This morning, upon leaving Brussels to go back home after my seminar in Louvain-la-Neuve, my attention was caught by a big green banner hanging from a tall building at Place Schuman. It said "Safe Internet Day" and below, in smaller fonts, "think before you blog". I found it inspiring.

A blog, if used correctly, is a very nice tool which enhances one's possibility to express one's ideas, or to do scientific outreach, as in my case. It may also be used for self-promotion at times (and the opportunity does not escape me, although I try to self-contain these outbursts). But a blog, if it attracts traffic, may become also a dangerous instrument, which must be handled with care.

The ways by which one may hurt other people, or hurt oneself, through careless blogging are not entirely obvious, and they are quite varied. Learning to play it safe is a long process, which usually progresses faster if the mistakes produce more damage. I think I know enough on this topic to be capable of putting together a list of advices. However, do not count me on providing too specific examples from my own five-year-long blogging experience -damage is proportional to exposure, and I do not wish add visibility to the pieces which caused trouble in the past. Furthermore, I have not yet managed to fail in every possible way myself... I am still learning, too!

Copyright infringements

This is easy to understand, although hard to avoid. The internet is a free market of information, and it is very tempting to assume that nobody cares if you steal a picture or make unauthorized use of text you find elsewhere; but in so doing you may be violating a copyright.

You may get away with it unharmed most of the time, because the internet is huge and nobody has the capability to track down the improper use that others do of one's intellectual property. But sometimes you get caught, and you risk being sued. The risk is minimal for a blog: usually one will just receive a firm request to remove the material; other times, the owner will just be happy with a link to his or her site. But there are plenty of corporate nutcases out there, and they usually have good lawyers: so be very careful of what you pick up and where you pick it up from.

Hurting collaborators' feelings

Somewhat connected to the previous item, but sometimes more on the personal level, is the issue of giving Caesar's what is Caesar's. It may seem redundant, pedantic, and even annoying to always give the proper credit to results or other material you post in your blog. But it is always necessary to do it, because people will resent not being recognized for their achievements.

The matter becomes only more slippery in case you are reporting something you contributed to: you think you have the right to say some result is "yours" because you worked at it, but if somebody else worked at it with you (it does not matter whether your contribution is smaller or larger than his or hers) they will feel directly offended by your negligence, as if you implied that the merit is yours alone. It occurred to me once: I called a plot "my plot" when comparing it to that of a different collaboration, but this did not fail to raise resentment in a colleague. And it was harder than I would have believed to explain I meant no harm.

Violating collaboration rules

Well, I do not know how specific of my field this is, but in large scientific collaborations there are very specific rules regulating what a collaborator can and cannot do when it comes to distributing restricted information. Now, regardless of how specific those rules are, there will always be a grey area where you will sometimes find yourself in your blogging activity. And be sure that in those instances your collaborators will not miss the chance to take a free hit at you. Trust me on this one, since I am like an old boxer in this respect.

Defamation

Verba volant, scripta manent. And in the internet, scripta manent even if you delete them: as you put some information on a web page, it gets metabolized and copied elsewhere. Before you know it, it's everywhere, and it will stay there forever. So be careful what you write: if you express your opinions on the homicide of somebody, for instance, you better be careful that you do not write anything that may be considered defamatory of the possible authors of the crime -even if they end up being convicted, they can still sue you.

Exposing oneself to being sued

There are other ways to expose yourself to the risk of the economic collapse which would follow a cause for defamation in Britain. Simon Singh knows something about it, and you may find a lot of information about his case. I have written myself against homeopathy and other pseudo-sciences in this blog, and sometimes I think that I really should stick to the physics -the worst that may happen in physics is to get flamed by Lubos, which is actually even entertaining.

Becoming a target

This sends shivers down my spine: I mentioned above that there are corporate nutcases in the web, but there are even more religious fundamentalists, and they are slightly more dangerous. I often write about the trouble of a secular society with religious institutions embedded in it, and the hard and long way we have to go to let reason be free from the conditioning of religions. In so doing, I sometimes let go with personal views which may inflame the occasional nutcase. This is quite dangerous, since if you get perceived as a enemy of this or that religion, a fundamentalist might end up taking you for a target. Not something you really crave for.

Violating people's privacy

This is a subtler issue than it looks. Of course, taking a picture of somebody and putting it online without his or her consent is a violation of privacy, even if you meant no harm and the picture was taken in the context of a physics seminar or other innocent settings. But there are other ways to err.

For instance, if you discuss something which happened to you, and you end up describing something of the people around you, it may still end up pissing them off. Just saying "I stepped out to smoke a cigarette with X" might incur in X's rage, if X's parents were unaware that he or she smoked. There are a number of ways to get wrong, and only one to do things right: speak as little as possible of the people around you, and do not give their names if you at all can.

Causing envy

This side-effect of the popularity of my blog is the one which disturbs me the most. If there is one sin I am totally free of (and I think it is the only one, since I score quite well in most of the others), that is envy. Maybe because I have a high self-esteem, or because I consider myself lucky and accomplished, or maybe just because it is not in my genes: I never envy somebody for what they have or achieve. Sure, I may curse your luck if you beat my hand at poker, or if the one nice girl at the bar decides to talk to you rather than to me; but that is not true envy, but rather simple disappointment for the turns of good fortune that life brings.

Instead, real envy is a terrible sickness, which devours people. And I really fear it in the people around me, because I know that even good friends can start hating you because of their envy of what you have or are.

Unfortunately, I have had to reckon with the fact that having a successful blog may bring people to envy you, despite the unlogical basis of the feeling: anybody can start a blog and try his or her fortunes in the mare magnum of the internet. I found out that what causes the most envy is the popularity and the attention that a blog owner receives, especially from journalists, who have long realized that they get information much more easily from bloggers than from the official channels -i.e. contacting the spokespersons of an experiment, or group conveners.


In summary...

In summary, blogging is a dangerous activity, especially if you get some readers. Be aware of the danger, read back what you wrote before posting, take different stands, make hypotheses of the various pitfalls. It looks like a waste of time, but it is actually time saved, especially if your lawyer does not live in your block.