The Internet And Responsibility

Many years ago, when I was a young lad, a wise man gave me the
best advice that anyone has ever given. "Richard", he told me,
"Never lose your integrity." I've followed that advice all of my
life, and it has served me better than just about anything else.
Here on the internet, we webmasters have a substantial amount of
power. Because of that power, we also carry a burden of
responsibility.

My wife has been very sick for several years. In fact, four
years ago she went into a coma for 5 days and came within
seconds of dying. It's a major league miracle that she survived.
Her recovery has been tough on her, both because of pain and
because she has trouble leaving the house. In order to make
things more tolerable for her, I gave her all of the tools she
needed to become a webmaster along with some training and help.

Now she has become a very good webmaster. She has created a site
about how she survived asthma (http://www.survivingasthma.com)
and another about how she survived diabetes
(http://www.survivingdiabetes.com). These sites explain her
experiences, give some advice from her heart and attempt to give
people hope.

Recently, she got an email from someone who just stumbled
across her site and was greatly moved. In fact, that person had
been contemplating suicide, read her site, and decided to live.
Another person was able to get help based upon my wife's advice. Many
others have sent in emails explaining how their lives were
changed or in a few cases even saved.

Wow. Now that's power. And along with that comes an incredible
responsibility.

Now, on one of my web sites I give people advice on the web, the
internet and other related topics. I give people insight on how
to create sites which look good, produce results and perform
their task.

I've received numerous emails from people explaining that I have
changed their life in many ways. Some people have had their
interest rekindled, others have learned things they didn't know.
And still others began to get an understanding of how to be
ethical on the internet. In fact, some people even said they've
learned that it's important to be ethical at all!

I humbly submit that we webmasters have a high responsibility to
the internet community.

- We need to communicate clearly
- We need to communicate accurately
- We must not tolerate unethical behaviors
- We must not promote scams and frauds
- We may make money, we must do it honestly
- We must respect other's opinions
- We must not flame, spam or engage in other unsocial behaviors

All of us need to understand how much power we have and use that
power in a responsible way.