Nothing. You are required to do nothing special when you read content I’ve published or shared. You don’t have to comment but you are welcome to comment if you feel moved to do so. You don’t have to share it, although I encourage you to share if you find the content to be interesting. If someone has shared my content on another site you are welcome to comment, “like” or otherwise express your opinion if that alternate site provides the tools to do so. I may not see any of that activity on another site. That’s fine with me if it’s fine with you.

I felt compelled to state my preferences after engaging in a discussion over on FriendFeed about the etiquette of ‘liking’ items shared on that site. I understand the need for people to desire that all feedback on their content remains centralized as much as possible. Mark Krynsky, the person who originated the discussion, is using the very nice FriendFeed Comments plugin for WordPress (as I am) and would like kudos, comments, etc from FriendFeed captured back to his original post. Hence Mark’s request, which you can view on FriendFeed.

I don’t mind Mark making the request. What rubs me a bit wrong is the suggestion that the technique Mark suggests for his content is a matter of proper etiquette when using FriendFeed. That’s where we disagree. The technique for finding and clicking the appropriate link may be a simple one, but it could also be inconvenient for the reader to take the extra time to do it. So I’m not going to place any type of onus on the reader to take such an action. I’m just glad that anyone would share/like/comment on my content anywhere. It just doesn’t matter to me whether or not other people can see that information when they come to my blog.

Where, when and how the discussion around web content occurs is in the control of the community. I’m fine with that.