Go forth and blog

I read an awesome article by Ruth Gledhill, who is the Religious correspondent for The (London) Times on one of their blogs.  The post is about Church leaders in the UK drawing up the “Ten Commandments” of blogging, in order to help blogging Church-goers to avoid temptation. Thought-up and rubber-stamped at a conference called “Godblogs” in London, the commandments cover a wide range of potential pitfalls:

1 You shall not put your blog before your integrity 

2 You shall not make an idol of your blog 

3 You shall not misuse your screen name by using your anonymity to sin 

4 Remember the Sabbath day by taking one day off a week from your blog 

5 Honour your fellow-bloggers above yourselves and do not give undue significance to their mistakes 

6 You shall not murder someone else's honour, reputation or feelings 

7 You shall not use the web to commit or permit adultery in your mind 

8 You shall not steal another person's content 

9 You shall not give false testimony against your fellow-blogger 

10 You shall not covet your neighbour's blog ranking. Be content with your own content   

As if thinking up the commandments wasn’t enough, they have been “engraved on cyberspace tablets” by the Evangelical Alliance. I’ve hunted high and low for these virtual tables, but I can’t find them, all I could find was this post by the Evangelical Alliance

MyTake – We all need a few rules now and then to keep us honest, but I’m not so sure that there’s that much religion in the above. It’s more common sense. If you take away the “You shall nots” then you’ve got a fairly sensible list. I do think this is more of a publicity stunt than anything else – don’t get me wrong, I’m all for a good publicity stunt, and this IS a good publicity stunt. It’s not quite Moses on the mountain stuff, but it’s certainly getting the word out.