The seven deadly sins of blogging!!

Clearswift produced a guide to the 7 Deadly Sins of Blogging. The full document can be read here, but I've summarised the main points below for those too lazy to click a link and read the additional information.

1st Deadly Sin Thinking you’re only talking to friends
The Golden Rule of blogging: never say anything on a blog that you wouldn’t happily say in public, that you can’t substantiate or that the organization would not permit. If in doubt: take it out!
2nd Deadly Sin Thinking your blog is personal, not an organizational matter
If you’re publishing a personal blog, make it clear on your home page that the views expressed in it are your own (and don’t mention your organization).
Whether personal or corporate, here are some of the big no-nos of blogging:
Sharing confidential information
Sharing business plans
Engaging in controversial speech
Sharing copyright-protected material
Sharing illegal or distasteful material

3rd Deadly Sin Linking to inappropriate material
It’s not just what you say in your blog, it’s what you link to. Linking to illegal material or inappropriate websites, videos or images is probably a breach of your policy – check it out if you’re unsure.

4th Deadly Sin Thinking you can erase mistakes
You can’t. Once you’ve published a blog entry, it’s out there for all to copy, share, link to and discuss. Of course, you can remove a post (and you should if you have any doubts), but you never know who has already copied it, distributed it or put it in their own blog.

5th Deadly Sin Ignoring comments to your blog entries
Your own blog entries may be completely responsible, but that doesn’t mean the people who post comments will be. Most bloggers experience unpleasant, inappropriate comments to their posts at some time. This can include racial or sexual abuse, harassment, personal attacks and links to pornography or illegal material.
You are responsible for all comments posted on your blog. Make sure you regularly monitor all comments, remove offensive or illegal ones, block irresponsible contributors and report any serious incident.
And of course, when you comment on other people’s blogs, the same rules of professionalism and security apply as they would on your own blog.

6th Deadly Sin Devouring resources
Simple text-based blogs are generally resource-friendly. But when you start to share recorded webcams, presentations, music, video and multimedia files, you may be eating valuable bandwidth, slowing down the network and using up storage space.

7th Deadly Sin Leaving yourself open to virus attack
A new generation of computer viruses, worms, Trojans and ‘malware’ (malicious computer code) has risen up to exploit the opportunities presented by blogging and other Web 2.0 services.

(With thanks to Duncan MacLeod for sourcing this information.