No Comment!

Photo by decadentyou used under the flickr Creative Commons license

There is an etiquette to blogging. It encompasses writing, commenting and responding to posts. Credit should be given where credit is deserved. Images should note any license or conditions that allow them to be used. Quotes should only come from people who have approved their use or already been publicly stated.

Yesterday, I lunched with some old colleagues from a past life before heading off to Google Developer Day Sydney. We often meet. We always talk. We all blog.

This time was different. This time while we spoke, we had no idea that one of the participants was going to go to work the next day and post snippets of that conversation to his blog. The post included our names, the names of other people who weren't there, links to our blogs and absolutely no context.

Although he took down the post once it was made clear to him that what had happened was inappropriate and an abuse of trust, it still leaves me a little worried. There was nothing malicious in what he did but it was pretty bad form.

To make it clear: Do not quote someone or paraphrase them without their permission. If you do, don't expect me to trust you enough to say anything interesting ever again.