Blogging etiquette has been written about pretty exhaustively. Basically, most of these suggestions can be condensed down to this: “Do unto others as you would have done unto you.”

Most existing guidelines are about commenting behavior. That’s not really an issue for this site, and should it become one, I have and won’t hesitate to apply a commenting policy. Comment spam is highly annoying, but my good friend Akismet catches almost all of those – I’ve received about 2,750 spam vs 1,750 non-spam comments since I moved to WordPress in May 2007.

I am interested in exploring questions beyond commenting, for example:

What is appropriate to write about – and what isn’t?

To some degree, at least in America, this is up to the individual author. Freedom of speech is protected in our Bill of rights:

Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…”

More practically, we’re all part of one or more communities. The Internet is a public forum, and anonymity is an elusive thing. Personally, as I’ve mentioned before, I refrain from blogging about work frustrations, family issues and sensitive subjects like religion and politics. To some degree I try to follow a basic rule of interpersonal communication – if I have an problem with someone, I try to resolve it with them personally, privately; I would never want a public forum to be my first arena for that issue.

Many bloggers have different comfort zones around adult material, profanity and controversial content. More power to them! I try to keep mine PG-13 because my family reads it regularly. They know I can swear a blue streak and occasionally dwell in the gutter, still I don’t want to post anything that I’m not proud to share with both my parents and my children.

Interestingly, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is working toward protecting bloggers’ rights to free speech in America. Apparently we fall in a grey area between private citizen and journalist, and as such our rights and protections are somewhat unclear. They address liability, slander, workplace rights, obscenity and more. While their site is pretty fascinating, I don’t personally plan to push those boundaries.

One great rule of thumb I read for what is appropriate to share online and what is not is, “Would you talk about it in your counselor’s office?” If not, you sure as heck shouldn’t be broadcasting it on the public Internet.

Should I credit my sources?

Yes! Not only is it courtesy to the original source of the idea or content, it’s also a good journalistic practice. While we bloggers aren’t necessarily aspiring to be journalists, it’s still a great idea to use some of the profession’s best practices.

• Fact check your details.
• Cite and/or credit your sources.
• Re-use content only with permission.
• Minimize harm.
• Respect the privacy of private individuals.
• Disclose conflicts of interest.
• If you make a mistake, apologize and publish a correction.

What are suggestions for maintaining a blogroll?

Some folks avoid this question entirely by not maintaining one. It is a tricky question because it can become a popularity contest. Do you list your friends? Family? Colleagues? Bloggers you admire? Other websites? Must it be reciprocal? Blogging 101 has some good concise input on this:

“You should never feel pressured to add anyone to your blogroll; likewise, you should never feel guilty about removing someone. “

My guidelines for my blogroll? Basically, it’s whatever I feel like at the time, I’m arbitrary that way.

• In general, my blogroll contains blogs I read frequently – they live in my bookmarks or RSS feed.
• They are active sites, regularly updated, with original content.
• The sites tend to be related to my areas of interest, or topics I blog about, and I want to share them with visitors to my blog.
• Finally, they tend to not exceed my own guidelines for appropriate content – I’m not going to link to an adult oriented site.

I don’t recommend emailing someone you don’t know well asking them to add you to your blogroll. It is a blogging faux pas and feels spammy.

Are there any best practices for trackbacks?

A linkback is a method for Web authors to obtain notifications when other authors link to one of their documents. The most commonly seen version is the trackback.

Most blogging platforms have sending trackbacks enabled by default; when you post something with a link in it, your blog software will send a trackback to the original author. Then, that original author’s post will often display that trackback at the end of their post, or in their comment list, like this:

Ungeekit » Blog Archive » Trackbacks 101 Says:
August 15th, 2008 at 12:00 pm

[…] This is a test of the trackback emergency response system. If this were a real trackback, you would have been […]

I actually have trackback display turned off on Smug Puppies, because of trackback spam – clipping services and the like linking to my posts. This is not always the best approach because readers then miss part of the broader conversation taking part across the web – and in fact, I think I’ll turn them back on, separating them from comments.

I do, however, see incoming links in my blog software dashboard, as do most bloggers. This is actually what started me down the path of researching & writing this. A couple of my recent posts have been more widely distributed than I expected, which is great; I very much appreciate the readership and attention.

The interesting issue is that in a couple of cases, folks have linked to posts on this blog and discussed them, well, uncharitably. I have no illusions about my prose or perspectives, they’re hardly sacred. Still, it seems a little unusual to cruise someone’s site, not participate in the conversation there, and yet link to the content elsewhere and discuss it behind their back.

So what do you do in a scenario like that? The trackback and web crawling system lets you know who’s linking to you. Ignore it? Politely address it? Impolitely address it? Descend like a band of demons upon their site – or respond vigorously and vehemently on your site?

I chose choice B – politely addressing the question. It seemed a little presumptuous to insert myself into their conversation, given that the parties involved had chosen to have it without me, but being moderately assertive is my style – and hey, theirs is a public site too! It seemed to work well in one instance, and was ignored in the other, which doesn’t seem to be a very conversational site.

I’ve seen friends and acquaintances choose choice C, and execute that very well. I’m not up to that level of online conflict – for me, blogging and online contact is a form of recreation, and I don’t want to engage at the level where it’s not fun anymore.

What are best practices around social networking related to blogging, like use of Digg, StumbleUpon, etc.?

Many bloggers participate in social bookmarking sites and forums, like Digg, Reddit, Fark and StumbleUpon.

These services are somewhat controversial. At best, they enable browsers to alert others to new and interesting content; at worst, they become an online popularity contest, enabling a lot of really bad content to build upon existing high traffic, and completely missing a lot of really superb posts.

The real etiquette issue is the impact on a blog should a post actually take off using social bookmarking media. Many smaller bloggers use shared hosting with minimal bandwidth, and a front page Digg or Fark can drive tens of thousands of hits to a site, paralyzing a site and even an entire shared hosting server. Last week, a fellow UCF blogger had a post, ironically titled 7 Reasons I Won’t Submit This to Digg, hit the front page on Digg and do exactly that.

At a minimum, it’s good practice to let a blogger know you’re submitting their site to a social bookmarking forum. In some cases, with a new blog or an anonymous blog, it’s a good idea to ask the author if he or she would like that level of attention.

What areas of blog etiquette – with visitors to your site, or with behavior related to other blogs – have been challenges for you? I’m aware of O’Reilly’s proposed Blogger’s Code of Conduct, but I’m not sure if it’s useful or unnecessarily bombastic. Do you have any cautionary tales? Any success stories? Share!