I’m a bit of a sucker for graciousness. And few human qualities fill me with greater respect than a person’s ability to admit that one has made a mistake. Rudeness, crassness, cynicism, defensiveness, unnecessary displays of aggression — all these I can find examples of simply by turning on the television or radio, walking down the street, entering a store or calling the customer service department of the average local enterprise; and I know that if I were to review my own behaviour on any given day I’d find traces of them as well. I realise too that, quite unconsciously — and perhaps selfishly — I have surrounded myself with gracious people: I have few friends whom I do not admire for the decency and grace with which they treat those around them, not to mention their willingness to engage in ruthless self-scrutiny when necessary.

And now let me add to this list one of my blogging colleagues, Guyana Media Critic.

GMC’s Living Guyana is one of the blogs I keep a close eye on, both for Global Voices purposes and because his scathing critiques of the Guyanese media are fascinating, funny and, it would appear, extremely effective. I’m told that his blog has triggered serious changes in the way the Guyanese media operates. In maintaining Living Guyana, I am also told, GMC has put himself at great personal risk.

A few days ago, however, GMC posted a photo of a koker (or sluice-gate) that looked suspiciously familiar. It looked identical, in fact, to this photo from my Flickr page. So I dropped GMC a line reminding him that my Flickr photos bore a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 license, which meant he was free to use them once they were attributed clearly to their owner.

A day or two later I received an e-mail from a deeply contrite GMC calling the whole thing “a sorry episode” and explaining about the computer crash which caused the mix-up. To ensure complete transparency, GMC also flagellated himself publicly for his error, exposing himself, in the process, to the possibility of ridicule and accusations of not practising what he preaches.

The cynics among us will probably say that I’m writing about this episode because it casts me in the role of victor and because, along with the sackcloth and ashes, GMC’s blog post also included some very flattering words. Or maybe that GMC only posted a public apology because he didn’t trust me not to ridicule him publicly.

I won’t lie and say I dislike winning, but I hope you’ll believe me when I say that, for me, the truly awesome feature of this story has to do with GMC’s own graciousness and willingness to subject himself to his own standards. I’ll be bearing his example in mind when I make my next faux pas — and when I finally get around to developing some standards of my own.