Blogging is a great way to take advantage of technology by starting conversations via the web. Conversations are great. It doesn’t matter if they are conducted verbally or literally. Conversations share ideas and can spark fires. Yet no matter how great one is in verbal conversation, sooner or longer something is said that shouldn’t have been said. So, in the world of bloggers are there repercussions to typing something you shouldn’t have typed?
Everyone does it. A word is misspelled or “your” is used and it should have been “you’re.” These errors make us human. In Naked Conversations, Dave Winers says typos reveal authenticity (4). So, compared to some errors one can make on the web, typos are minuscule.
Once company employees started blogging, the least of the company’s legal team’s worries were about typos. According to Naked Conversations and the interview with Microsoft’s first blogger, Joshua Allen, “everyone was worried someone would do something stupid and the whole thing would fall down” (12). Just ask Juan Gutierrez. Apple settled with Gutierrez, in April 2001, after it was found out that he posted company secrets on the web.
Though what Guitierrez did was wrong, he didn’t post Apple’s trade secrets accidentally. The posts were intentional. So, how can one clean up their blog’s mess. First of all, errors like not citing or not linking correctly should be corrected in the original posting. However, the offense of including incorrect information in your post should not be fixed by editing the original. The most acceptable thing to do is to retract, correct, or apologize in the comments of your erroneous post or publish another post with an apology, retraction, or correction.
Now, if you notice some blogs an error on their site, make them aware of it. On the Internet, you don’t have to worry about embarrassment for verbally making someone aware of his or her faux pas. All you do is post a comment telling them of their error. Since to err is human, remember to double-check your correction before you post.
Since bloggers are just “everyday” people with thoughts and ideas, can there be repercussions to errors on their blog. Other than admitting or accepting your mistakes, I would think not. So, the good thing about typing something you shouldn’t have is you don’t have to “pull your foot out of your mouth” in front of a physical audience.
Sources:
Scoble, R. and Israel, S. Naked Conversations. Hoboken: John Wiley and Sons (2006).
C/Net News.com. August 7, 2001. Apple Settles with “Worker Bee.”
Teblog. January 11, 2006. Correcting Blog Errors.
Business Blog Consulting. March 7, 2006. Blog Posting Erorrs: Correct Them or Not?
