Blawging and scholarship

As already noted at Moneylaw and elsewhere, a broad discussion of internet interactions has broken out across the blawgosphere.  Concerns about bullying, internet trolls, attribution, and other subjects have clearly developed along with the development of law blogs.

Part of the issue is the disjuncture between the two forms of interaction many us law profs now engage in.  When publishing articles and essays, we engage in a medium which involves long delays, imposes strict rules (for example, about attribution through footnotes), and requires many levels of review.  The second form of scholarly interaction, the developing blawgosphere, is the photo-negative of this process-- it is fast, generally unrestricted, and involves no review in many cases.  Those of us with a foot in each medium find ourselves in a wider stance than Larry Craig. 

In time, I suspect, the two forms of interaction will both move towards the middle, and that may be for the best in that it will sand off the least appealing aspects of each.

-- Mark Osler