Gimme Some Disclosure [rel=snark]
Disclosure always has been the horse to beat to death among bloggers. Bloggers, especially probloggers (whatever that is), are supposed to be honest, beg and warn you every time they want to make some money on your back that they actually could make money if you are no greedy all for free internaut.
Finally, I’ll come clear with things here and agree with the Master, Shoemoney.
You should assume everything written on this blog is a lie. You should assume I have motivation for linking to everything on this page and will benefit from it somehow.
To be entirely honest honest with you…
I assume you know that I everything I write on this page, I will benefit from it somehow.
Yup, that is correct. I can already see those $ signs in your eyes, but forget it! Being a Jack has some advantages! See, I’m a muppet, I can write what I want here. I can rant & rave. Even at your expense.
As long as I disclose. And I think disclosure doesn’t go far enough yet. Also Jacks and Muppets should disclose [their relations]. And best thing to do that, is the lovely XFN code.
XFN™ (XHTML Friends Network) is a simple way to represent human relationships using hyperlinks. In recent years, blogs and blogrolls have become the fastest growing area of the Web. XFN enables web authors to indicate their relationship(s) to the people in their blogrolls simply by adding a ‘rel’ attribute to their <a href> tags
On a side note, XFN also is the perfect way to get screwed in your search engine rankings, but I digress.
To be entirely honest, I think XFN is for netiquette wussies. Those who believe that the web only consists of hugging cybergenes and cuddling cyberDNAstrings. But one of the best things online always were the flames. What is funnier than sit back and enjoy a great flame war and Wikipedia or Usenet.
But what about disclosure?
From now one, every flamer should disclose and use the XFN model to do so. Following attributes are imaginable:
- rel=”useless”
- rel=”wannabe”
- rel=”whiner”
- rel=”wussy”
Of course no limitations are set, but when disclosing… better do it consequently.
