Blog

Blogging Best Practices


A blog (short for web log) is a personal journal that is frequently updated and intended for public consumption. Essential characteristics of the Yale Class of 1980 blog are its journal form, informal style, and content generated by classmates that reflects the personality of the class.

Think of the Blog as your virtual dining hall. You can use the class website to restart a 21st century version of the countless hours you may have lingered in your residential college dining hall as an undergraduate, bantering with your classmates.

Here are some best practices to keep in mind as you start to blog:

1. Civility. We expect the discussion, while passionate, will remain respectful-- no curse words, personal inflammatory comments and the like. The dining hall metaphor holds here-- if you wouldn't say it that way as an undergraduate, certainly don't say it that way now.

2. Private creation, public consumption. Remember that although posting is limited to class members, the material that you post will be viewable by anyone in the public who happens upon the Class website.

3. Use the interactivity of the medium. We've built this blog with some interactive features. You can upload a photograph in your posting. You can include a link to material available elsewhere on the web (visitors should cut and paste the link into the address line of their browser).

4. Expect changes. Blog content can change as rapidly as today's global, wired information economy changes.

5. Connect with your class. The Class of 1980 continues to be very active, well past our date of graduation. Many class leaders have opened new friendships, and learned other points of view, from classmates whom they did not know while undergraduates. So don't wait until reunion to connect with your Yale classmates-- they are even more interesting, passionate and intelligent than they were during our time together in New Haven.

6. Give us feedback. The Class website committee is open to feedback so we can continue to revise and improve the blog, and the site.

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