I would like to get some guidelines from others on blog etiquette with respect to what is acceptable to write about and what may be taboo with people you encounter while travelling. Should you get permission from someone prior to telling their story in your blog? And what about pictures?

We have often been in awkward situations with this. One time, we met one young man and stayed with his family in a fairly poor country and wrote about him and his family in our blog. We stayed in touch with him via email, but didn't mention our blog as his family was quite poor and we wanted to remain as humble as we could. Later a friend of his found his picture on the internet (in our blog, probably after keying in his hometown) and he wrote back to us asking why we didn't mention this to him and would we please remove his picture and story from our blog. We did this at his request, but felt fairly lousy afterwards.

Sometimes we have mentioned our blog to folks, but often it was uncomfortable to do so with many of the locals we met in developing countries. We tried to remain as humble as we could while travelling and sometimes felt the blog might compromise this. On the other hand, we gave out our email addresses freely to the locals and always gave our blog address to other western travellers.

With internet access being universally available these days, you may be surprised who finds your blog. And many of the stories you want to share are from local folks who speak some english and are probably somewhat internet savvy.

And recommendations of blog do's and don'ts from those experienced in the world of journalism or experiences from others?

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Dave McMillan
http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/tstories/mcmillan/