Until I get a confirmation, I won’t say which radio station I’ll be on but I will be on-air talking about blogs and the blog awards. Seems though it is the usual theme of “wikipedia and blogs are too free. People can make up facts that are not substantiated. They need to be regulated.” We always fear something we don’t understand I guess. For Irish bloggers we still come under the very restrictive libel laws. Bernard from Running With Bulls knows all about that. Digital Rights Ireland’s summary of Libel laws gives a good grounding on how the accused really has a large mountain to climb to defend what they say. Far easier to captitulate and recant.
Surely there is in effect an environment of over-regulation if you are Irish based? Anyway, there is enough self-regulation in the bloggersphere where if you say something wrong you’ll have half a dozen people pointing out this error and if you refuse to accept it they’ll blog it themselves and point it out. Besides, reasonable people get listened to more than hotheads. Hotheads get more attention, which is not the same as being listened to and being taken seriously.
There’s plenty of good arguments about wikipedia too. To me it is a piece of coal that will eventually become a diamond. You start off with the coal, dirty and dark and rough and through polishing from various people, it becomes a rock-solid gem.
I think they might be inviting other bloggers on too.