Pledge to My Readers

It is now 2014 and I’d like to take a moment to promise some specific things to you, my readers.

1. I pledge to write with honesty and to avoid exaggeration.
2. I pledge to be diligent as I research particular stories, especially by sharing my sources.  The internet has too many urban legends posing as truth.  Users of this medium also tend to be lax about telling where their ideas and information came from.  I will continue to use footnotes.
3. I pledge to live up to being a “thinking place” on the World Wide Web, as one of my readers called this blog.  I don’t want to add to the “ecosystem of interruption technologies”[1] by placing advertisements on these pages.  I will also avoid the overuse of hyperlinks, which distract readers from the main point. 
4. I pledge to shine the spotlight on God’s work, past and present.  When I share my opinions I will be careful that they are biblically informed rather than self-serving.

Please hold me to these pledges.  I value accountability.

---

[1] This term comes from blogger and science fiction writer Cory Doctorow who wrote an article called “Writing in an Age of Distraction” in the January 2009 issue of Locus magazine.  I found this quotation in Nicholas Carr’s 2009 book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains.