I just wanted to make this public: Your friendly neighborhood Maniac isn’t perfect.

You may have noticed a hubbub around Zenbu Kimi no Sei Da over the last few days. Before that story broke the other night, I had already seen some tweets mentioning some trouble with the group, friends asking friends, that sort of thing. Despite definitely not being a journalist, I still try to give credit where it’s due and at least refer directly to where I first saw or heard a thing. In that spirit, the original version of the post on the news from Zenkimi included an embedded tweet from a reader.

That person took exception, I apologized and revised the whole thing (additional info was flowing in by then, anyway), and it would/could have been water under the bridge. But I’ve been annoyed with the whole episode ever since, so I just want to make this public.

This is a little complicated because I’m not sure that the person in question even wants to be IDed publicly, and I’d just as soon not be more of a jerk, so HI PERSON, YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE AND I’M STILL SORRY.

It goes like this: If I were a journalist, there’s a good chance that I’d stand by using the tweet originally. Things that are tweeted from unprotected accounts are completely public, after all, and there’s no presumption of privacy or privilege — it’s like calling out to a friend in public.

But just because something passes a basic ethical test doesn’t make it a right thing to do, especially when there’s a righter thing to do, or at least a more respectful thing to do. Person pointed out that I should have asked to use the tweet, and I should have — I wanted to publish quickly and just went with it without considering the person at the source.

And, more to the point, I’m not a journalist! For a lot of people, that means not worrying about pesky things like respect or ethics or whatever, but I’m looking at it differently: I’m running what I want to be a community site, where readers and other idol fans and even other music fans can get information and interact and learn stuff and call me names and things and feel comfortable doing so; to that end, I need to be as respectful of people in the community as I demand of people in the community.

So, again, Person, I’m sorry for jumping the gun and using your message without your permission, and I’ll try to be more cognizant and attentive in the future.

Now let’s get back to our regularly scheduled programming.