The Buzz Manifesto

Written by a diverse group to make Buzz enjoyable for all!

This document was born by a comment in a Buzz post and with the help of several people it quickly developed into this Version 1.1.

In only nine months Google Buzz developed into a new form of social conversation with it's own rules.

This document reflects our collective experience.

The Authors:

Tracy Crawford, Laura Creed, Jeff Creed, Andy Robinson, Masha du Toit, Dr. Matthias Thorner, U-Ming Lee

1. About the need to following back-

Just because you follow me, doesn't mean I am required to follow you. Each of us have the right to choose who we follow. Some of us follow others simply based on the content they post or because we appreciate the comments they make on other's posts. Don't be offended if someone doesn't reciprocate when you follow them. Following a few heavy users tends to require a large time commitment in order to keep up with current posts so we may just be selective on adding others because we worry we will miss items of interest. It's also possible we didn't have an interest in the type of things you have posted in the past when we viewed your profile.

2. About responding wisely-

If someone posts something that offends you, consider your response carefully before posting. I recently saw someone lob personal insults at someone else simply because she did not agree with his conclusion of facts. Once you go there, there is no going back. You will forever be remembered on the Internet for the things you post. Another incident I ran into was someone getting hysterical about a subject related to the dislike of a certain animal. I've seen the same irrational behavior before but usually its centered around some perceived attack of children and above all "we must protect the children". Reason will never prevail with certain people and sometimes blocking them is just the best way to end being annoyed by them.

3. About being original-

You may not be followed because you post duplicate material that we see from someone we are already following. It's nothing personal and you shouldn't take it that way. You get followed when someone likes what you're posting and/or your comments (if you have them viewable).

4. About randomness-

Try to be random and mix things up. I know a lot of people have their primary area of topic (technical, celebs and entertainment, automotive, etc.) and that's fine. I follow a lot of those people because they also tend to be very smart and articulate and love to engage in discussions that are longer than 140 characters. Again, this is also related to 2 (above) when it comes to whom I follow. It's still not personal and this is only a suggestion. Read for while, find your own niche topic and you'll get quite a few people following you.

5. About collecting followers-

Buzz isn't high-school and it isn't a popularity contest. It’s not Facebook either, if you haven’t realized this already from the first one or two items in this list. If you are concerned when 1) someone you follow doesn't follow you back and/or 2) making the "Top Buzzers" list (or whatever it’s called this week) then you probably need to go outside and breathe for at least 3 minutes, and spend some time thinking about what really is important in your life.

6. About blocking as a last resort-

Taking anything personally on Buzz amounts to a metric amount of stupid. As said in rule 2 (I am paraphrasing here), think before you post. Firing back an equally hostile reply to something that offended you (or made you mad) only leads to a flame war and then we have to mute the thread. It pisses us off when we have to do that because a lot of the time the thread was an interesting discussion that the rest of us were engaged in and enjoying. It doesn’t make sense to also block someone just because you unfollow them. They might still be enjoying your posts. Also as mentioned, block if you must, but this should be a last resort.

7. About maturity-

Be an adult, even if you aren't actually one yet. There are several people in high-school that I follow because they are very smart, post interesting items and are articulate (see #4 above about twitter-length posts.) On the other hand make some decisions about teens and pre-teens that may follow you based on your content. Do you want to block them or interact with them? I watched some pretty mature content cross my stream occasionally from people that I didn’t expect it from!

8. About too many posts-

You may be great, funny and interesting. I may love reading your posts. If you post too often though, I may not follow you. I may read you sporadically, but I want more than one person’s posts in my buzz stream. If all you’re going to do is dump an overload slew of your cross-posted tweets, don’t. That’s one of the quickest ways to be unfollowed and keep people from following you.

9. About missing posts-

And above all else, bear in mind that the more people you follow, the faster your stream flows which leads to a more frequent missing of posts. It is for that reason alone that I personally only follow one fifth of the people following me. Again it is nothing personal and even if I am not following you at present, the six degrees of separation rule will ensure that our paths will meet at some stage or other along the way.

10. About no one commenting on your thread-

Don’t take it personally if no one replies in a thread you initiated. It’s quite possible that it got lost in the stream. It’s also possible that no one has anything to comment or say about it. You aren't going to read anything like "your post is old news, welcome to yesterday" or "that was posted 3 days ago, thanks for the breaking news" here. That might be the real reason you didn't get any replies, but the Buzz community is not snarky like that. If that's what you want, head over to Fark and have fun there. The corollary to this is that if you post a comment in someone else's thread like my examples, you are pretty well guaranteed not to have very many followers.

11. About what we follow-

It is worth remembering that people don’t follow you on buzz, they follow what you post. Seems like an obvious thing to say, but whether I follow you or not is no judgement on you personally, just a consequence of how busy I am and what I feel like reading at the moment.

12. About advertising-

Generally considered to be Spam and unwelcome. You will be blocked, reported and removed. Get thee away from Buzz when you drop advertising on other people’s posts. We spread the word to others.

13. About people-

Get to know the people that you follow on Buzz! Engage just a little bit. Know who is obsessed with Google or Apple, who can help with technical problems. Know who the avowed atheists are and don’t introduce them to those that are heavily religious. Know who the smartasses and comedians are (they are usually one and the same), they can make your bad day better with their irreverence.

14. About language-

Try to avoid sentence constructions that are too complicated or ambiguous. Consider carefully what the other person is saying and ask for confirmation if you are unsure. Many mistakes in communication occur when a native speaker of the English language writes to a non-native speaker, or between two non-native speakers. This is normally because the non-native speaker is translating from their native languages and grammatical mistakes can occur.

The Buzzer Checklist

- Be polite.

Would you say the same if you were face to face with the person you are writing to?

- Be concise and clear.

Vagueness and generalisations cause misunderstanding. Refer to specific examples and actual people – ideally things that you have personally experienced.

- Respond to the words on the page, not to what you believe the author's intention was.

Base your assumption on what has actually been written, rather than reacting to what you think the writer believes or means to say.

- Stay away from making blanket statements and referring to broad groups of people

(either positively or negatively). Blanket statements expose your prejudices but don't add useful information to a discussion.

- Be open minded.

You don’t have to agree with everybody out there. Having an open mind means that you are willing to listen to others and respond in ways that are not intended to silence them.

- Watch your emotional levels.

If you find yourself responding emotionally – even with the greatest of justification – step away from the keyboard. Allow yourself time to cool down before responding.

- Be aware of your motivation.

Why are you writing? Are you trying to prove that you are right, or to "win" an argument? Or do you care about persuading somebody or changing their mind about something? Look at what you have just written. Does it just serve to stamp your opinion, or have you added to the conversation?

- Accept the difference.

We all have different backgrounds and life experience. Most of us speak different languages, eat different food and pray to other gods. Most of the people who read your words are complete strangers to your culture. Tolerance is very important in such a multinational environment.

- Respond to the post not the person.

Sometimes a post may make you feel as if the person who posted it is an idiot. Take a minute and think about the fact that they have a different perspective and come from a different background. Remember to be polite and respond to the post itself and not attack the person.

- Consider what you are writing.

Would you want what you just posted read in court? In a newspaper? By your children? If this doesn’t concern you, by all means, write whatever you like no matter how offensive, sexual or crude. Buzz doesn’t censor and the Buzz community isn’t easily offended. But don’t expect many followers if this is your style. There’s also a strong possibility of being blocked if this shows up in threads where it is off-topic and / or unwarranted.

- Profanity usage.

Profanity isn’t necessarily condoned, but it’s not forbidden either. It doesn’t bother most people here, but use in moderation and with caution. This all depends on the people that are involved in the discussion, normally, nobody cares. To clarify, this does not mean that you are welcome to use gratuitous profanity nor go on a spree where every 4th word in your post is one of Carlin’s seven words. As mentioned above, Buzz does not censor anything (there are no built-in filters for profanity), as this is up to the person that initiates the thread. The initiator of a thread may delete any and all comments in the thread or entire thread itself if they wish.

If you wish to comment or review the Manifesto, can do it on the Publication Buzz for this article