John Battelle screwed up. He wrote an article about Mike Homer, CEO of Kontiki, which was published in Business 2.0. Homer then invested in Battelle's startup. And Battelle didn't mention the potential conflict of interest in the article.

Battelle sets a good example of how to handle mistakes online -- acknowledge and memorialize. I'm sure Battelle is embarassed about the whole thing and wishes it never happened. But does he flush the problem down the memory hole? No, he acknowledges the error and potential conflict in a note on the article itself, and writes a 400-word post to explain and memorialize the issue:

Now, Mike's investment was not directly connected to the column which ran in Business 2.0, coming after it was edited and sent to the magazine, but thanks to the lag time in publication of a monthly magazine, it sure looks bad. I should have realized this, but I didn't, at least not until it was too late for the magazine to note the apparent conflict in the column.

This was a stupid mistake on my part, and I am sorry about it. The magazine is running a clarification in this month's issue ...

I intend to be as transparent as I can afford to be about the company and its intentions over the next few months as I struggle to get it up and running. In other words, if you are going to make mistakes, may as well make them in public - they get corrected faster that way.

Anybody doing meaningful work will make mistakes. The Don't Be Evil way to handle mistakes is to acknowledge and memorialize - not try to bury them in the memory hole. In short, be transparent.