A Blogger’s Bill of Rights

Posted on December 8, 2003 in Attitudes Blogging

The history of literature is strewn with the wreckage of writers who minded beyond all reason the opinions of others. — Virginia Woolf

This is an adaptation and an expansion of a famous list, often uncredited, by Dr. Manuel Sanchez M.D. from his book When I say no I feel guilty:

1. You have the right to judge your own writing, behavior, thoughts, and emotions, and to take the responsibility for their initiation and consequences upon yourself.
   
2. You have the right to apologize specifically for what you have done wrong and to maintain your point of view.
   
3. You have the right to offer no reasons or excuses for justifying what you write or for deleting comments and articles.
   
4. You have the right to judge if you are responsible for finding solutions to other people’s problems.
   
5. You have the right to change your mind.
   
6. You have the right to make mistakes (including typoes) — and be responsible for them. You may fix your grammatical, lexigraphical, and factual errors.
   
7. You have the right to say “I don’t know”.
   
8. You have the right to be independent of the goodwill of others before coping with them.
   
9. You have the right to write illogically, creatively.
   
10. You have the right to say “I don’t understand”.
    
11. You have the right to say “I don’t care”.
    
12. You have the right to say “I don’t have an opinion.”
    
13. You have the right to choose who you link to.
    
14. You have the right to choose who may comment on your blog.
    
15. You have the right to end discussions on your weblog.
    
16. You have the right to say “no” to advertisers and others who attempt to use you as a free platform for their products, services, or views.

My weblog policy is consistent with these assertions of rights. I do not deny to anyone the right to travel the Internet Superhighway and I have not closed my weblog to reading by anyone. All the acts that I have performed are consistent with the spirit of this bill of rights and I deny the same to no one else.