Blogosophy

The Constitution of The Madrigal Maniac.

1. Journalism: Let me first state, I am not a journalist. This is a personal blog that comments on the events defining the City of Columbus, the State of Ohio, the USA, and the international community. These are my opinions and do not reflect the beliefs of any organization I may be associated with.

2. Transparency: Don’t pretend to be someone you are not. If you have a relationship with someone or something you are commenting on, you need to reveal it in your post. In other words, readers should know where you are coming from.

3. Integrity: Have the facts to back up what you say. Citing where you found your sources of information help here. If you say Bill O’Reilly is actually the illegitimate son of Red Skelton … I want to see some proof.

4. Try to be Nice: I want people to be passionate. But I won’t tolerate racism, homophobia, xenophobia, sexism, or too much crude language. I suppose a well placed f-bomb can be useful now and then. However, if you continually comment that Rush Limbaugh is a worthless f*%cking douche bag, you should probably try and improve your vocabulary. Not that you wouldn’t be correct. But people will focus on the f*%king douche bag part and not the part that is actually correct. That he is worthless.

Note: Your initial comment will need to be approved. Once you have a comment approved you should be able to post in real time. If not, let me know.

5. Advertising: Not a big fan. Especially as practiced by corporate America. But it is a part of life and the blogoshpere. There are probably three types of advertisements. The first is the simple link. This is usually to a web site that further enhances the understanding of the post. Second, are those who generally are causes or blogs I support such as the Brady Center. Third are paid advertisements which I currently use, but haven’t made a dime off of. I have a good friend whose trying to teach me how to monetize my site and I know I could do it. Although, evidently I’m monetarily web challenged. It just seems weird to me that I would be pushing buttons on a computer to make money. Shouldn’t Americans be physically building something?

6. Guest Posts: I am willing to accept articles for guest posting. You must follow the Madrigal Maniac policy of “try to be nice.” If you absolutely can’t, at least make it witty.

7. Spam: Don’t do it. WordPress has a very good filtering program called Akismet. So don’t try it. You’ll just be wasting your time.

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