USING CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSES
You can see the about Licenses page of the Creative Commons web site (http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses) with four icons that represent how the different licenses work.
It’s a good idea to obtain a Creative Commons License for your blog content and then include information about that license in your blog’s footer.
DISCLOSING YOUR POLICIES
Creating some policies for your blog is a good way to set reader expectations and protect yourself from unlikely but possible legal entanglements.
. Comment policy : Describes what comments are inappropriate and how they’re moderated.
. Privacy policy : Describes what information is collected about visitors and how that information is used.
. Terms and conditions for site use page : Describes legal info about your blog, such as copyrights, availability, and warnings.
CREATING A COMMENT POLICY
The key to successfully balancing the process of publishing and deleting comments is to create a comment policy that states exactly what kind of comments will be deleted or edited before they’re published. By publishing a comment policy on your blog, you’re protecting yourself from accusations of controlling the conversation on your blog.
You may want to cover the following points in your comment policy for any sort of blog:
. Hateful or attacking language : You can include a rule that says comments that are hateful in nature or attack other visitors will be deleted.
. Spam : Be sure to include a statement that says all comments that are considered to be potential spam will be deleted.
. Editing and deleting : Include language that says you reserve the right to edit or delete all comments that are off-topic, offensive, or detract from
the blog community discussion.
The following are some other items you might want to cover in your comment policy, but these items depend more on the type of blog you have and want to maintain:
. Profanity : You can include a statement saying comments that include profanity will be edited to remove potentially offensive language.
. Links : You can include a statement warning visitors that comments containing more than a specific number of links (such as three links) will
automatically be detected as spam and deleted. (Typically, you can configure this setting within your blogging application).
WRITING A PRIVACY POLICY
It’s a good idea to include a privacy policy on your blog, particularly if you display ads. A privacy policy is intended to communicate to blog readers how their behavior on your blog (paths taken, links clicked, and so on) will be tracked and how any personal information provided on your blog (such as email addresses in comments or forms and so on) will be used. You can provide a link to your privacy policy in your blog’s footer. The policy can provide details about any information that’s collected about visitors and their behaviors on your blog, confirmation that you won’t sell any private information given on your blog, and acknowledgement that your site tracks visitor’s behavior through the use of an automated web tracking tool called cookies, your blog probably uses cookies for tracking.
DEVELOPING A TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF SITE USE PAGE
A Terms and conditions of site use page is the right place to provide disclaimers and warnings about your blog. It’s a way to protect yourself and your blog’s content from potential problems such as copyright infringement. A terms and conditions of site use page isn’t a requirement, but if you do decide to use one, a common place to link to it is in your blog’s footer.
Your blog’s terms and conditions of site use page can include the following elements:
. Copyright information : Include both your blog’s copy rights as well as information on who to contact if a reader finds content on your blog that he
believes violates copyright laws.
. Site availability : Include information that protects you if, for some reason, your blog is unavailable at any given moment.
. Warnings : Include warnings as appropriate. Eg: You might want to include a warning for visitors under 18 years of age if your blog uses profanity or
material offensive to children.
. Link responsibilities : Include language that tells readers you’re not responsible for the content on other sites that readers are led to through links on
your blog, nor are you responsible for the availability of those sites.