The blogger CoC
A few days ago, Tim O’Reilly (of O’Reilly Media) wrote about the need for a blogging code of conduct, and composed a draft together with that guy from Wikipedia. I was hoping it’d be quietly ignored, but apparently the NY Times picked it up, and now so did Slashdot (apparently the NY Times carries more weight than O’Reilly’s blog, at Slashdot), so I guess this is big news now.
Personally, I think it’s just a predictable and childish knee-jerk reaction to that thing with that person overreacting because “she received death threats” in the form of anonymous comments on her blog.
Quite aside from that, it just wouldn’t work, since it would depend on people policing themselves, and people willing to do that aren’t the problem. That is, if you can even consider this a problem. I don’t.
More than just pointless, though, I think this sort of thing is actually harmful.
It’s being pushed by O’Reilly and that one guy, so clearly it’s going to carry some weight. They’ve stated that they would like technical blogs to implement it, presumably to grant them greater credibility. The obvious (and, I think, likely) slippery slope here would be that blog who don’t implement this CoC and effectively engage in self-censorship would not be considered credible.
O’Reilly is a big name in the open source (&c.) community, and while I’m not entirely sure he has this kind of leverage in that part of the blogosphere, it seems he might just gather enough support to do it. All with the best intentions, of course.
The main problem I have is that it would prevent anonymous comments. It’s an obvious knee-jerk to the Sierra incident, but it’s such a dangerous move.
What ever happened to just disemvoweling trolls and fucking forgetting about them? Get over it already.
echomikeromeo said,
April 11th, 2007 at 1:30 am
Some of it – such as the “no anonymous comments” – seems to be against the general spirit of the internet. One of the reasons it’s so wonderful is that it does allow one to express oneself without an identity.
taz said,
April 11th, 2007 at 3:18 am
Why do you feel she was overreacting? Anonymous comments are easy to ignore, but I think it is genuinely disturbing when someone goes to the extra length of making gross photo manips. I can see why refusing to leave her house might be melodramatic, but shutting down her blog and refusing to go to a blogging/tech conference seem fairly reasonable to me.
I also can’t readily agree with you that a Blogging Code of Conduct is harmful. I don’t see it becoming a marker of credibility, but just another way for bloggers to denote their desire to control and be responsible what goes on at their blog — or to denote that they don’t care, if they use that ‘free for all’ badge.
Interesting things to think about.
Cairnarvon said,
April 11th, 2007 at 3:28 am
Don’t ever visit 4chan, it will destroy your world~
Low-quality photoshops are about as hard to make as random threats. She freaked out over a random harmless troll. I get worse hate mail than that, and barely anyone reads my blog.
Maybe she just doesn’t understand the internet, but still. She seems to expect the benefits of celebrity without any of the downsides. If you intend to be a public person, especially on the internet, you have to develop a reasonably thick skin, and an ability to recognise a 14-year-old with too much free time for what it is.
If it were just O’Reilly, I’m pretty sure this code of conduct would stop at him (and maybe a handful of other people; there are a bunch who have already adopted it), but Jimbo Wales is so desperate to be a social engineer, and he has so many nublet fanboys, that I really don’t see this just dying quietly.
The me-too mentality is already pretty strong in the blogosphere, and it seems to increase exponentially as you increase Wikipedia and its related “projects”.
echomikeromeo said,
April 11th, 2007 at 6:09 am
Isn’t it amazing how the phrase “nublet fanboys” didn’t exist 10 years ago?
saythings said,
April 11th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
Or “disemvowelling”?
I agree with Cairn though; The people who are already “self-policing” aren’t the ones that are the problem.
Not to be too black and white about it, but people generally either have social responsibility or they don’t. Some CoC isn’t going to change that.
Reminds me of the CCA