The Ethics of Posting on Bulletin Boards: You Decide

In the past few weeks, I have read quite a bit on B/R about how one should, or should not, go about establishing himself here as a writer.

There has been a great deal said about people who post their articles on other people's bulletin boards, and there seems to be a bit of banter about those who have reached “Senior Writer” status and whether they are deserving of such a title.

There are certain guidelines on B/R that most of us are well aware of. Those state that we are not “to contribute any Content that is infringing, libelous, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, abusive, offensive” and can be found under “User Content” in the Terms of Use. Posting on someone’s board does not fall under any of those prohibited activities.

What most of this really boils down to is ethics, and since the founders of this wonderfully open forum have not chiseled out these ethical guidelines for us, it is up to each of us to decide for ourselves what our ethical parameters will be.

When I first discovered B/R and began writing my first articles, I began just like everyone else does on this site. I was a newbie. If you care to go back and look at my early articles, you will see that in two of them I garnered a whopping four comments apiece.

I think that my “America vs. China! When The World Goes Home” article was one of my best, but only 14 people commented on it. I wasn’t exactly burning up the reads either.

One of the things that is essential in feeling at home here is realizing that it is more than just about writing ability. It is great if you have been blessed with the ability to craft words into a picture, but B/R is more than just a sports section of a daily paper.

This is a community of people. I found that as I got out into the community and read other people's articles and commented on what they had written, I began to meet people and develop relationships.

If you stay indoors all the time and never find out who is living in your neighborhood, no one is going to know who you are, nor will they ever hear what you have to say.

When I was a boy growing up in the south, every house had a front porch, and after supper (that’s the evening meal), families would sit outside together. Sometimes the neighbors would come over and sit a spell. We knew everyone in our neighborhood! Nowadays, most people have no idea who lives two doors down from them.

Hermits impact no one. My best advice to those of you who are trying to get established here is to get out of the house and meet the neighbors.

As I began to walk the streets of this cyber-community and meet people, I began to gain some friends and pick up some fans, and as I wrote articles I posted to their boards, and they posted to mine. I wanted them to post me because I was interested in them and in what they had to say.

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