I'm throwing the debate open a bit because one of the undertones I see repeated throughout this thread I find very disturbing. It seems to me that some of the writers Im not throwing stones at anyone are coming at the debate with the attitude that researchers are in a special place verses regular people who may have access to the subjects or their artifacts. When framing new research, I believe that one of the first questions I must ask myself as a social scientist is - am I in a different position than anyone else who the subject would interact with or would have access to the data I will need to use for this study? Obviously if I will be using experimental methodology the answer is YES in all caps all the time. The answer is yes here because no one else would have the same data I have created through the research. The answer to the question falls along a continuum to, and beyond, purely qualitative methodologies that may place the researcher in both a usual and unique position in relationship to the subject and the data or may place the researcher as yet another viewer, albeit with special properties and considerations but still they are just another member of the crowd. I find it hard to imagine under what conditions, a researcher viewing a blog and analyzing the presentation of the material in the blog, their viewing would be unethical. While anyone else who stumbled onto the blog and linked to it, or talked to their social network about it would be ethical. When I write about teen blogs, I use the names given to the blogs by the authors so that proper attribution of creative work can be given. I write for and publish in academic journals and books, as such I am not exposing the authors creative work to a broader audience, rather I am exposing the work to a more focused subset of the audience they already have anyone worldwide with access to the internet. The risks associated with my research are minimal, not nonexistent, though in truth the risk level is pretty close to zero. Now we can structure lots of what-ifs that would make any particular webpage author in danger from my work. Personally, I do work through such scenarios in my developmental process before I begin a new project, and I review them regularly throughout the process. However, it is impossible to get a risk level down to absolute zero if that is the goal then all research must stop as well as all plane flights, skateboarding, and football since far more people are harmed in these activities than in most social science research. I sincerely think its time to discuss what listserv authors mean by ethical and human subject rather than using the terms without a definition, when definitions are so clearly differing. We are at cross-purposes as this thread has developed can we get it back on track by looking at the underlying beliefs and structures that are clearly motivating responses? Lois Ann Scheidt Doctoral Student - School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University, Bloomington IN USA Adjunct Instructor - School of Informatics, IUPUI, Indianapolis IN USA and IUPUC, Columbus IN USA Webpage: http://www.loisscheidt.com Blog: http://www.professional-lurker.com