Big, Freaky Smiley Faces

Hi folks -- you know, I could have sworn that I'd posted something since Tuesday, but going through my text files (I do my drafts offline and save them), I see that's not the case. It's been a hectic week.

So I thought I was seeing things when I was walking down to get lunch -- looking across the atrium, I saw this:

Yikes.

That's good for a double-take right there.

Here's a closer crop:

Big, Smiley Face.

Apparently, a trio of young hooliganettes (Victoria, Olivia, & Amelia, behind the pillow) had taken over a conference room, and equipped with a smiley pillow, endeavored to make things in the office a bit more interesting.

Gee, Sharon, who do you think they get it from?

Thanks -- Joe

[Update: In case it's not abundantly clear from the photo and accompanying text, Victoria, Olivia and Amelia are Sharon's daughters, visiting the office.]

Tags: aol, smileyface, photos, hooliganettes

Blog Your Way to a New Job?

In a switch from the usual "people getting fired for personal blogging"-stories, today's Wall Street Journal has an item that leads "How Blogging Can Help You Get a New Job." [link via MediaBistro]

The story talks about how some recruiters (typically in the high-tech or media fields) search through blogs (or get referred from other bloggers) to find potential hires.

Even if the person don't blog about work or industry topics, a recruiter or hiring manager can see if the person has something to say and is a good communicator. At the very least, it helps make a potential hire look like a real human, outside of an interview room or resume.

Now, of course, all the standard pitfalls apply -- bragging and blogging about your trangressive behavior and drunken antics may not show your best side to a future employer, etc -- but it's nice to see blogs as a potential asset, and more than just a threat, to employment prospects.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: blogging, busted for blogging, career advice

You, With the Blog: You're Ugly and Your Mother Dresses You Funny

Hi folks -- now, I realize that I could come to regret this, but I think that Tim O'Reilly's Draft Blogger's Code of Conduct that I've been reading about yesterday and today is stupid and irrelevant to most bloggers (that is, regular folk who aren't among the so-called A-Listers, corporate or otherwise high-traffic  bloggers).

(The part that I might someday regret is if this idea grows legs, a seal of approval, a standards and sanctioning body, annual certification dues, and corporate sponsors, which AOL decides to join as a charter member, causing me immeasurable future heartache, etc. But this is unlikely.)

This all came about from the Kathy Sierra incident that I mentioned a few weeks back (with a follow-up last week).

In response to perceived death threats and generally vile and misogynistic blog nastiness directed at Ms. Sierra, some of the more prominent bloggers out there had suggested ways to try to fight this, one result we see now in the O'Reilly's Draft Blogger's Code of Conduct.

You kind of have to read it. It's a masterpiece of social engineering (the old-fashioned kind, not the "tell me your password" kind) that blends far-reaching legalistic prohibitions:

"We define unacceptable content as anything included or linked to that:
- is being used to abuse, harass, stalk, or threaten others
- is libelous, knowingly false, ad-hominem, or misrepresents another person,
- infringes upon a copyright or trademark
- violates an obligation of confidentiality
- violates the privacy of others"

And combines it with infruriating vagueness:

"We define and determine what is "unacceptable content" on a case-by-case basis, and our definitions are not limited to this list. If we delete a comment or link, we will say so and explainwhy. [We reserve the right to change these standards at any time with no notice.]"

Here's are my initial thoughts, in the rough order they were received:

• April Fools Day was last week.
• Given those prohibitions, good luck finding anything to link to.
• If you have to explain yourself every time you delete a comment from idiots, spammers and trolls, the idiots, spammers and trolls have won.
  
• I wonder what kind of badge Wonkette would run

Yeah, they've proposed badges:

"Civility Enforced" vs. "Anything Goes"

All snarks aside, the problem with sort of thing is simply thus:

* The people who would adhere to this kind of speech code are not the people you need a speech code for in the first place.

* The stuff that is already illegal (e.g. death threats, libel, defamation) is, um, already illegal.

* For those of us who use a third-party blogging service (which is the vast majority of bloggers), we're already subject to Terms of Use; for example, the AOL Network's Terms of Use forbids activities that

1. violates or infringes the rights of others including, without limitation, patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright, publicity or other proprietary rights;
2. is unlawful, threatening, abusive, harassing, defamatory, libelous, deceptive, fraudulent, invasive of another's privacy, tortious, or contains explicit or graphic descriptions, or accounts of, sexual acts;
3. victimizes, harasses, degrades, or intimidates an individual or group of individuals on the basis of religion, gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, age, or disability;

Blogger's is similar (see #12, Member Conduct), as is WordPress's, etc.

So, who is this voluntary blogger speech code for? People (or companies) who run their own blogging software on their own hosted servers, who want to show they're on the right side of things by wearing a badge graphic.

Why am I worked up about this?  I despise meaningless gestures, and I especially dislike blanket statements that actually only apply to a very small fraction of people dealing with guilt complexes when they should just put the smack down on idiots, spammers and trolls.

High-traffic blogs have to deal with a lot of crap, since they get a lot of comments, and a some of those commenters just come to take a dump in the punch bowl (as they say). So the blog owners have to deal with it, even if they're legally shielded from comments posted by others in their blogs.

And there are any number of ways to deal with this, depending on your blog platform -- reviewing all comments before they go live; pre-screening commenters; even disallowing comments entirely or having volunteer, community or even professional moderators.

Blog owners have the absolute freedom to decide what kind of comments they'll allow. I've read of some bloggers who say they feel pressured to not pre-moderate comments, or to keep nasty comments, or to allow anonymous comments, out of some sense of obligation. Who are these people? It's your blog, do what you want.

Now, all that said, I do what I can to maintain a civil atmosphere in whatever blogs I'm involved in. As a relatively small-fry blogger, I don't have to worry about getting lots and lots of comments flooding in that I can't keep up with.

So, to extract a germ of usefulness out of all this silliness, I think an articulated comment and community policy is a good thing (which means I should probably spell one out somewhere: "I reserve the right to delete any comment, for any reason, including those that violate the AOL TOS, or are otherwise useless." See the blog rules my cohorts at the Community Info blog have for theirs.)

Also keep in mind that these are absolutely not new problems, and not restricted to blogs. Check out this Washington Post article from March about similar shenanigans on a law school-themed message board.

Also, since I started drafting this entry yesterday, the folks at BlogHer have a much better and more concise analysis of this, and of course, all the A-Listers are weighing in as well.

How do you feel about comments and blogger conduct codes? Leave a comment of your own below.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: tim o'reilly, blogger code of conduct, kathy sierra, speech codes, blogging

Friday Blogplugs

Here are a few more blogplugs to close out the week, which are which are entries that people label with the tag blogplugs, so that other people can find them:

* Krissy shares some very, very good news about her husband's health.

* Barbara blogplugs an entry by Kristen, Principle of Covenant.

* Jimmy wants to show you something.

* Ron changed the name of his blog.

* Paul points to the 36th edition of CarnivAOL, over at Dawn's Carpe Diem.

* Frank, a product manager here at AOL and sometimes-contributor to Web 2.0 blog TechCrunch, has an entry reviewing 5 free online video editing sites.

* Erin, over at the AIM BuddyBlog, points us to the new Easter Egg SuperBuddy icon.

Remember, if you've got entries of your own or other peoples' that you want to blogplug, just send it to me or use the tag blogplugs, so that people can find it, just by clicking the link.

Happy Easter, everyone (and welcome to spring, even if there is a freeze warning in effect for us right now).

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: blogplugs

You Can All G -- to H --

There was a story this week from San Francisco about a visiting minivan family who had a run-in with Critical Mass, which is a monthly gathering of hundreds (sometimes thousands) of SF cycling activists who basically take over whatever road they happen to be riding on, running red lights and stop signs en masse, etc. (Link via Obscurestore.)

I'm not going to opine about the actual incident, since it involves the usual opposing "their fault/no, their fault" viewpoints -- the cyclist side says the minivan tried to run a biker down and take off, and the minivan side says it started with accidental contact followed by a biker rampage.

I do note the following, though, in a quote from the article -- I didn't realize the San Francisco Chronicle's style guide for profanity in quotes involves partially obscuring some of the naughty bits with a space and a double dash (--) [oddly masked bad words ahead]:

"I f -- hate Critical Mass,'' said Mishka Generic, 33, a bike messenger who lives in Oakland. "They give everybody who rides a bike a bad name. It's not that all of them are bad, it's just that when you put that number of people together, you get some -- holes."

It amuses me that the language is abundantly clear, despite the fact that they just use the double dash to remove part of the swearing, instead of the tried and true "[expletive deleted]", or masking it with the first letter, followed by dashes or stars (where "darn you to heck" would be "d*** you to h***").

Also, the quotee's last name is Generic, which I suspect was not her birth name.

Other than that, I agree with her sentiment, in that when you put any number of people together (in any type of gathering, including online), you're bound to get some, er, b -- a -- to spoil the bunch.

(For a more positive story from Obscurestore, check out the boss who gave his star employee a '65 Mustang, though if you want to keep it positive, don't go through the rest of the items on the main page.)

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: san francisco chronicle, critical mass, obscurestore, masked profanity

Announcing AOL Version 10.0?

Somehow, I don't think we would be announcing a new version of AOL on the menu board at Wegmans:

Our local Wegmans, pandering to the AOL worker clientele.

This is from lunch today at the Market Cafe (that is to say, food court) at the Wegmans supermarket across the street from AOL HQ in loverly Dulles, VA.

(It's been up for a while -- I finally remembered to bring my camera.)

By referencing the Beltway (495, though it's about 15 miles from here) and AOL, they're injecting a little local naming flavor into the offerings.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: wegmans, aol, lunch, photo

Need a Reason to Blog? Ask This Taxi Driver

Keith, a cab driver with a great reason for blogging.

Last week, I spent a few days in Boulder, Colorado for a conference on blogging and social media. (I need to blog my notes -- here were my initial impressions.)

It was very informative and enlightening, so I hope the conference folks don't take this as a criticism, but one of the most instructive things from my trip came from my cab driver as I was leaving: another reason why regular folks can benefit from having a blog.

After the conference, I got into a cab idling outside the hotel for a short hop into Boulder before I headed to Denver. I got to talking to the driver (his name being Keith), and when I mentioned that I was coming from a blogging conference, he said that he had a blog.

Now, just like everyone else, cabbies are people with stories to tell (though some of theirs may be more colorful than those of your average blogger), so why wouldn't they blog? There's a whole genre of taxicab bloggers -- I wrote about an NYC taxi blogger last year, and I check in from time to time on a local DC cabbie, Diary of a Mad DC Cabbie [language warning].

Do they do it to become famous? Probably not, though the NYC hack's blog led to a book deal (it's due out this summer.)

However, cabbie Keith has a more pragmatic reason for blogging: When you do a Web search on the term "boulder taxi", his blog is on the first page of search results. In fact, right now, it's the #1 result on Yahoo!, and it's the #2 listing on Google -- which also enhances AOL Search:

He didn't even have to give me the URL -- "Just search on boulder taxi." He was right.

Being on the first page of results for relevant search terms is kind of a big deal, since most folks don't like to click past the first few pages of results.

In fact, there's a whole industry set up around "SEO" (Search Engine Optimization) , which is all about how to make your Web pages show up better in search results, so you get more visitors. (It's kind of the Web equivalent of naming your dog-stretching company "AAAAA Dog Stretchers," so it shows up first in the phone listings.)

Now, search engines tend to like blogs, because they have lots of inbound and outbound links, and they update frequently. (Spammers figured this out, too, which is why you see a lot of spam blogs created just to point to other Web pages to try to boost their search rankings. It's a constant battle.)

Anyway, Keith figured out a way to make his blog work for him, to help bring in business. And he says it's working for him.

Now, this is not to say that if you start a blog, you'll suddenly start pulling in tons and tons of visitors from search engines. There's a lot of voodoo involved with SEO stuff, including who you link to, who links to you, what you write about, how often you update, how often you've been blogging, how your page is built, etc.

However, one thing blogging can help with is to provide a human face and personality to what you're doing. For example, in addition to all the other stuff about contact numbers and availability, I would probably get the sense that the Boulder Taxicab guy isn't the kind of person who might, say, try to rip me off or drive me to a vacant lot and beat me to death with a tire iron.

(Not to say that there aren't some potential pitfalls, too. If you start blogging polarizing opinions about stuff unrelated to your work -- say, politics, religion, or your penchant for tormenting fuzzy animals -- you might turn off potential customers.)

So, I hope this doesn't come across as a big advertisement for Keith's cab, since I'm not getting any kickbacks. There are many reasons to blog, and this is just another one. I had a pleasant (though short) trip, and I think I left a decent tip. Which is only fair, since I got a blog entry out of it.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: social media, icwsm, icwsm2007, boulder taxi, reasons for blogging, blogging, seo