rated at 23 in one and 70-something (and sometimes nothing at all) in another. It’s bizarre, and perhaps speaks of the difficulties of measurement in a social media world.
I know that one of the many discussion points we enjoyed on a recent The Scoop podcast was this whole ‘KPI/ROI’ issue. Until the ‘Social Media-sphere’ itself grows up and offers a robust set of statistics, the corporate world will quite rightly look down upon it as a rabble.
We already piss off the mainstream media, why give Corporate Australia further reason to discount Social Media? And, purleeease, don’t give me the “we will show them, wait until we blog about this!” rhetoric… It might gain traction in the US with ‘mommy bloggers’ (a very powerful lobby), but we don’t have the numbers here, so spare yourself the angst.
*********************************
* From Snoskred’s ‘About me’ page (and you have to scroll a long way down to find it):
So What Is Her Real Name?
Snoskred isn’t going to tell you that online. If you build a relationship with her and get to meet her someday, that is when you’d find out her real name. But believe me, a rose by any other name smells just as sweet
Give me strength!!
^ rogering = ‘to roger’ someone is to bugger them, thus the alas but still funny false myth about ‘Roger the Cabin Boy’ on Captain Pugwash.
** I was fortunate to bump into Lord Archer and engage in a long and delightful conversation about Lady Thatcher and the Thatcher Years. For good or ill, and despite the rhetoric, I do believe they were overarchingly good until they ran out of ideas+*+ They were a ground-breaking era, of which Lord Archer was a fundamentally significant part, and I am humbly blessed to have a signed copy of his latest novel, and which Mrs BetterComms won’t let me read because she knows I would not be able to put it down until fully read (I read the last Harry Potter in one sitting) and thus render me ‘useless and hopeless’ for two days, and she says I’ve got far too much work to do!).
+*+ Thatcher and her government ran out of ideas and repeatedly shot themselves in the foot over the ‘family values’ ticket, with ministers being uncovered as having illegitimate relationships, rumpy-pumpying with sex industry workers, elderly men procreating and creating disabled children from attractive young mistresses (there is a theory that it is NOT the female that creates the disability, but the old age of the male), and so on… unlike Howard in Australia, who was ousted from government not because he had run out of ideas but because the people were tired of his ‘Mother Knows Best’ style of leadership, plus the ‘myths’ of economic good governance’ were found to be just that — myths — and we came to suffer badly from his lack of investment in infrastructure and a rather troublesome and ever-growing inflation problem.
As the Rudd government has recently shown (by pinching his ideas and reclaiming them as their own), the Howard government still had good ideas but the people distrusted Howard; quite rightly so after the fiasco over the ‘Children Overboard’ and other quite ruthless political manoeuvrings.
Note for none Australians: we Aussies know all of these political references; do your own googling/wikipedianing on them…
Stumble it!
Filed under: ethics
3 Responses to “Ethics and the post I wasn’t going to write”
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May 3rd, 2008 at 8:26 am
It sounds to me like this is simply an argument in semantics. It’s not called “THE Top 100 Australian Blogs” is it? Meg has simply given it her own title on her OWN BLOG.
I’m actually surprised you even care. Not that I even knew WHO you were until 5 minutes ago.
As for Snoskred - well she has her reasons for not revealing her real name online. Safety reasons.
May 3rd, 2008 at 12:55 pm
My point about ranking systems is that how on earth are companies supposed to find the influencers in their industry, market, whatever, if one rating system has them ‘one way’, another has them ‘another way’?
Andrew Boyd comments on Meg’s post that creating a ‘list’ is a great way of drawing traffic, and it is.
Perhaps the various list creators can link-love each other and thereby let their visitors know that there is more than one way to skin a cat.
May 7th, 2008 at 9:39 am
[...] circle, who mainly rise to her defence, and propel Lee to write yet another, much more aggressive response on his blog. Lee calls the post “Ethics and the post I wasn’t going to write” which you [...]