Here’s a drastic idea.

There’s been a meme floating around that seems to be catching steam — the idea of accountability in the sense of trust that bloggers have with their peers and their audience.  Yes, this is another branch of the Edelman fiasco.   The importance of disclosure and transparency. Pledges, badges, commitees, codes of ethics and round tables have all been … uh, tabled.

Many interesting discussions all around.

I think the easy thing is being outraged. The next easy thing is to decide why we’re outraged. I anticipate the next thing is that one, or several, groups, consortiums, rings, and/or posse’s will automagically form of their own accord to try and introduce a sense of self-policing amongst the blogosphere community.

But how can they do this?

A pledge is one thing, but what of the consequences? What happens when one or more members is found to be in violation of that code of ethics? An even trickier question is what happens when that violation is … well, disputable?
Clearly a mechanism for dispute resolution will need to be organized, but going back to the “easier” question … when a member violates a sense of ethics, of right-i-tude, as it were, what are the consequences?

How can you reinforce that sense of accountability? That knowledge that not only keeping up a sense of trust, transparency and truth is the RIGHT thing to do … but there are repercussions for going back on your pledge to your peers?

As an aside, when there are consequences, I think it gives an organization a sense of weight and purpose; without a metaphorical stick to effectively police itself gives membership meaning — because there is the potential for loss if you violate the purposes of the organization.

Well, there are a number of means to hold violating members accountable. Off the top of my head …

1. censure: Sort of a formal reprimand but without any lasting consequences

2. throwing members out: Excommunicating members from the group; a public shunning, if you will.

3. squeezing their google juice: Asking members to begin removing all inbound links to the offending party, from blog rolls to mentions in posts; if google juice is dependent on links, the theoretical affect is having the offender’s site to start dropping in Search Engine results.

4. google bombing: Going to far? Well, if its good enough for political machinations … you could ask members to start associate the offender with certain key phrases (”hypocrite”, “shill”?), or alternatively, have the candidates name associate with articles which describe how the party violated ethical principles of blogging.

Too strong? Not strong enough? I think part of the debate shouldn’t only be “should we create standards for ethics”, because we clearly should. The debate, I think, must also include what to do if bloggers violate those standards.

Because we already have an example of one agency that has.