Transparency and Blogging Ethics

Yesterday I wrote about a recent Top 100 Education Blogs list that was published on the Online Education Database website. This list and its parent website have generated some controversy in the past two days due to the way that some of us were informed about the list, the structure of the parent website, and other emails that at least some of us received regarding articles published on the parent website.

First, let me acknowledge that I probably should have been a little more transparent in my own post regarding the skepticism that I had when I first received the emails this week (one regarding an article and another regarding the Top 100 list.) I should have mentioned in my original post that my decision to write about the list and the two articles were based on the value that I found in both of the articles. I didn’t see anything wrong with sharing that information with readers – regardless of how I originally discovered the two articles (through a direct email from a person associated with the website.) The articles still contain information that some people may find useful and I saw no harm in linking to them.

However, the issue of the emails did stir up some additional concern among others on the list and their concerns are valid. Miguel was the first blogger to express concern about the motives behind the emails – his post from last night brings up questions (which received a response from Jimmy Atkinson — the sender of the emails), and his post this morning re-addresses those questions while also acknowledging that all of us have given the list and the website lots of publicity (good and bad.)

Darren (A Difference) took the time to dig more deeply into the website and its background – which I sincerely thank him for! And John Pederson (Pederson Designs) has taken the time to publish the list on a wiki so that all of us can remix, add, subtract, and contribute – fun!

This does raise the issue of ethics around generating traffic to a website. Was it unethical of Jimmy Atkinson to send us the emails and encourage us to post links to his site by putting our blogs on a “Top 100” list? Possibly – it depends on how you look at it. What I do know is that there are better ways to inform us about his site and the articles that wouldn’t have come across as unethical.

In the past I’ve come across a number of blog posts that address the issue of generating traffic:

What does it mean to be a good blogger? (by Tim Jackson)

How to get traffic to your website for free (from Twenty Steps)

10 Killer Ways to Increase Traffic and Stickiness (by Instabloke)

This is just a sample — there is a great deal more out there on the web.

I think all of us are (or should be) striving to be better blogging citizens who practice ethical and collaborative methods for publishing, promoting, and communicating with each other.   I agree with Miguel on the issue of TRANSPARENCY and I join him in suggesting that Jimmy Atkinson start his own blog:

While I valued the info found in the article you shared, I would like to encourage you to start up a blog yourself…this would make the work you do–and the organization–more transparent and less likely to raise these kinds of questions.

Change Agency by Stephanie Sandifer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. You may copy, distribute, transmit and/or remix this content for noncommercial uses as long as you attribute the work to Stephanie Sandifer (with link back to the original post) and agree to license the work under the same or similar license.