I assume you’ve all seen this joint statement… [Tags: kathy_sierra rageboy cyberbullying ]

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A study by Communispace (which, as an online community developer has a horse in the race) says that while big communities necessarily have lots of “eyeballs,”

Results indicate that 86% of the people who log on to private, facilitated communities with 300 to 500 members made contributions: they posted comments, initiated dialogues, participated in chats, brainstormed ideas, shared photos, and more. Only 14% merely logged in to observe, or “lurk.”

By contrast, on public social networking Web sites, blogs, and message boards, this ratio is typically reversed, as the vast majority of site visitors do not contribute. In a typical online forum, for example, just 1% of site visitors contribute, and the other 99% lurk.

The long tail lives!

A different study by Melcrum says that 55% of corporations already have blogs or are planning to within the next 12 months, and 63% plan to be distributing videos on the likes of YouTube. 73% have no plans to use SecondLife. 70% have no guidelines or policies for blogs and other social media, and only 26% were “sure how to monitor what was being said about” them.

[Tags: social_software blogging long_tail marketing everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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Michelle Tempest points out that “the majority of UK medical bloggers choose to write under the cover of anonymity.”

Interesting. And something to point to in the uphill fight to keep anonymity the default on the Net. [Tags: anonymity doctors michelle_tempest ]

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Drew, who was fired for having a blog (although his employer has claimed otherwise), has prevailed in his struggle to get unemployment benefits.

His baby is still cute. [Tags: Drew_townson blogging mercenary_audio]

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Proving once and for all that the Internet is a series of pipes, not tubes… (Be sure to check the list of water companies partnering with Google on this.)

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I very much like Tim O’Reilly’s post about a bloggers code of conduct.

It’s certainly possible to quibble with the specifics of Tim’s post, although personally I think he’s right on the mark. But more important, his post is among many legitimizing taking responsibility for the comments we allow on our blogs (Tim’s point #1). It’s a call not for a single code of conduct to govern all sites, but for codes of conduct.

We’ve always been responsible for comments: There’s always been a line we wouldn’t allow commenters to cross, or if there’s been no line, we’ve been responsible for that as well. But we need to be OK with setting out explicit guidelines. Conversations always work within norms, although they rarely need to be explicitly expressed: You know not to do a lot of insult humor at a board meeting and you know not to argue with the mourners at a funeral no matter how overstated the eulogy. Likewise, if you’ve been reading a blog for a while, you probably have a sense of what’s ok and what isn’t. But people leave comments on blogs they’ve read once. They come in with their own sense of what’s allowed. Fine. Good. But we should make explicit to them what our norms are.

Tim joins many in pointing to the BlogHer Community Guidelines. Count me in. I’m adding them to my comment form this morning. I’ll probably work on some minor personalizations over the next few days. (Passover approaches, and I’m under the weather, so it may take me a little longer.)

PS: There’s been a discussion along the same lines over at StopCyberBullying [Tags: cyberbullying blogging tim_oreilly blogher]

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