Lawyer and law professor blog content is peer reviewed
Law blog skeptics often argue that law blog content is dangerous because unlike legal articles, law reviews and treatises, a blog post is not peer reviewed. Bunk.
A blog post via the power of RSS is peer reviewed with more immediacy by knowledgeable authorities than print copy. In addition, the motivation for a blog author not to put out flawed copy is far greater. Who wants to be called out for being a 'dumb ass' on blogs and news sites across the net? Blogs citing your stupidity indexed at Google forever. How fun can it be to Google your name and see links to citing your mistakes?
Great example of this has been living itself this week with Robert Scoble's flawed attack on Google, SEO, and search engines in general. Knowledgeable and well respected people came down on him like a ton of bricks. It's all over the blogosphere. There's no question that the reputation of Scoble, someone held in high regard by a lot of folks for his Microsoft and Podtech blog work, took a major hit.
Dave Winer, discussing the Scoble situation, puts it succinctly, 'We fact check your ass.
- There are many of us.
- We care about the truth.
- We use colorful language.
As Winer says, 'this leads to a bunch of good blogger behavior.'
I write extensively on con men and their operations, and frequently run into my stuff on the search pages, sometimes as many as 8-10 entries in the first 3 pages of many categories. Delightful.
However, perhaps the worst book I ever wrote, of my 55 business books, copyright 1976, has surfaced some painful excerpts on the blogs. Embarrassing.
What straight internet search giveth, the blogs taketh away.