Blogging at BlueNC

Anybody can schedule a live-blog at BlueNC. If you aren't sure whether the community would be open to chatting with the person you have in mind, email or pm members of the front-page team or pose the question in an open thread. Also, check with Betsy or James to make sure the date is available.

Post a question thread 24-36 hours prior to the live-blog and if possible provide us with a photo of the person who will be live-blogging with us. Please be prepared to welcome the participant and help moderate the thread. We will be here to make sure things run as smoothly as possible and to make sure your thread is posted to the front page, highlighted in the appropriate top block and "stickied" up top during the live-blog.

BlueNC has a live-blog series that includes real-time community interviews with candidates, community and Party leaders and experts on topics of interest to the community. We also have community members who attend conventions, meetings, rallies or other events who will live-blog from the event so that the rest of the community can participate "virtually".

Astroturfing occurs when one or more users registers under multiple pseudonymous identities in order to use them to create a phony sense of grassroots support for or against a person, organization or issue.

We do not allow astroturfing at BlueNC. If or when we become aware that an astroturf-style campaign is under way, we reserve the right to block all user accounts involved and ban the IP address(es) of the individual(s) who created the multiple identities.

On the internet, sock puppets are alternate identities of one person that are used deceptively in an online community. We do not strictly prohibit multiple identities at BlueNC because there are valid reasons for some people to have a public identity and an anonymous or pseudonymous identity. We do however ban the creation of multiple accounts when they are being used to create a false sense of support for or against a person, organization or issue

There are really two sub-topics here: rights and etequitte.

RIGHTS: You should check into the license on any photos or graphics you want to include that you didn't create. If you don't find out otherwise, assume that someone owns all rights to the picture. If you don't have the right to use the image, you need to ask permission, or stay within the bounds of "fair use" (as described in some more detail in the FAQ about quoting other sources).

Clearly, copying an entire article or post from another site would be stealing. But quoting a phrase from a sentence in the same article is obviously not stealing. How much can you use? Well, somewhere in between.

"Fair use" is a legal doctrine related to copyright that all bloggers should know about. From the Wikipedia article linked above:

Every one of your posts that meets the recommended list criteria (as posted at bluenc.com/popular) will be on the recommended content page. The top three will be on the list that appears in the sidebar of all pages. Other than these, there is no limit.

There is no formal limit on this, but it would be unusual for this number to be very high. At the time this answer is being written, there is enough good content being posted to the site that it is impossible to get it all on the front page (and still have the front page be useful). And thanks to "track changes" and the recommended list, which both allow visitors to find good content that is not on the front page, there is only limited pressure to put everything good on the front page.

Aka, "how much blog would a blog hog slog if a blog hog could slog blog?"

It's entirely up to you. We have never needed to impose a limit.