Only two days back, I was blasted (by many, many emails) by a blogger after I politely refused to exchange links on one of my tech. blogs. The primary reason I gave was that I had a policy of no link exchanging on that blog, and if you take a look at it, you’ll see that there are no permanent outbound links except to some other blogs I manage.

The reason he (I think) gave was that he had already placed me on his blogroll, and it would only be polite for me to return the link. I’m not sure how many of you have experienced something like this, but this was my first (to such an extent at least), so I was pretty flustered. Where was the unspoken / informal blogger etiquette?

Yes, it’s unspoken, but I had thought that most bloggers would at least share similar ideals. Let me list mine to see how it goes:

1. Never force a fellow blogger to help you
   This applies to almost everything, whether a linkback, an idea or two, technical help, or an interview - even if you’re going out of your way with a big incentive. Although most bloggers would be willing to lend a hand with a project you have if they had the time, don’t forget that they might have to refuse or even not reply because of time constraints, heavy workloads, set principles, or a simple lack of internet access while travelling.
2. Do not trackback without linking
   This is a pet peeve of mine. Some bloggers trackback ping one of your posts without linking to the post in the first place. I’ve not seen this done anymore, but it was an irritant quite a while back. I’ve heard a pretty weird argument on this one before, i.e. a rel=”nofollow” cap is placed on a trackback, but not on a link to the post, so why should I link to it as long as my post is related?
3. Credit your sources
   This is probably the No. 1 rule in blogger etiquette. If you got the facts, story, picture, video, and etc., from somewhere, credit that source - normally thorough a linkback. To a lesser extent, if you got an idea from somewhere, it would be nice to credit that source as well (though many will say this is unnecessary).
4. Do not hotlink
   This means that you should always reupload pictures, audio and video from other blogs/sites on your own server in order not to waste their bandwidth and CPU processing time (unless the content in question is already on a free audio or video host). Admittedly, hotlinking doesn’t really happen much among bloggers (more by forum-ers really).
5. Do not spam
   For bloggers, the greatest annoyance we have to face is probably spam. So, why contribute to more spam? Spam here covers comment spam, trackback spam, email spam, and etc.
6. Respect copyright
   This one is normally an unambiguous and unbreakable rule, but in the blogging world, copyright (or its enforcement) is not always clear. For example, would you allow bloggers to use a screenshot you posted on your blog unasked as long as he credits you properly? You’ll find that most product blogs never ask their sources before reposting copyrighted images, but credit their sources satisfactorily. So, source sites tend to let this go. But in general, one should always ask before republishing anything copyrighted by others.
7. Disclose your personal interests when necessary
   When supposed to objectively review a product or service, it is important to post a disclosure if you have an incentive to be partial. Bloggers who also consult for the companies they review or who accept offers for sponsored posts usually obey this rule.
8. Moderate comments for spam, not viewpoint
   Another controversial etiquette tip here. Some believe that a blogger has the right to delete any comment posted on his blog since it is his blog. While that is true, it is good practice to only moderate for spam (e.g. overly promotional and unrelated, heavy cursing, etc.) and not to delete comments just because they disagree with you. And even if you have to delete a comment, be sure to follow good comment deletion etiquette.
9. Be willing to disclose and correct mistakes
   If you make a mistake, disclose it and update your post accordingly. Do not do as Paul Scrivens claimed TechCrunch did, i.e. delete a comment highlighting the error and modify the post without telling anybody.

That’s about it for now. Am I expecting too much, or too little? Feel free to add to this list or flame me. I’ve always been pretty thicked-skinned, but after this incident, I don’t think there’s anything anyone can say that can get me flustered any more.

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