I’ve seen a lot of bad behavior lately in the blogosphere, so I want to remind everyone how to behave properly and play nicely. I’m not going to name names or point fingers, but if you’re guilty, you’ll know it. Unless, of course, your conscience is either broken or on vacation. In that case, you should probably just move along to the next site that you visit daily, because clearly, I cannot help you! For more commandments geared towards commenting, I recommend that you check out Brown Baron’s Ten Commandments of Blog Commenting. In the meantime, here's my set of rules for getting along in blogland:

1. Thou Shalt Not Act As Moderator on Another’s Blog

You are only a moderator in one place, and that’s your own blog. Unless you’re there or on a community site that asked you to moderate, you should not attempt to be in charge. When you visit someone else’s site, you are usually encouraged to leave comments. That does NOT mean you are encouraged to respond to all the comments left by others. Especially if the comments are questions geared towards the author of the post. Let the author respond! If the author doesn’t know the answer, they’ll ask for more input. If you really feel that you MUST have your say, write your own post in response on your OWN blog! You can even link to the post you’re responding to.

Did you ever write a post about something that you thought was ultra-cool and brand new, thinking nobody would have heard of this thing and you’d be cool just for knowing about it, and then you find out that you’ve been in the dark and EVERYONE knew about it already?  (Whew!  That was one heck of a sentence!)  Doesn’t that suck?  Now you look like a moron living in the dark ages.  There are two steps to correcting this problem.  First, crawl out from under your rock.  Second, do some research and find something that really IS new and cool and write about THAT.  And stop wasting our time with your chatter about things we all already have.  Just because you’re out of the loop doesn’t mean the rest of us are.

3. Thou Shalt Not Pretend To Be That Which Thou Is Not

That means don’t pretend to be someone else, whether that person is real or fictional. When you leave a comment, it is perfectly acceptable to remain anonymous (if you’re not being a jerk). But be prepared if you leave a nasty comment. Some people won’t let you stay anonymous for long. Get with the times, this is 2007! Do you really think that someone won’t be able to figure out that you aren’t who you say you are? There are a million internet tools that are quite useful in aiding this discovery. I’ll let you in on a secret about RSS Pieces, as an example. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you are, if you’ve been to my site, I know it. I’m watching youuuu…

This is kind of like Drunk Dialing, a big no-no. Would you call up all your exes when you’re drunk? Of course you wouldn’t! What kind of weirdo would you be then? By the same token, don’t write posts when you either:  a) aren’t of sound mind, b) have had a few too many sips of merlot, or c) haven’t cooled down from something that angered you tremendously. Trust me on this. If you don’t obey this one, you’ll be kicking yourself post-hangover (whether the hangover is hypothetical is irrelevant). The bottom line: don’t plaster your own blog with garbage.

Read Also:  Handling the Angry Blogger

6. Thou Shalt Not Attempt To Ruin Another

Attempting to hurt someone’s business is not only petty and immature, it’s also unethical. Didn’t you learn about business ethics in college? What exactly do you think you’re going to gain by making someone else look bad? I can tell you for a fact, all you’ll accomplish is looking like a mean-spirited person and a bad business owner. Seriously, if I know you talk about people behind their backs and try to make them look bad, I am not going to do business with you. I think it’s safe to say that most people will agree with me on that.

7. Thou Shalt Not Create a Clique

I can’t stand it when bloggers get together and form a clique to protect themselves from the other bloggers. Here’s a thought: If you’re nice to the other bloggers, they’ll be nice to you. You should try it, it really does work. The last time I had to deal with cliques involved cheerleaders, and that is not an era of my life that I wish to repeat. I have a science project for you to try. Why don’t you do an observation of your fifteen-year-old daughter for a week and see how she and her friends interact with one another and with “the outsiders”. You’ll realize quite quickly that fifteen-year-olds are very clique-y, almost as much as RE bloggers!

This is pretty open-ended. I actually mean that you shouldn’t steal content from other blogs, but you can take it however you want. In fact, I recommend it! Don’t steal ANYthing, got it? So back to the stealing content. It’s one thing if you write a post similar to a post you saw elsewhere. Feel free to do just that sometimes. The problem is when you start stealing every single idea from a particular blog and essentially re-writing all of their posts for your own blog. That’s bad. But don’t get confused here, because I know that sometimes ideas are “stolen” unintentionally, and that’s totally different and not wrong at all (because it was not done maliciously). If you did unintentionally steal someone’s idea, you’d rectify the situation and apologize anyway, right? Right.

9. Thou Shalt Not Create Untruths

Didn’t your mom teach you that nobody likes a liar? Perhaps before opening your mouth, you should check your sources. Refer back to number five and the theory of thinking before typing. Much too often I see posts that have inaccurate information in them, and the writer clearly didn’t do his or her homework. Next time, spend a little more time on your research and dig just a little bit deeper. You just might find something that you’ve been told all along is true!

Read Also:  Don't Get Caught Lying On Your Blog

10. Thou Shalt Not Ooze With Jealousy

Yeah, we get it, you’re jealous. Get over it. We’re all tired of your rants against people that never did anything to you. It’s obvious that you just don’t like certain people because you’re jealous of them. If everyone else can clearly see how green you’re turning, what do you think their opinions of you will be? Not good, my friend, not good at all. If you insist on being jealous, at least try to hide it a little! But seriously, jealousy is not good for your soul, so just get over it and you’ll be a happier person. And happier people are more productive people, which is important because you’re not so productive right now.

You are now armed and equipped with some basic blogging guidelines.  So go out into the world and utilize your new knowledge!  Good luck!

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