Re: The Welborn Protocol and The Blog from the Core

Steven Riddle has blogged a complaint of The Welborn Protocol:

.... What is happening is that traditionally accepted protocols, courtesy, and etiquette is abandoned in favor of the convenience of an author or poster. I have almost never written e-mail to a site that posts the "Welborn Protocol" because I am put in the awkward position of having to say that I think that what I have chosen to communicate privately is indeed private. This hardly seems to be a way to make someone feel at home. Once, in extreme duress, to express solidarity with someone I was moved to write such a letter and was galled at having to say that private things should remain private.

I suppose if commenting services were not so widely available, I might see more wisdom in this. But I still think the better, more traditionally acceptable, and more courteous road would be to ask people to state in their note whether what they write can be shared, rather than assuming that it is so. This seems a presumption that dominates society....

A comment left by JB the Kairos Guy at the blog expresses my viewpoint rather well:

Yes, private correspondence is, and ought to be, private. But writing a letter to a newspaper editor requires you to specify privacy if you don't want to see it reprinted in the paper. Blogs that follow the Welborn protocol seem to me (my own included) as more of a publication than private reflections.

At the same time, I see your point, which is why I only rarely publish the name of the author without prior consent. (Emily Stimson, for instance, gets her name mentioned. She's a blogger writing a blogger and we regularly blog each other's generic correspondence.)

It is the "neither fish nor fowl" nature of the blog that is really at question here, not the manners of most bloggers....

If anybody wants an "automatically" private communication, I have other e-mail addresses besides weblog @ the view from the core . com, which are advertised on my other websites (ELCore.Net and The View from the Core).

One more thing. I do not have comments on the weblog. I doubt very, very much that I ever will have a comment feature available to readers. Why? Several Reasons.

One. Because I have no tolerance whatever for blogroaches. :)

Two. I despise — I chose that word carefully — I despise carping, mean-spirited comments left by anonymous cowards at other blogs: I despise them so much I will not even provide the opportunity for them here.

Three. Comment boxes seem to invite an extraordinary absence of thought. Heck, I fall prey to that myself. (Though thoughtful comments are, of course, quite numerous, too.) I try, for that reason, to keep my remarks to my own blog. Though I do fall sometimes. Alas.

Besides, anybody can get his own weblog. :)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 09/19/02 01:53:07 PM
Categorized as Classic.