Blogging and the prior literature

Time to air a pet peeve that hopefully will contribute to discussions on blogging norms.

Here's the example:  Blogger F has what he thinks is an original angle on a point or subject that either (1) came out of his own head or work; (2) relates to a major news story of the day; (3) picks up on something said by Blogger A; (4) relates to a minor news story.  Blogger F cites the stories in (2) or (4) or Blogger A but does not cite Bloggers B-E who have made similar or related points.  Assume for the sake of this discussion that Blogger F does not know about B-E -- proceeding in the face of such knowledge would present a separate problem.

In the academic setting, this ignorance of the prior literature would be a bad thing, a sign of academic negligence.  What about in blogging, particularly by an academic blogger?

I think a similar norm should apply, though applied differently in this different setting.  Applying this norm in both settings helps everybody economize on time.  And Bloggers B-E probably don't enjoy being ignored.  The norm can be policed by the usual reputational and shaming incentives.

The problem is that in the vast web it's harder to keep up than in conventional academic publishing.  But not impossible.  Depending on which of the above contexts apply, you've got Google, trackbacks, and RSS feeds.  Trackbacks alert you to other comments on Blogger A.  Google is a quick and dirty way to spot at least the more prominent discussions.  RSS feeds, enhanced by aggregators like Bloglines, can help you track the blogs that are in your area that are most likely either to have discussed the topic or cited to other discussions.

"Guilt" should depend on the context.  It's lower in situations 1 and 4 above than in situations 2 and 3 because of differing expectations that there are prior posts and in difficulty of finding them.

Now, I fully expect somebody to tell me I ignored their posts on this subject.  In my defense, this is in situation (1), and I did make an effort to Google the subject. It doesn't seem to be covered by the usual approach to blogging "ethics."  If I missed you, I apologize in advance.  I think it's more likely that nobody's discussed this because nobody cares.

Update: Speaking of the ethics of blogging, this just popped up, linked by Larry Solum.

Update 2: Will Baude has an excellent response and makes some persuasive points about my norm over-deterring blogging.  I haven’t absorbed all of it, and probably won’t for awhile (maybe not until I incorporate this into my blogging article). For now I suspect I'm going to conclude that there’s a problem with over-posting, but my proposal to deal with it needs to be revised to avoid  over-deterrence.  After all, the Hayekian aspect of blogging Baude mentions is central to my blogging paper, and this aspect requires an absence of undue constraints on posting.  But I still wonder if the power of the blogosphere to provide information isn't diluted by an absence of self-constraint on posting. 

Comments

[Cathy]

I'm think I'm more likely to agree with Will Baude and Christine Hurt, in part because I'm not sure what the concern is behind your assertion, "In the academic setting, this ignorance of the prior literature would be a bad thing, a sign of academic negligence."

It would seem that if you are trying to write a major academic research document on Topic, and you don't include a reference to another major document on Topic, it undermines your credibility as someone who can speak authoritatively about Topic. Still I don't see that as being an ethical problem in terms of morality, but perhaps it may be an ethical one in terms of the actual ethos of the author itself.

But a blog post is often a vastly different creature than a major academic publication. They are created much more speedily, and are often a reflection of first impression. That first impression can often provide a great deal of insight on an issue, which would be lost if each time a poster had an idea they had to find all possible similar expressions. Not only would the exercise be burdensome and impractical, but it would also wreck that instinctive native reaction, so that by the time the thought did get expressed (if the author has not given up by now) it would have inherently changed as a result of exposure to others' thoughts. I think that's a much greater harm than having multiple people unknowingly post similarly. Great minds do think alike, after all, and I don't think we should be afraid of that happening in the blogosphere. In fact, it would tend to suggest the correctness of the expressed thought that so many people were able to think it.

[Will Baude]

Another, second-order thought. If you embrace the idea that we have too many posts now and ought to deter them via social norms (I think the opposite) it is also worth pondering whether your norm will have selective and perverse effects.

In particular, norms are rarely universally followed, especially when they are personally costly to the blogger. This means that you are probably going to have the most deterrence against consciencious and norm-conscious bloggers and the least against cavalier, careless, or norm-defying ones. It will be worth pondering whether this distribution effect will be worth it.

[Lawrence Cunningham]

I agree with Professor Ribstein's point on attribution norms in blogs.

Here is a comment I posted on the Conspiracy in February 2005, commenting on an Orin Kerr post. This was amid discussion of the new policy of certain law reviews to cap article length; it led Professor Kerr to suggest how blogs can be used as scholarly vehicles. He speculated that such a combination of law reviews and internet postings might be the wave of the future. My post is dated February 22, 2005 and read as follows, with the final part quoting a prior blog post by Professor Anthony D'Amato:

Lawrence A. Cunningham (mail) (www):
Maybe this will be the future; who knows whether it will be better. At least traditional scholarly publishing involves an elaborate vetting and editorial process, including important functions such as preemption checks and attribution constraints. One often reads on the blogosphere writers making identical points without any evidence that they are aware that others have said the same thing because there are no editorial constraints in that world. For example, I note that the post on which I am commenting bears a date of February 10. The following was posted the day before that on the American Constitution Society blog comment board concerning new limitations on article length:
Written By:Anthony D'Amato On February 9, 2005 04:07 PM
We ought to split the problem. The shorter version of the article (say, a max of 35 pages) should be published in the law review. The longer version should be published on the internet with the url listed in the first footnote of the law review article.

PS: You can find the foregoing comment of mine [Cunningham] at the following link: http://volokh.com/posts/1108070837.shtml

--Lawrence Cunningham