Scott over at LazyCoder called me out in my comments for participating in Channel 9’s viral marketing campaign for On10.net, whatever that may be.

I have never met Scott in person, yet he challenges me about this. And this is exactly what I love about the blogosphere^1^ .NET blogging community. That despite never meeting, it really does feel like a community in which we know each other well enough through our writings and feel empowered to challenge each other if need be.

On his blog, he writes (and my ego leads me to believe this is a response to my post) a promise statement that everything he says will be genuine. This is a statement of his blog’s integrity or blogtegrity for short (sorry, but I like making up words). Think of blogtegrity as being kind of like journalistic integrity, but with much more integrity to the truth and not beholden to the government or large corporate interests (ooooh, I went there).

I love this and it gave me an idea to take it to the next step. For a while now on the top navigation of my blog I have had a link to my privacy statement. I have now added a link to my blogtegrity statement. It is a promise similar to Scott’s that I will maintain my Blogtegrity to the best of my ability.

As for me being a Microsoft Shill, here was my response…

I have a couple of friends I know personally (I knew them before they were assimilated into the borg) that work there who are very excited about the work they’ve been doing and told me about this, but couldn’t give me details.

This is just friends helping friends. I trust their judgement.

In a follow-up I mentioned

Ha ha. Oh ye of little faith.

Scott, after writing this post (Better Developers Through Diversity) critical of “Microsoft-Think” you’d still think I might be a Microsoft Shill? ;)

Till next time, Goodnight and Goodluck.

^1^ Apparently it is no longer de rigueur to use the term “blogosphere”. I have never personally had a problem with the word, despite the fact that it is ill-defined. The term “architecture” is ill defined as well but useful in discussing software.

How many words describing a community are well defined?

Meaning of words are hardly ever set in stone, they are an ongoing negotiation. Much like grammar. Otherwise meaning would never change to fit the changing context in which we live.