logicandlanguage.net

This topic might seem silly and self-aggrandising. It would be arrogant to overestimate the extent to which one's blog is read, of course, and the weight given to what one says. But then, it would be foolish to underestimate the accessibility of information on the web; no-one would be very happy about the number one search result for their name being an off-the-cuff criticism of their paper by some lazy blogger who didn't understand it properly. (Or even a blogger who did.)

This is just a subgenre of a topic that Brian - seminal, and very widely-read blogger that he is (my lawyers asked me to add that phrase) - has worried about from time to time: the ethics of blogging. I think the factors which combine to make it tricky are the natural informality and immediacy of the medium, along with the accessibility and longevity of items on the web. It's easy to assume that one's core (and comment-happy) audience is one's entire audience, (hello fellow logic bloggers!) but of course in principle it can include one's students, senior colleagues, rivals, family, journalists, philosophical opponents, MI6, JK Rowling (it's so easy to forget she has internet access) and other celebrities, including those in one's own profession, whom one will undoubtedly run into in the queue for coffee at a conference next month.

A friend once told me that his mother had instructed him never to write anything in an email that he would not write on a postcard. But the average blog is much more public and widely-read than the average postcard (even if we include the postcards which I write to my gran in Winchburgh, which get read by the local postman before he delivers them. "Oh hello Mrs Russell, I see your granddaughter still hasn't settled down ...") Could we come up with a similar rule-of-thumb for blogging? Perhaps one way to do it would be to consider the extreme cases: don't write anything in your blog which you wouldn't want to be read by i) the members of a hiring committee, ii) your students, iii) your father.

On a completely unrelated note, things will be quiet around here for a while. I'm back off to the UK on Monday and they tell me it's half a world away...

And I'd add to that list, the people presenting the papers you're commenting about, in the particular case of conference blogging. Especially since they might find you in a simple google search of their name.

I've found it not too troublesome yet. It's been a constructive thing for me to figure out what to say that helps me remember what has struck me and I've learned.

An interesting converse case to conference blogging is the phenomenon of students blogging about lecturers. Should they be worried or suprised that their lecturers might find their blogs? (A nice example is here.) Should I avoid glancing at what students write about me?

Anyway, back to the conference... this post is brought to you live from LC2005 in Athens.

My own experiment crashed quite early. For me, the reason was simple - the core content of most of the talks was not about logic. This is not to say that they weren't interesting or that there aren't cool connections to logic (quite the opposite), it's just that the substance of the talk was not logic. I'll try the conference blogging thing again later this year at the AAL/AustMS logic fest.

It is not uncommon for people you mention on your blog to stumble accross it and contact you - this has happened a few times even to little ol' me. There's also something quite cool about meeting people who know you through your blog - I always get a feeling of stitiching together a great electronic divide :)

Perhaps another rule of blogging etiquette to add to your list, Gillian, would be:

(iv) Don't put anything in your blog which you don't have permission to publish, such as private emails quoted without consent of the author.

I thought what you did for the talks was fine — you wanted to talk about the logic related things that interested you, and you did. (I must admit that I was wondering if you were going to get around to Day 3 sometime or not, however.)

Anyway, it's very nice to make the face-to-face acquaintance of someone you've met electronically, (at least when the electronic interactions are healthy). In the case of people contacting you who you've blogged about, I've made a habit of talking to the speaker (when I can) and telling them any evaluative comment (like "that representation of power series was really neat") if I'm going to go on post it.

(Speaking of meeting face-to-face someone you've only electronically met, please remind me, Jon, to ask to be put on the notYASS roster when I'm next in Canberra. It sounds like a lot of fun. Maybe Gill's blog is not the place to post this, but it is a distributed world...)

Consider yourself rostered, Greg. You may also like to join in on our recently started "logic cafe" - the theme so far has been developing natural notions of proof equivalence. Remind me to wrangle some funding to pop over and visit the Melbournites when all you guys are in town again. At least from the AAL program, it seems that none of you lot will be making it to Perth, which is a pity.

Well, I'll let you (Jon) know when I'm planning to come to Canberra. It won't be a while, of course...

I can't speak for my colleagues, but I have a good excuse for not being in Perth for the AAL -- I'll be in Oxford.

I've been somewhat wary of conference blogging for almost precisely the reason you mentioned above - leaving someone out can be taken as tacit criticism.

I've also been wondering a bit with respect to some of what I've been posting lately. It's sort of "book blogging", where I post my reactions to some argument in the latest chapter of a book I've been reading. I feel like I may have been more critical at times than I normally would be when discussing things directly with someone.

But certainly, the members of one's hiring committe, one's students, and one's immediate friends and family are important audiences to keep in mind when putting anything on the internet. Not to mention anyone that you mention by name.

I think it's "don't write anything in an email (or blog) that you don't want to see on the front page of the NYT." But, you'd think that people wouldn't take nonmention of their work/talk as criticism. I certainly haven't discussed a lot of things on my blog which I think very highly of; and I didn't go to a lot of things at LC'05 in Athens simply because it was too hot, or they conflicted with other things, or I was too tired, or too lazy, or I really wanted to see the Parthenon at some point. And I ddin't blog because they turned off the wireless internet. Even Greg didn't come to my talk, and he consequently didn't blog about it -- he had some spurious excuse about having to fly back to Denmark (right!).

Right. He told me he didn't go to your talk because he thinks your work is dumb and you wear ugly shoes.

Front page headline of NYTimes: "Richard Zach Wears Ugly Shoes".

Unfortunately, a much more positive fashion review from a Calgary publication just isn't going to carry much weight in the face of that.

But seriously, non-mention of someone's talk only seems like criticism if one was present and mentions a lot of other talks. And in that case it's understandable how someone could get a negative impression by omission.

I'd never say Richard wears ugly shoes.

I really appreciated Greg's coverage of the Logic Colloquium although I do not pretend to understand even a small portion of the material mentioned.

To me, the situation is like that of a reporter covering a big event, such as a political party meeting where several candidates or party bosses get to give speeches. The reporter does not really listen to each and every speech but it might be catastrophic if you miss your Blair or your Merkel or your Berlusconi or whatever.

Greg, I thought your commenting on your student's weblog was a gentle and upfront way to let them know that you were in the audience. Their response was very funny, and ALSO written as if you wouldn't be reading it!