I think the issue of requirements is different from the actual practice of care. Australian ethics protocols ask us to think about how the other person could be affected by participating in the research and I think it’s not too hard to ask ourselves the same question when quoting bloggers (or anyone, really), rather than simply brushing off the ethical dimension as academic citation allows us to do.

In this case I have been really worrying a bit about what all this commentary does or means to the person at the heart of it: Paul-Olivier Dehaye. In human terms, where and how is he? Pat Lockley has written somewhere in the last couple of days that in the case of the disastrous Georgia Tech mooc, he reached out to the instructor because so much was being said about her, and she was indeed distressed by it.

Do we think Paul-Olivier Dehaye has forfeited the right to be treated generously by those of us also working in his profession? I hope not. But I don’t have a clear conscience myself here, as I was really cranky (and publicly so) at Steve Wheeler. And to be honest, that still bothers me.