Should someone be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination, because of what they write on their blogs or social networking pages on their own time?

It’s getting to be a more commonly asked question these days.

Recently, a North Carolina school teacher found herself with a lot of explaining to do after someone pointed out to her superiors that her Facebook page contained a write-up that the teacher had supposedly written herself.  Her bosses weren’t pleased by what they found:

“Superintendent Peter Gorman has recommended firing a teacher who listed “teaching chitlins in the ghetto of Charlotte” as one of her activities and drinking as one of her hobbies.

“In her ‘About Me’ section she wrote: ‘I am teaching in the most ghetto school in Charlotte.’”

That’s not exactly the kind of comment that would do well to endear a teacher to her students.  But still, it’s America, and there’s supposed to be Freedom of Speech, right?

Or is it?

No one is proposing, from what I can tell, that a teacher doesn’t have the right to post such things.  But with exercising that right comes consequences, and that should mean that the right bears responsibility.

What do you think?  Should such comments be enough to kick a teacher to the curb, or should the school and any concerned parents just look the other way and pretend it’s no big deal?  How would you feel if it were your child’s teacher?

Back in December of 2005, after nearly two years of blogging, I made a decision that got me in a little hot water with some of my regular readers:  I decided to move my blog from AOL, where it had been since I first launched it in February, 2004, to Blogger.  (I’m now using Wordpress at my own site, for those of you who read via a feed reader.)

I made the decision because of what was a series of poor examples of customer service from AOL itself, culminating in the appearance of banner ads that we bloggers had absolutely no control over.  We weren’t even told that we were going to have them until they appeared.  It made some of us angry.  So we packed up and left.

And some of the people who had been fairly loyal readers in “J-Land,” AOL’s special name for its little blogging community, really let those of us who were leaving hold it.  We were traitors.  We were the scum of the earth.  We were fair-weather friends who were being childish and over-reacting.

More than one person tossed a few “good riddances” our way.  Some seemed to take great pleasure in stating that they’d never set their virtual foot in Blogger, where a lot of us ended up.

These angry people — who were going to let their feelings be known, a courtesy they refused us — decided they were going to make AOL J-Land better than it had ever been.  One day, they pledged, beating on their chests, J-Land would never even miss those of us who had been there from the start or nearly the start.  And they accused us of acting like we were the ones in “junior high.”

Fast forward to present day, as many AOL J-Landers are just learning some surprising news, despite claims that everyone should have, but apparently didn’t, receive email notification of a major change:  As of November 1, 2008, AOL J-Land will be no more.  AOL is shutting down (their word for it is “sunsetting,” if you can believe that!) its journals community and several other services because, apparently, they weren’t generating enough income.  And, those journal writers who opt-in will can their journals’ contents transferred to — wait for it — Blogger.

No, really.  I am not making this up.

Had we stayed put in J-Land, aggravation about AOL’s cavalier treatment of us aside, we might have seen more red flags go up a while back when novelist John Scalzi, who had been blogging professionally for AOL for some time, was suddenly out the door.  Granted, he made it clear that it was a mutual decision at the time; but the fact that AOL would even consider dropping their most popular blogger, a writer who motivated countless discussions on his blog and through posts on other blogs, and served as the host of a kind of community square, spoke volumes.

The sad thing is that the majority of folks who are in J-Land are genuinely nice people.  They’re incredibly supportive of each other.  One blogger does a post about a death in the family or a medical crisis, for example, and they’ll receive dozens of comments of condolence or prayer in no time.  And there are some long-time readers of this blog who never for a moment stooped to the level of the childish “our way or the highway” types who were more interested in controlling what other people did than worrying about the quality of the community.  They got it:  they understood that a blogger’s value has nothing — absolutely nothing — to do with the software that runs the mechanics of the webpage itself.  It’s about the person, not where that person writes.

But like many problematic factions, the squeaky wheels were pretty loud.  Much louder, unfortunately, than the good people who tried to state what should have been obvious in a valiant effort to keep unity afloat.

Another sad thing is that there were several notable bloggers in J-Land who have since passed away.  Since they’re no longer around to “opt-in” to a transfer, blogs like those started by Frank or Pam will suddenly just cease to exist.  Sorry, says AOL; it’s not their problem.

I really feel bad for the good people who weighed their options and felt that staying with AOL was their best option.  I hope they’ll find a better place to blog and will continue to share their unique voices with the rest of us.  I’ve always believed that blogging gives us all a great way to see other people’s perspectives and help us all think about things in ways we might never have considered before.  They deserve much better than to find they no longer have a place in the blogosphere to call home.

As for those venomous territorial bloggers who were so quick to write us off as being unworthy of their attention, I wonder how they now feel about being treated as though they’re the “deadwood.”  Not exactly a happy place to be, is it?

And I’m willing to say something they refused to say when they had the chance:  even those folks deserve better treatment than that.

I made a modification of the typeface here at Patrick’s Place.  The body type is now a closer match to the new logo.  Granted, it’s not the same typeface, but it looks closer than what I had before.

But what do you think:  is this typeface still as easy to read?  Does it give you a headache?  Or does it make the blog look a little crisper and cleaner?

Leave me a comment and let me know what you think!

When it comes to writing, I hate rough drafts. I’d like to toil over the writing, and make it as good as I can the first time, even if my way takes five times longer than just getting your ideas down, setting it aside for a little while, then going back and redoing it. A lot of the time when I do go back, even a piece that I felt was “finished” really isn’t. But that still doesn’t change my preference to get it right the first time…or at least, as right as I can be.

When it comes to blogging, drafts can be a bit dangerous. I’ll admit that for about five or six of the posts in this Arch-a-thon, I raided the drafts section of my blog where there are some unfinished posts I’d started then just didn’t finish for whatever reason. A few of the drafts I had on standby dated back more than a year, and a good many of them were just simple links to posts or news items I meant to write about. Some day. But any piece that far back is likely no longer relevant, so I decided to just toss them.

In cleaning out the old “drafts” section, I found a piece titled, “Taking Two.” Here’s what it said:

“This little piece has no elaborate set-up and requires no real explanation, other than to say that this is a little piece of wisdom that I learned a long time ago and have been reminded of nearly constantly ever since.”

That’s it. That’s all I wrote.

No hint of what that piece of wisdom might possibly be. No clue.

I’ve got nothing.

One of these days, I might just remember whatever piece of wisdom I was going to write about: I certainly made it sound like it was one that I think of often enough that it shouldn’t be hard to pick out. Until then, your guess is as good as mine.

No, this isn’t some lame attempt just to get some comments:  actually, I just want to make sure that the latest spam-catcher that I installed in the background isn’t blocking anyone.  So please say hello.  Comment moderation is still on, so your comment won’t necessarily appear immediately, but you should get a notice that your comment is in the moderation queue.

By the way, ever notice how strange the word queue looks spelled out?  I had to do a double-take just to make sure I hadn’t spelled it wrong.

Strange language, English.

UPDATE:  Because of comment spammers, I’m closing comments for this particular post.  Thanks to those who were willing to help me test out comment moderation.  Now that it’s clear that it is working, there’s no need to keep this one open.

I now have a third layer of spam protection up and running.  This newest layer is supposed to determine whether a “spambot” is attempting to imitate a real live human being.  I’ve run a few test comments to make sure that “normal” comments are getting through, and I haven’t encountered any problems, yet.

The second layer of spam protection has a growing list of buzzwords that will prompt a Captcha test — one of those annoying “Type these letters” tests that forces you to transcribe words from a graphic — to make sure you’re really you.  I apologize if you get hit with one of those, but I am trying to hit as many of the spambots’ keywords as I can while still trying to make it easy for you to get through without any problem.

Yesterday’s Saturday Six didn’t seem to be affected, but if you post a comment and it won’t let you through, please click the Contact tab at the top of the header and send me a quick private message to let me know.

I’ve been quietly battling a surge in spam behind the scenes here at Patrick’s Place.  Many of the spam comments (that you never see because of two layers of comment moderation) come from the same email address, which I am working on blocking completely.

The target URL of about half of them lately has been a dating site for Christians.  I’m not going to say which one, of course, because that’s what the spammers want.  No dice.

Ironically, one of the spam comments said something about gay dating, and the link was to the same site.  That’s going a long way to make a point.

The actual site, in case you were suddenly wondering, in no way deals with anything gay…which is a little odd when you think about it:  there are gay Christians in the world.

If I may borrow that all-too-familiar phrase, what would Jesus do when it comes to spam?  I don’t think he’d be a spammer:  he’d be a commenter who’d say who he was and what he wanted without wasting time sending thousands of little messages that point to someone else’s site.  And I suspect if Christ had his own blog, he’d have a spam filter like you couldn’t imagine.

UPDATE:  I’m closing comments on this particular post, because other dating sites keep leaving spam comments and I’m tired of dealing with them.

Olive Riley found her blog “mind-boggling,” her great grandson says. It allowed her to make friends from around the world and maintain contact with people who were fascinated by her stories of growing up in the early 1900s.

“She enjoyed the notoriety — it kept her mind fresh,” he told a news agency.

And fresh it certainly seemed to be. She recalled in clear detail life at the turn of the century — the last one, that is. Born in 1899, (can you imagine?!?) she shared her thoughts about modern life and living through two world wars and raising three children. Though her mind remained sharp, she didn’t actually type up her blog, The Life of Riley. Her vision wouldn’t allow her to do the typing, but she had help in getting her stories transcribed.

“You 21st century people live a different life than the one I lived as a youngster in the early 1900s,” she wrote in a recent post about how laundry was done by hand. Her very first post of slightly more than 70 described a visit to see relatives she hadn’t seen in 80 years, and she jokes of being the target of too much attention from well-wishing relatives went so far as to tie a bell on her walker so they would know if she got up in the middle of the night:

“We’ll, I was so sick of that bell, that one night I got th idea of stuffing a sock in it so I’d have some peace and quiet. But you know, when I got to the bathroom, I must have bumped something because that bell rang again and there they all were ‘Nana’s up! Nana’s up!’ And then it was the landing instructions. ‘Back you go now, Nana, lower yerself down, now. That’s the spot’ O Gawd.”

Another recent post encouraged her readers to sing happy songs, advice Riley herself took to heart in one of her final YouTube videos:

If we ever make it to 108, we’d be lucky to be as sharp as she is.  The same can be said if we make it even to 88!

I’m sorry I missed Olive.  I’d have loved to leave her a comment that she might have heard read to her by one of her caregivers.  I hope she’s still looking down here seeing what people who’ve just now found her have to say.

Online gossip columnist Perez Hilton is being sued by an Ohio woman for $25 million after he published a slur-filled email she sent him, and the suit stands as a reminder to what ought to be basic common sense.

Apparently, Hilton received an email from his “victim” that contained anti-gay slurs, and attacked both Hilton and actress Angelina Jolie.  Hilton, whose website lists a privacy policy that states he will not release private information of users who post comments on his site, then published the email in its entirety…including the woman’s email address.  Unfortunately, the woman used her work email, so her employer, a senior living center, was also identified.

Hilton’s fans then ran amok, sending hate mail to the emailer and her employer, and the emailer quickly found herself terminated.

There’s an old saying that you should never send anything in an email that you wouldn’t mind being published in a newspaper.  And most places of business have very clear policies about the use of company computers and internet time.

It would never even occur to me to send such an email from my work email address.  I can’t believe that others wouldn’t think twice about doing so.

What do you think:  should she collect?

I had gotten behind on my Blogroll.  Admittedly, I was shocked at exactly how behind I had gotten.  Probably half of the Blogroll that appeared under the links tab (until I moved them to the sidebar and placed other things on the Links page) were pointing to blogs that either hadn’t been touched in more than six months or had been deleted completely.

Where do bloggers go when they stop blogging?  Especially if they have developed any kind of following?  A few did make it clear in a final post that it was the final post.  But I noticed that the majority of stifled blogs just seemed to stop cold without warning.  Did something happen to the people?  Was there some catastrophe in their personal lives that forced them out of regular blogging?

Did they just lose interest so completely that they didn’t even find themselves able to work up enough will to just say goodbye?

Could they have been so convinced that nobody — not one single person — was interested enough in what they had to say that it was an exercise in futility?

It’s kind of sad in a way, as if “the little guy” suddenly had a shining moment of clarity in which he realized he was only “the little guy,” would never be “the big guy” and just retreated.

Or maybe that didn’t have anything to do with it at all.

Who knows?  Only those bloggers, I guess, who chose not to explain.

In any case, the updated Blogroll is now on the sidebar, where it belongs, and will likely be updated much more frequently now that I will actually be seeing it every day.  If you notice any bad links, please click the Contact tab at the top of the page and let me know.  Same procedure if you’d like to be linked.

I spent entirely too much time working on this blog on Sunday, but I think I am fairly satisfied with the result.

I’ve managed — finally, after many failed tests — to add a feature called “Asides.”  They’re miniposts that don’t warrant a full-fledged post, but maybe something along the lines of a footnote.  The last two posts, in fact, are examples.  They’re very short, and they don’t even get the fancy date graphic.  But if you click on the title, they will appear individually as a full post and you can still comment.

Next, I added one of those nifty tag clouds.  I don’t know if I’m going to keep it or not, but I might.  It’s midway down the sidebar for now.  The traditional alphabetical category listing is further down if you prefer that.

Then, there’s another new feature in the sidebar called “Top Commentators.”  It tracks who has left the most comments over the past week.  Not that I am trying to encourage some kind of comment race, but hey, a comment is a comment.  We all like them, right?

And speaking of comments, the new secondary spam filter continues to do wonders.  Blogging life, at the moment, is good.  So I’m going to stop before I screw something up.

Let me know what you think…what you like, don’t like, and what you might like to see in the future.