Preamble
The convergence of tools, technologies, companies and individuals that constitute the “social web” has increased opportunities for participation, access, and collaboration in ways that are fundamentally egalitarian; virtually every participant is now both a consumer and a producer of content.
As happens during times of rapid change our “social infrastructure” – shared understandings about the rights and responsibilities of this expanded field of actors – has not kept pace. Critical questions about issues such as transparency, accountability, ownership and privacy seem stubbornly out of sync with the rapidly evolving reality.
The Media 2.0 Best Practices group seeks to catalyze debate, discussion and ultimately progress on these topics by rallying a group of thought leaders to the initial task not of answering these questions but of framing them intelligently and exploring the margins of consensus and disagreement.
Will you join us?
Learn about the history and process of this project
The Media 2.0 Best Practices [Strawman]
A promise from site operators to their participants
Goal
To give publishers, emerging media platforms and individual participants an evolving set of 'Best Practices' to encourage open, democratic and transparent interaction. Further, to help participants who wish to engage with those platforms to know, at a glance, which aspects of the best practices they can reasonably expect to be applied to their experience.
Best Practices
Transparency
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Inline Disclosure
We pledge to disclose, both on an 'About' or 'Disclosures' page and inside relevant post content, any and all potential conflicts of interest around the subject on which we are writing.
- We pledge to disclose the general business model (if any) behind our site - including primary revenue sources
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Corrections
When we discover an error in our copy, we preserve the original text by striking through the error and inserting the correction, thereby allowing readers to know exactly what has been changed.
Authenticity
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Original Source
We pledge to give readers access to the source material upon which our arguments are built through the regular use of outbound links. We may function as filters, but we respect that our readers are entitled to the same source material that drives our perspectives.
Participation
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Commenting Encouraged
We allow and encourage commenting as well as direct interaction between/among participants. To that end we make it easy to post your comments directly to the site. Leaving a comment can be done either anonymousyly or with lightweight, inline registration.
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Aggregated User Opinions
Participants are encouraged to provide their non-textual opinions about the content on our site, including ratings, polls, etc. Aggregated opinions are provided in order to allow participants to curate and customize their own experience.
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Ethical Moderation
A site moderation policy - including criteria for blocking or editing of comments, users, etc. - will be easily accessible to all participants. All moderated comments will be posted or rejected in a timely fashion. In keeping with our commitment to transparency, comments that are edited by the moderator will be marked clearly or returned to the poster for revision. Private communications between participants will be respected as such.
Reciprocity
- Links
Incoming links from other blogs (Trackbacks), Twitter (Tweetbacks), FriendFeed and other relevant social media tools will be acknowledged on site with a link back to the source.
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Value Creation
We believe that participants who are significantly involved in the creation or co-creation of the content on our site, and from which we derive substantial value, should be compensated for their contributions.
Fair Use
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Feeds available for all streams
We encourage you to subscribe to our content in a way that makes sense to you. All our regularly updated content is available via RSS/Atom for users to subscribe to in the feed reader of their choice.
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Full feeds
We respect your right to view content in a format that is most convinient to you. Unless otherwise indicated, all our feeds contain the full content of the original material.
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Creative Commons licencing
We believe in the creative spirit of the community. Our content is made available for re-use and re-mixing under Creative Commons Licencing.
- Easy access to content sharing tools/services
Each piece of content will have its own permalink for easy bookmarking or sharing. We also strive to make sharing easier by providing sharing options on the page.
Control
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Content and metadata ownership
We commit to giving participants control over the content they produce on (or upload to) our site/service, including its related metadata. We provide the tools necessary to remove, edit or repurpose that content as you see fit.
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Data Portability
We commit to continuing along a path of user-centric, interoperable Data Portability of your personal data and metadata as described by the vision of the DataPortability project.
Privacy
- Clarity
Our privacy policy will be easily accessible and intelligable to real people (ie, non-lawyers). Updates to this policy will be clearly communicated at the time such updates are made.
- Information Collection and Use
We will declare, in clear and simple terms, precisely what personal information is captured about users of our site/services.
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Right to Delete
Individual participants have the right to delete, in full, any or all of their personal information from our system at any time. Such requests will be actioned immediately and will not to impeded by artificial technical or bureacratic obstacles. Your aggregate statistical data may remain for our trend tracking purposes.
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Ethical application of personal information
Personal Information collected about participants is used only for the purposes of providing and improving our services. Should you decide at any time that you no longer wish to receive services or communication from us (please see 'Right to Delete' above).
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Transactions with like-minded entities
From time to time, we will partner with, employ or sub-contract 3rd parties who will need access to your personal information for the purposes of providing their services. We commit to working with partners who are aligned with the spirit of this document.
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Change of ownership
A merger, acquisition, reorganization or sale of assets or a bankruptcy event is always possible for any service. In such a case, we intend to ensure that the new entity remains commited to these best practices.
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Law Enforcement Compliance
We cooperate with government and law enforcement officials and private parties to enforce and comply with the law. We will disclose any information about you to government or law enforcement officials or private parties as we believe necessary or appropriate to respond to claims and legal process (including but not limited to subpoenas), to protect our property and rights or the rights of a third party, to protect the safety of the public or any person, or to prevent or stop any activity we may consider to be, or to pose a risk of being, illegal, unethical, inappropriate or legally actionable. Where governing law is not in tune with the principles outlined in this document, we will make this fact clear and post appropriate cautions for all participants.
Declaration of the Signatories
The Web is the single most valuable artifact on Earth, and it is being built collectively, through the spontaneous and independent actions of billions. In order to retain the attributes of the Web that have allowed it to flourish as it has, we, the undersigned, have come together to affirm certain rights and responsibilities of those choosing to provide services on the Web; specifically, we have outlined a set of Best Practices enumerating the reasonable expectations of participants which should act as codes of conduct for governments, companies, publishers, and tool developers. These are designed to provide guidance for each based on what benefits us all.
Project Participants (In order of participation)
Chris Saad, Khris Loux (On Behalf of JS-Kit), Eric Blantz, Stowe Boyd, Micah Baldwin (On behalf of Lijit), Brian Solis, Ben Metcalfe, Marianne Richmond, Jeremiah Owyang, Daniela Barbosa, Peter Kim, Loïc Le Meur (also on behalf of Seesmic/Twhirl), Deborah Schultz, Frank Gruber. To get involved please email us.
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