Colleagues,

Over the past weeks, Chris Saad, Eric Blantz, Khris Loux and I (Stowe Boyd) have been discussing the ethics and best practices around social media and social tools, specifically with regard to the needs of a social tools vendor like JS-Kit. All of us are working with JS-Kit in some way or another. In my case, JS-Kit is a client. The Recent Facebook flap led us to consider addressing these issues in a larger forum. As Eric said, 'the value of the activity is proportional to the involvement of a wider group of smart people.' We immediately thought of the Media 2.0 Workgroup as a good start for that wider group. As a result, JS-Kit authorized us to donate our draft materials to the workgroup for open sourcing to the community.

We initially considered creating a code of ethics and best practices for tool vendors, treating issues like user rights, transparency and data ownership. We also considered the alternative of a 'Bill Of Rights' expressed from the perspective of individuals, as well as the notion that tool vendors, publishers and other constituencies might have different perspectives, and obligations. All of these ideas have merit.

We have decided to open the discussion up to this larger group, and maybe other smart people, so that over the next few weeks we can push ideas around and search for common ground. Maybe we will decide to open this up to the whole world, but as a starting point we are keeping this limited to just the cc list. We hope that you will be willing to invest a few hours over the next few weeks, and -- if possible -- attend a meeting of the group that we're planning around the Wed 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, 31 Mar - 3 Apr. We have not set a time or place, but we will do so in short order.

We have high aspirations, but we don't know exactly what form any results of the process might take. Perhaps we will be able to define a strong consensus on a number of topics that we will craft into a document or a website. Alternatively, we might fall into camps, arguing different sides of complex issues. Perhaps we would create a series of public conversations on the most difficult and important topics, and video those, with participation of others. We don't know.

We do know that the issues around the ethics of participation in the social web are enormous importance. The web is the most valuable human artifact ever created, and it is ours: there is no higher authority to ask 'how should we act?' We have to look to ourselves to find these answers, and the sooner the better.

The strawman is posted here.

/Stowe