EFF Issues Guide to Anonymous Blogging

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has posted a
set of blogging guidelines. This
is a topic we have been kicking around at the Berkman
Blogger’s Meetings. The
EFF Guidelines are more accurately a guide to how to blog without losing
your job; in other words, how to blog anonymously.

This is an extremely useful and important topic.  Who knows, if
we had followed the advice contained in this guide the Dowbrigade might
by now have been named to a powerful position in the Bush administration,
Ambassador to Bhutan, perhaps, or Sub secretary of State for Ethnobotany.
Who knows how many lucrative opportunities have flown the coop when potential
employers Googled Dowbrigade after searching for our authors on-line
CV. Which links to the blog, of course, obviating any serious attempt
at anonymity.

Blogs are like personal telephone calls crossed with newspapers. They’re
the perfect tool for sharing your favorite chocolate mousse recipe
with friends–or for upholding the basic tenets of democracy by letting
the public know that a corrupt government official has been paying
off your boss.

If you blog, there are no guarantees you’ll attract a readership of thousands.
But at least a few readers will find your blog, and they may be the people you’d
least want or expect. These include potential or current employers, coworkers,
and professional colleagues; your neighbors; your spouse or partner; your family;
and anyone else curious enough to type your name, email address or screen name
into Google or Feedster and click a few links.

We found out about the EFF guidelines from the ed-tech
insider, an excellent
source for blogging in education news, where Tom Hoffman notes: "I
have very mixed feelings about teachers blogging anonymously about their
classroom experiences. The seems to be becoming standard operating procedure
on the web in the past year."

Oh, yeah? The Dowbrigade has assiduously avoided blogging about specific
students during the past year.  When forced to, by circumstance,
we would resort to clever subterfuge like "I wanted to strangle that
spoiled brat from a Central American country with a canal." Can’t be
too careful, or too clever. We do feel a bit more confident writing about
EX-students, and the further they get from our active tutelage the less
inhibited we feel. Don’t worry Ricardo, we’ll send that money soon.

from Electronic
Frontier Foundation