Slashdot Mirror
Bloggers Propose Code of Conduct
akintayo writes "The New York Times reports that in response to the recent brouhaha, some technology bloggers have suggested raising the level of civility on tech blogs by implementing a code of conduct. Kathy Sierra, a technology blogger and friend of O'Reilly was subjected to threats and insults from readers and other bloggers. In partial response, O'Reilly and others have proposed a code of conduct which could include restrictions like the outlawing of anonymous accounts."
Jeff Jarvis takes it apart better than I could.
This flies in the face of science.
Godwin's Law was always there
I have never understood the need for anonymous posting anyway!
...But THAT is funny. Please, guys, you're killing me
Faith: n. -- That human impulse that drives them to steal appliances when the power goes out
"Mr. O'Reilly said the guidelines were not about censorship. "That is one of the mistakes a lot of people make -- believing that uncensored speech is the most free, when in fact, managed civil dialogue is actually the freer speech," he said."
really? "managed dialogue", eh? hmmm...
Coles Notes Summary:
It won't work because the internet can't be policed, and those who would self-police aren't the problem anyway.
As an aside, while the writer in your link has a good point, he could have made it in a paragraph. Stretching it out for three pages is sheer pedantry.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
From the slashdot summary:
From TFA:
Apparently, this was only recently added by an anonymous prankster, but it shows why it's important to link to the specific revision of a wiki page you're discussing in addition to the "latest trunk"...
In any case, I'm not sure how requiring the use of a valid email address is going to help. Anyone who wants to make a threatening or otherwise comment will just use dodgeit or a similar service to do so - you could ban them, I suppose, but good luck to you finding them all. And even if you do manage to, trolls will just create hotmail.com addresses; sure, you could ban hotmail as well (although you'd probably already be hurting some legitimate contributors that way), but then, trolls would use simply move to other free services. Do you need an alternate email address to sign up for Google Mail, Yahoo or so? I'm not sure, but even if you do, a troll could just use a hotmail.com address (or, for that matter, a dodgeit address or so) to create a GMail address, for instance. Ultimately, requiring valid email addresses (and I'm assuming you actually mean working ones, not just well-formed addresses, as some sites do) will not hurt trolls; it will make their job more difficult, but anybody who's already wasting his life on something as idiotic, useless and unproductive as trolling likely won't care much.
Of course, this is symptomatic of a bigger problem: a code of conduct, by definition, is a convention that is voluntarily followed - but those that agree to follow it are precisely those who're not a problem, anyway, and for whom a code of conduct is wholly unnecessary. The trolls, on the other hand, will simply disregard any aspect of it that is not guarded by technological measures.
If you really want to weed out trolling, the best idea is to a) delete obvious troll comments; b) possibly require approval for comments prior to them being published (I personally don't think that this is throwing out the baby with the bathwater, but it would solve the problem, at least); or c) implement a moderation system like Slashdot's - if you have a sufficient userbase where the trolls are outnumbered by the "good" folks, it should work quite well. Oh yeah, and in any case, d) grow a thicker skin, stop worrying and learn to love the bomb. Stop running around like headless chickens after some troll managed to scare you - calm down and think sensibly and move beyond fear.
butter the donkey
...before all these emo trendy assholes started pushing their whiny agenda on the rest of the world. 20 years ago if you talked the way that most of them do in their blog posts, you were guaranteed an ass beating just for good measure.
Back then the men were men, the women were women, and things got done.
Now everyone acts like an emotional woman, and the world is going to hell.
This post will probably get modded down by some suicidal, over-emotional teenager who is blinded by the tears in his eyes from crying about how horrible his middle class life is in suburbia America, all while people are starving to death in Africa.
You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads!
I think that phrase shows where he's coming from; marketing. Lets face it 99.9% of people don't blog for dialog, they blog about their cats, boys (or girls) and day to day trivia.
Those that do use their blogs for marketing (being it of themselves, or companies) are in trouble. O'Reilly is seen as such a big player that standing up and saying "Piss off" could well be seen as a career limiting move; the blogosphere isn't made up of "free thinkers" as they like to believe they are, in reality it's rather cliquey. The big hitters are attempting to impose mob rule and that's worse than the original "offence".
Code of conduct?
There's already a great one: The Golden Rule
O'Reilly and others have proposed a code of conduct which could include restrictions like the outlawing of anonymous accounts."...
Anonymous Cowards in Slashdot have been the single largest source of valuable information and dialogue, in the single largest technology forum (Slashdot) over a large period of time.
No wonder I didn't RTFA.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
I just learned to read :)
-u24.
also:
"Slow down cowboy
It's been 6 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment"
that's one goddamn slow cowboy! wtf?
Don't loose the anarchistic nature of blogging !
I recall when this story broke originally that she started blaming various bloggers for the threats with zero evidence, among them some fairly prominent names,
Note that there's a big difference between a known blogger "insulting" you and an anonymous one writing threats.
A blogger's code of conduct? "We won't say anything online that we wouldn't say in person." Yeah, might as well shut down the entire Internet.
The great thing about it is you can say what you want. It's a double-edged sword, but trying to turn it into a butter knife will simply result in everything becoming numbingly dull corporate-speak.
Good luck getting everyone to adhere to your code of conduct. While it may look good on paper (or on your LCD) you'll always have someone pissed off at you. Between honest bloggers there usually are some unwritten (or untyped) guidelines that are followed that roughly equate to the classic 'do unto others' rule. To sum it up I'll have to put it this way: nothing to see here.... move along.
First post = troll. Cleverly worded post designed to enrage others = flamebait.
Courtesy of Violent Acres - http://www.violentacres.com/archives/156/dooce-doe snt-like-me
Bloggers is a condition
1. A code of conduct will be created.
2. The code will spread as a meme between blogs.
3. Some of the more popular bloggers/blogs will pick up on it and implement it, adding a bit graphical/text certification.
4. Typepad/Wordpress/Moveabletype will implement the code as a feature.
5. Boingboing will rally against it.
5a. Slashdotters will bitch about it.
6. It'll stay around as a tool - like creative commons, trackbacks, pings, etc. Some people will use it/live by it, others will rally against it, most will ignore it.
7. Everything will go back to normal.
Just like with everything else...
I can say... Bloggers take themselves far too seriously. No one else does. :/
If my words make sense, convey logic or beauty or are simply pleasurable to read, then the stuff I post on the 'net is worthwhile. This is however a property of the content of my post, and no Blogger Badge or such will magically endow my words with worthwhile content.
There already exists a 'code of cunduct' called 'civility' which is in scarce supply on the net, much thanks to anonymity but moreso thanks to poor upbringing. Another reason for lack of civility online is this blessed ease at which I post. Since with little investment of effort I can make my words reach people my words in themselves represent little effort. If flaming people online required me to write by hand, go to the post office and pay for stamps, I'd likely not flame a whole lot of people.
The ease at which we communicate is however not something many of us are willing to give up on, so we are left with the variables of anonymity and upbringing. Only the former is up to me, and evidently it's not something I'm very willing to give up. Until I post something I feel is important enough to sign with my real name I'm just another Anonymous lolling on teh intarwebs.
Why not let this be our badge? When we post humously instead of anonymously, pseudonyms notwithstanding, then we mean serious business. Don't append your name to anything you don't want to be held accounted for, and accept that the words of an AC will not be taken seriously.
All rites reversed 2010
What would the code of conduct do? Fedaral laws themselves don't stop crime, how would a stupid code of conduct wiki thing stop bloggers from sending threats and all? I don't understand.
This is my sig. There are thousands more, but this one is mine.
It's that simple (see headline). I do feel sorry for her and the shock she's gotten from some sick person photoshopping her into some porn scene or something and I really like her books (I got two of them myself) but there is one thing you should be prepared for when going public, be it as a popstar, a politician or a professional writer and blogger, and that is exposure.
There are a measurable amount of sick people out there who get a hard-on from doing stuff like this. It's a perfectly normal state of things - like the slugs in your garden. Not very nice to look at, but in some way part of the ecosystem. In a way I feel sorry for these people.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Actually, methinks both are blinded by their own "I'm so great because I have a blog" ego trip.
E.g., Jarvis seems to think it's some media agenda or conspiracy to judge all blogs by the worst examples. Guess what? So is everyone else that can be squeezed in one category. Big surprise that it applies to blogs too.
E.g., one thing I remember being told in the army was that, basically, when you're in uniform, pay attention what you're doing, because people won't go "oh, Moraelin is drunk again and making a nuissance of himself", they'll go "oh, great, so that's what the _army_ is doing." Every single soldier or cop will be judged by the actions of the worst soldier or cop.
Same here. Once you fought to be seen as some monolythic "blogosphere" that challenges all the traditional sources of information in some virtual two-front Schlieffen Plan... Guess what? You _are_ seen as a monolythic entity and judged by the worst examples. Whop-de-fucking-do. Big surprise there.
The traditional media faces the same problem, which is why they all try hard to maintain a facade of impartiality or of only reporting. Yes, I'm sure someone can jump in with a "hah, the media and impartial, that's rich. Well, I remember <insert anecdote when they weren't impartial>," Well, that's the whole point. The worst fuck-ups are taken as representative of the media as a whole.
And _especially_ die-hard self-proclaimed advocates of the blogosphere are quick to latch on every single media fuck-up and fashion a battle banner out of it. Well, then don't be surprised if it's a two way street, then.
From there, both are equally deluded in some utopian view of it, if in different directions. Basically:
- O'Reilly: guys, we need to police ourselves and become some kind of utopia where everyone plays nice, is responsible, etc. (Yeah, right.)
- Jarvis and the like: nooo, people are smart enough to see who's right and wrong on their own, check the credentials of every blog page they read, know who put their real name behind their opinions, etc. (Yeah, right. As if I have the time to check if, say, Jarvis himself exists or is his real name.) And the unspoken rules that exist for a real community, surely work flawlessly for an anonymous online group. No, really, they'll start working any day now. (Equally: yeah, right.)
The former is bogus because it obviously can't work, the latter... for the exact same reason. I'll point out at what Penny Arcade called The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory. There'll always be someone who thinks that "anonymity + an audience = an oportunity, nay, a _duty_ to be a complete fuckwad."
One fact that all the "it'll work like a real community" utopians miss is that, medically speaking, about 1 in 30 people are sociopaths. (Well, in the USA at least. I don't know what the statistics are for other countries.) Most are kept in check IRL because, while they might completely lack empathy and consideration for their fellow man, they do realize that there are consequences for their actions. There is a name and a face on each such action, and that might come back to bite them in the ass. So they proceed to be normal members of society, for lack of a choice. Take away the "action => consequence" feedback, and they revert to being the assholes they always wanted to be. Even if you got them to maintain a name and a face attached to their blogs, they'll use sock puppets and astroturfing for their trolling.
So neither of the two extreme point of views even work, or have anything even vaguely resembling the world-saving qualities that their advocates claim.
So choosing between the two is like having to choose between an enlightened dictatorship utopia, and an anarchist utopia. Those too have had their own share of apologists, and whole tomes written about how and why they'd work better than the current society models. Too bad they don't work in practice. Well, now we see basically the same extremes appli
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The most prominent and usual argument I have seen for non-anonymity is that it raises the level of civility and constructiveness in a forum, because people are personally accountable for their statements.
But what mechanisms actually lie behind this? Surely the concept of accountability for unconstructive or insulting posts relies on the mechanisms of fear and status. If someone doesn't care about status, then it is all fear - you are fearful that posting the insulting comment will result in negative experiences for you personally. Which it most likely would and is part of the intended design from the beginning - the rationale is that if someone goes around posting 'Sieg heil, sieg heil' or 'gay homofagosexuals' in comments section, then their real name _should_ be visible, so that cyber and real life activists can descend upon them and intimidate and frighten them from posting stuff like that again, and also that the government can rule them out of jobs like e.g. social care where their mindset is a danger to the health of children and the vulnerable.
Compare this to the mechanism in China. Why do people criticise China for banning anonymous blogs? Because they somehow infer that posting unpopular or government/society-critical will lead to them being personally harassed, subject to cyber and real life activism, and also that the government can rule them out of jobs.
The difference between the 'evil guys' (China) and the 'good guys' (us) then becomes that they harass people for saying good and true things, while we just harass people for saying deconstructive and antisociety and insulting things towards groups and individuals that they deserve harassment for.
Fascinating read. Could you give us your real name, address and phone number?
I know that there is probably a 17 hour time difference between you and me, but I'm sure you wouldn't mind me calling you at 3 am to discuss this issue with you.
Let's see, for this site I'll use the name... (consults the AD&D naming tables) Pedro AxeLayer. I live at 123 main st, in whatever town the site's owner lives. I, by some amazing coincidence, have the same phone number as the site's local police.
I will make an account on a site to give myself "persistant" in-context credibility (as with "pla" here on Slashdot), but I simply don't give out my real contact info. I don't even give that to most companies with whom I do business - They need a way to bill me and nothing else.
Now, I harbor no delusions that I have "real" anonymity - Of course someone sufficiently motivated could track me down IRL. But I can sure as hell make it difficult, as well as providing myself a layer of plausible deniability for most purposes ("Someone with the same username as my email address insulted your favorite sports team? Why, what a coincidence, Mr. Boss! I'll have to contact the site admin and see if they can get that username revoked, ASAP!"). Anyone who chooses to befriend me here on Slashdot does so based entirely on what I say. Not my name, race, age, gender, location, height, or weight. And I consider that a "good" thing (though for the record, I don't count as unusual in any of the preceeding list).
As for bloggers... I've said it before (and lost karma) and I'll say it again (and probably lose more karma) - Who cares? Make all the rules you want. It still won't make you "real" journalists (With some notable exceptions, of course, but the rest of you angsty teens and cat-lovers, don't kid yourself - No one cares what Fluffy dragged in today).
I generally don't like Michelle Malkin, but she's gone through much more of this than Kathy Sierra. You have a lot of this in the political blogging world directed at women who take conservative or libertarian views. In fact, with Malkin, add in everything that was done to Sierra, AND a load of racism from even mainstream liberals like those at Wonkette who've been known to make racial sexual slurs against her.
But hey, that's ok! Bitch brought it on herself, right?
Seriously, this is like only noticing that racism is a problem, when a "nice, pretty black women" gets in trouble with the KKK.
In the academic world, for example, discussion is mostly open and the discussants can be easily identified. This doesn't mean that some junior academic shouldn't be allowed to post about some prof's misdemeanors anonymously on caughtintheact.blogspot.com or wherever. What would be wrong is to have blanket regulations outlawing anonymity across the interweb - that would both undermine civil liberties and be unworkable.
This code of conduct is fictional too.
Do you REALLY believe that robots are REALLY obeying Asimovs three laws of robotics? Especially battle robots?!
Just disable anonymous, non-registered commenting while setting up your blog and thats that.
Read radical news here
Reduce, reuse, cycle
It is not only desirable but essential that anonymous posting be allowed. It represents protected political speech. Had the revolutionary treasonous personages that founded the United States not been able to publish under pseudonyms then we would likely have been under British rule for a while longer than we were. It was essential to preserver in day to day life while propagating the injustices of each locality to the whole of the advent nation. In current perspective where shield laws and whistle-blower laws are circumvented by prosecutorial misconduct, abuse of police powers and general guile to obtain the identities that should be protected; where our society huddles in fear and gives away freedom after freedom denying future generations their inalienable rights unless they, like their forbearers, are willing to make personal sacrifices to regain those freedoms for the whole of their society and reestablish a covenant of just freedoms and liberties, we can not and should not consider banning anonymous speech.
Those temporary grants of trespass to our basic rights we give the government in times of dire need are seldom temporary and rarely recovered notwithstanding great protest from the body public.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
GNAA is trolling, this is not.
learn the difference next time you get mod points.
this post brought to you by the "damn, I wish I had mod points" association (DIWIHMPA)
Richard Kyanka has, what I think, a better reaction to the situation.
Sacrificing the right for anonymity in order to increase the security of bloggers that don't need it.
NOT a good idea.
My Starcraft 2 Blog
FTA: But as with every other electrically charged topic on the Web, finding common ground will be a serious challenge
Most topics on the web are electrically charged, that's how they're transmitted from computer to computer. Generally speaking, the connections between the computers carry a common ground so it shouldn't be that hard.
Oh, get off your political soapbox. The owner of any media has always had final say in what goes in that media. If a blog wants to ban anon posts, that is their choice. Find another blog that doesn't if you don't like it. Or better yet, start your own then you can allow all the vitriol you want.
A code of conduct won't work for many reason but anon political posting isn't that high on the list. Many sites either don't allow anon or allow the user to filter them out (/. included). When it comes to civil dialog, anonymous political posts account for a very, very, VERY small percentage so your argument falls flat on its face right there.
This is a sig. This is only a sig. Had this been an actual sig you would have been informed where to tune for more sigs.
The whole idea of blogging is that anything goes and by 'anything', I refer to the right to free speech. This is an inalienable right and will remain so.
The inherent nature of 'the blog' allows the blogger and their respondents to remain anonymous. This permits an individual to test the very edges of the right to free speech. The only way to balance the abuse of free speech is if the law were to be enforced in such cases just as you might respond to those letters, phone calls or emails which fall outside the margins of free speech, (e.g. death threats, etc.)
The second scenario is the more commmon one which lies under the realm of "appropriateness" as defined by the blogger. Of course, the blogger is free to moderate as he pleases, for the blog is not a democracy, but a dictatorship. However, enforcing this through moderation (deletion, modifications) threatens the 'open' nature of the blog.
The solution to this fear of censorship is moderation by the community themselves as exemplified by Slashdot. Blogs can allow the suscribers to score each other's comments. The audience can then decide to see all the comments or only the highly scored ones. 'Inappropriate' posts (a subjective measure) hence become invisible to the audience who deem it to be inappropriate.
Of course, implementing this would require a new breed of blogging software. The current format present only two options: delete or not delete. A change in the standard blogging format along the lines of comment moderation by the blog audience is the solution rather than a set of rules enforcing what the majority of blogging community see as common sense and etiquette.
Do you think it's surprising that the New York Times, which, like all newspapers, has been getting its narrow ass kicked by these "uncivil" blogs suddenly wants to "clean up" the most unbridled and successful mode of mass communication ever devised? Or that the very thing that has again given life to political discourse and has given voice to an entire generation of social commentators displeases a newspaper that let down the Nation by being complicit in the phoney-baloney run-up to the War in Iraq, and that it was thousands of political bloggers who were right about Iraq being a huge mistake while the "Newspaper of Record" didn't bother to question the prevarications and canards it was being fed by the Administration?
I'm calling "bullshit" on this entire "uncivil, nasty blogs" meme that this little officious prick Howard Kurtz has been peddling. There is a lot of righteous anger in this country, in this world, right now, and sometimes it manifests itself in the word "fuck" being used as in "fuck-ing war" or "fuck-ing economy" or "fuck-ing chimp cocksucker who inhabits the White House and has less regard for the Constitution than the paper that sits on the bottom of his fuck-ing birdcage". You know, like that.
So if the medium that has been most endangered by the energetic, sometimes rude, crude or nasty medium that happens to be the last best hope for liberty and democracy decides that something is wrong and has to be changed, I say "Fuck them, and fuck that effete worm Howard Kurtz".
Claro?
You are welcome on my lawn.
...especially given their attitude towards "citizen journalists". Instead of making blogging more respectable O'Reily and company manage to make it seem far worse than it really is.
My blog is NOT a public space, it's MY space. My blog, my disk space, my bandwidth, my rules. Obey them or fuck off.
I piss off bigots.
Communities are tended and grown into healthy, fun, productive communities. They are not made that way merely by declaring them so.
This Code of Conduct is being presented as if a central entity is trying to own the process, and that's just not going to fly. Respectfulness is not something that can be owned and branded with a name and a logo.
Awesome. Maybe President Bush will intervene and save us all from the anonymous evil persons on teh intarwebs.
Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
nonsense text here to avoid lameness filter
Lowtax is an interesting guy, here his level headed reasoning makes O'Reilly and friends look like complete idiots. Being able to disregard a direct threat of that nature (involving your 2 year old child) puts all this Kathy Sierra crap in perspective doesn't it?
So who was really being nasty and uncivil?
Signature applied for, Patent Pending
While the comments posted against Kathy Sierra are despicable, I really feel that they are quite empty threats by a lonely, angry, frustrated, and upset individual. I understand Kathy's cause for alarm given as we live in times of media sensationalism that has encouraged copycat criminality. Yet I urge her and everyone to proceed slowly and methodically because we may travel down a slippery slope that we will be unable to recover from. If history is any indicator, look at George W. Bush, the passing of the Patriot Act and the formation of a Homeland Security Department. The Patriot Act has had disastrous effects on civil liberties because it was enacted far too hastily with powers broad enough to destroy everything our forefathers worked for. This is why I am a proponent of anonymous blogging: it may be some of the last ways to safely express dissatisfaction with our government and status quo. Craig's List has built a hugely successful community moderation system wherein inappropriate, threatening, or criminal posts are removed or appropriately referred for action. Use Craig Newmark's system as a model for a blogging system.
We don't need no thought control!
:*-(
;-)
Why does one person, Kathy 'cough' Sierra 'cough', have to ruin it for everyone else.
Bloggers of the world unite and take over!
The consequence of celebrity is, unfortunately, that some people will think they have rights over you. In fact, the ranting of an anonymous psychopathic blogger are probably far less damaging than the stuff that may get written about you in the yellow press. Rupert Murdoch's "news"papers have before now done the photoshop tricks with heads and bodies. British newspapers have faked scenes of politicians standing next to people they would not, in fact, be seen dead standing next to. They routinely misquote people for effect. More people are likely to believe this than something they find on the net - which is exactly what right wing newspaper owners are trying to achieve.
The point about this is that there is a regulatory body called the "Press Complaints Commission". The good newspapers do not need it, the bad ones simply ignore it. It's a sign of how successful the proposals are likely to be.
If you want privacy, do not seek celebrity, even anonymous celebrity on Slashdot. (I routinely create a new identity- it gives me about a year off moderation- and it doesn't hurt, though my current user id has more digits than the first one did.)
Pining for the fjords
Have they? Not IME.
I'm having a bit of a crisis of conscience at the moment, because I find my long-held views on various subjects such as privacy and free speech are coming into conflict.
On the one hand, I have always felt that anonymity on the Internet was over-rated. In real life, most of the theoretical advantages — particularly in the areas of political free speech and whistle blowing — don't add up to much in practice, because the authorities can often track down the author of a comment if they are willing to try hard enough. On the other hand, we see widespread examples of pseudo-anonymity being abused every day: spammers, phishing e-mails, breaking privacy/defamation/data protection laws causing anything from personal distress to huge financial losses, even first-posters and trolls on Slashdot.
On the other hand, as governments and surveillance technology improve, I am becoming more and more aware of the need for certain absolute legal safeguards over an individual's right to reasonable privacy. Here in the UK, we have no such laws, and at the same time, we now have government systematically data-mining its people under the pretence of anti-terrorism, identity theft as one of the fastest rising (and nastiest) crimes there is, and so on. One of the conclusions I reached some time ago is that it is not the collection of individual data points that is the insidious thing, but rather the mass archival and ability to data-mine all such points. It is the difference between someone in the street seeing me walk past, and government-owned CCTV cameras following my every step. It is the difference between posting a comment in a forum where it will live for a few days, and someone archiving every post to Usenet I ever made, without my knowledge or consent. (Yes, it's now relatively well-known that places like Google do this, but it wasn't when some of us first started posting there, and the legality of doing so is still questionable.)
The most effective counter to these technologies, in the absence of internationally recognised legal safeguards, is the use of pseudonyms, such as that I'm now posting under. I guess I'm a funny character on the 'net. Sometimes I post under my real name, sometimes I use an alias. Mostly I post serious content — helping people out on a tech forum, sharing knowledge of local services where I live on Usenet, that kind of thing — and sometimes I post things purely aiming for the "Funny points". Occasionally, I admit, I even give in to the urge to troll someone who obviously takes themselves too seriously.
On forums like Slashdot, I tend to use an alias, even though nearly all of my comments are intended to be constructive (and, reassuringly, the mods agree with this). It sometimes allows me to use real-life examples of things without causing any damage/offence to the people involved. I would stand by pretty much everything I write here even if it had my real name attached to it, though I would sometimes feel obliged to use different examples to protect others.
I do worry about the future consequences of having a large Internet footprint, though. A few days ago, after a brief trial period, I cancelled my Facebook account. I joined because a lot of my friends had signed up and were posting interesting photo albums there, but soon discovered that Facebook's whole purpose is to get everyone who knows you to spy on you and contribute unnecessary personal information about you for public (or at least Facebook's) consumption. I have stopped posting on another social networking site I was trying for similar reasons, too.
So what is my proposed solution to all this? The short answer is: I don't have one, and I don't think anyone else does, and I don't think anyone else can until the int
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
"I can only say that I found your statement to be boorish, and incredibly and insensitively insulting to the people that were here previously--that you could manage to give the first amendment of the Constitution of the United States a bad name, if I felt that you had the slightest understanding of it, which I do not. You don't have the slightest understanding of the difference between government action and private action, and you have certainly destroyed any case you might otherwise have had with this senator" - U.S. Senator Slade Gorton speaking to Frank Zappa
Some of you are old enough to remember the 1985 Senate "Porn Rock" hearings. Those of you who are too young to remember the hearings should consider yourselves lucky. Basically they were about protecting the children from dirty lyrics.
The Washington wives in the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) included Al Gore's wife Tipper and Strom Thurmond's wife Nancy, among others. The PMRC was present at the hearings.
The L.A. Times quoted the PMRC's Nancy Baker as saying "we'd like an official panel, consisting of industry executives and community officials, who would set up general guidelines for industry standards."
Recording industry compliance to the standards was to be "voluntary."
Will there be Congressional hearings on blogging?
When it comes to civil dialog, anonymous political posts account for a very, very, VERY small percentage so your argument falls flat on its face right there.
But the same argument applies more generally - there are plenty of cases where people discuss on personal or taboo topics, which they would not want to show up when their employer or family do a Google search...
And yes, someone who runs a blog has every right to disallow anonymous comments, but they also have every right to not adopt this code of conduct, which seems more likely if it has things like disallowing anonymous comments.
Another problem with disallowing anonymous (as in no login required) comments is: who can be bothered to sign up, just to post to some random blog?
...esp. when you're re-posting their subject lines, dude!
There's nothing more you can do to strip away anonymity than to track the IP address of posters, because there's nothing more that gmail and hotmail and yahoo will do for you.
They can't... they have no more idea who randomstalker@freemailservice.example.com is than you, unless you think the IP address of the public terminal they used to set up the account is useful.
Once again, to quote: "That is one of the mistakes a lot of people make -- believing that uncensored speech is the most free, when in fact, managed civil dialogue is actually the freer speech".
What a chilling bit of doublespeak. Freedom through security is not freedom, no matter how loudly your boss or your government or your school tells you it is. As a writer and internet service provider, I feel it is my core responsibility to protect and promote freedom of speech (online or off), and it is horrifying to see six years of political re-invention already so thoroughly ingrained in our sensibilities that we no longer call things out for what they are. Anything inhibiting freedom of speech is a direct perversion of our human rights. Not our American rights - our human rights.
Now, it is absolutely unfortunate that Kathy Sierra was attacked in her online community and made to feel physically unsafe by threatening commenters - but it's not an unusual incident - not when you're actively participating in a medium where EVERYONE, including the emotionally disturbed, has a voice and an easy mechanism for making it heard. Anyone who's been a participant in the web for any length of time has not only likely received negative attention from some corner, but probably also said a few things they wish wouldn't show up so easily in Google ten years later. I commend her for making it public and taking steps with her local law enforcement to make the threat known to physically protect herself, but I will admit it frustrates me how quickly the online community began calling for blood and legal retribution over what was basically a nasty, adult-sized playground bully doing what bullies have been doing online for as long as they've been able.
From a higher perspective, I would argue that we need to nip in the bud the developing American tendency to legislate/regulate/restrict thought and word instead of punishing actual actions. I may be just as outraged as anyone that someone said what they did about an author whose work I admire, but changing the way people are allowed to talk is not the way to fix that problem or protect one's self. With that said, I imagine this won't come to anything - that those who require an official document to remind themselves to be civil aren't likely to subscribe to that Blogger Code of Conduct anyway.
---- http://brianna.org - play
The pundits talk for 30 minutes before the speech about what he's likely to say - or in many cases - exactly what he's going to say if they get a copy of the speech ahead of time, and then for an hour after his speech pundit dissect and critique every expression and phrase.
After the speech, if any part is in error, the errors are trumpeted via media outlets loudly.
I want to hear the president's point of view - even if I disagree with what he has to say, or about the principles on which he stands, I think it's valuable to hear it "from the horse's mouth" and make up my own mind, thank you very much.
The current model is a good one, IMNSHO.
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
Just as long as bloggers think they have the freedom to spread lies about other people, and have their readers believe every word of it, they deserve no special protection.
Every day, the hateful rants of Limbaugh, Hannity and Savage are broadcast far and wide across America. These guys regularly denounce half the populace as traitors, as terrorists and worse. Michael Savage, in particular, is known for calling anybody to his left a "lizard" who should be exterminated. Of course, these same people are regularly featured on network news programs. Their writings appear in our major newspapers and magazines. They have million dollar book deals. They're media darlings and celebrities.
And now these same media outlets are getting all upset because blogs are uncivil?
If they manage to pass this bull chit. Someone really needs to come out with a Open Source Code of Conduct for bloggers. Then we can all sit back and watch all the bloggers use the open source version. lol
The problem with totally uncensored speech is that my "Blah blah gargle eff you no punctuation l33t h@xorspeek!" gets as much air than your well-reasoned and carefully edited argument. Except that I spent one one thousandth of the effort, meaning that you're paying a very high premium in terms of time for a very small portion of the bandwidth. The truth is, there is a cost for everything, even speech. If my (intellectually useless) speech costs me 1/1000th of your (intellectually potent) speech, then is speech really free? Worse, if I have a bot spewing out my viewpoint, how is that actually speech at all? And yet, by any casual economic analysis, it's actively reducing the value of your speech with each additional, valueless post.
But a blogger has a recourse. A blogger can set bars over which anyone wishing to talk must hurdle. We do this with voting, note: you have to be 18, you have to be a citizen, you have to be individually identifiable, etc. We have decided some things are not ok to use as bars to prevent voting; race, political affiliation, viewpoint. But others are. Why, then, should a blogger be forced to allow any random person to choke up his discussion, instead of requiring people to self-identify, and put a modicum of effort into their contribution? The alternative is to have your traditional Roman forum choked with masked, blubbering invalids, over whose din no reasoned discussion can be heard, much less responded to.
You have to choose your freedoms. You can choose the uncensored type of freedom; there will always be a place on the net for that. Or you can choose your unfettered by inanity type of freedom; and I think anyone who wants to promote that is perfectly within their rights - and so I won't complain if they do so by frowning at anyone who doesn't follow some reasonably light, civility-based requirements. Expecting people to act like adults is far from fascist.
[Ego]out
I think the problem is less with blatant trolls, which, as you say, can easily be deleted or totally ignored. It's more about those people who say things that are nasty, ad hominem attacks, childish, churlish, or otherwise intellectually without content yet claim they aren't being listened to, or cry out that they're being suppressed because of their views, and not because they're being inappropriate. If you define what parameters you are using to determine if someone is acting like an adult, you are far more in your rights to get rid of the people who are dragging down the quality of your blog by being uncivil. It is not unreasonable to demand adult conduct on a space you're managing. There are plenty of spaces for those who need to work out their inner eleven year old.
[Ego]out
We have come to expect a basic level of anonymity that the net offers.
can we have a Spammer's Code of Conduct?
This is a cut and paste of what I said at digg.com:
Here are Oreilly's 7 rules:
"We take responsibility for our own words and reserve the right to restrict comments on our blog that do not conform to basic civility standards.
We are committed to the "Civility Enforced" standard: we strive to post high quality, acceptable content, and we will delete unacceptable comments.
We define unacceptable comments as anything included or linked to that:
* is being used to abuse, harass, stalk, or threaten others
* is libelous, knowingly false, ad-hominem, or misrepresents another person,
* Infringes upon any copyright, trademark, trade secret or patent of any third party. (If you quote or excerpt someone's content, it is your responsibility to provide proper attribution to the original author. For a clear definition of proper attribution and fair use, please see The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Legal Guide for Bloggers.)
* violates an obligation of confidentiality
* violates the privacy of others
We define and determine what is "unacceptable content" on a case-by-case basis, and our definitions are not limited to this list. If we delete a comment or link, we will say so and explain why. [We reserve the right to change these standards at any time with no notice.]
[edit] 2. We won't say anything online that we wouldn't say in person.
Unless we are trying to protect a confidential source, in which case, we may omit certain private details or otherwise obfuscate the soure of the information.
[edit] 3. If tensions escalate, we will connect privately before we respond publicly.
When we encounter conflicts and misrepresentation in the blogosphere, we make every effort to talk privately and directly to the person(s) involved--or find an intermediary who can do so--before we publish any posts or comments about the issue. Bloggers are encouraged to engage in online mediation of unresolved disputes. Mediate.com will provide mediators.
[edit] 4. When we believe someone is unfairly attacking another, we take action.
When someone who is publishing comments or blog postings that are offensive, we'll tell them so (privately, if possible) and ask them to publicly make amends. If those published comments could be construed as a threat, and the perpetrator doesn't withdraw them and apologize, we will cooperate with law enforcement to protect the target of the threat.
[edit] 5. We do not allow anonymous comments.
We require commenters to supply a valid email address before they can post, though we allow commenters to identify themselves with an alias, rather than their real name.
[edit] 6. We ignore the trolls.
We prefer not to respond to nasty comments about us or our blog, as long as they don't veer into abuse or libel. We believe that feeding the trolls only encourages them-- "I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it. (George Bernard Shaw)" Ignoring public attacks is often the best way to contain them.
[edit] 7. We encourage blog hosts to enforce more vigorously their terms of service.
When bloggers engage in such flagrantly abusive behavior as creating impersonating sites to harass other bloggers they should take responsibility for their clients' behavior. "
And here are the ways the founding violated these rules
1. Certainly with the declaration of independence the founding fathers "threatened others." You didn't think the British were dgoing to leave in a peaceful fashion did you? Further this line from the declaration might be considered an ad hominem attack" "The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States"
http://usmilitaryhistory.com/declrind.htm
2. The founding fathers said neither the Declaration nor the Federalist papers in person to the British for the
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
This stuff doesn't shock me anymore, including the threat against his two year old daughter.
I had a friend in DC who was in the Secret Service. A good portion of her job was keeping track of suspicious, sick, or threatening mail sent to the First Family (Clintons at the time). The level of filth was astounding, everything from disgusting love letters to explicit and detailed threats aimed at Chelsea for instance. Many of these people apparently have been sending letters for decades, have been thoroughly investigated, and have been considered "harmless" if rather damaged.
The level of rancor and vitriol on sites like politico and homesteadingtoday can render discussions completely useless, and these are not anonymous posters generally. It seems to me that right-leaning, "Republican" posters are much quicker to suggest violence as a solution both to world/political problems and to disagreements with other posters. I highly doubt these are representative of core Republicans, but they are the voice which is making itself heard in many places and it is very damaging.
What a chilling bit of doublespeak. Freedom through security is not freedom, no matter how loudly your boss or your government or your school tells you it is. One bit of doublespeak deserves another, I guess.
While I'm no fan of the Patriot Act and etc., I do know that freedom without some security doesn't mean a whole lot. If you're starving, does it matter if you can criticize the government? If people are shooting at you, does it matter?
On a less strident example, it is clear that a meeting where anyone can say anything at any time will probably not get a lot done, or will be dominated by the loudest people, not necessarily the people with the best ideas. So, to keep a meeting running, we restrict "Free Speech" so that we can have Free Speech.
Look at Robert's Rules of Order sometime. They are designed for deliberative bodies, so that the majority can rule in the vote, but also so the minority has their say before any decision is made. Without those rules in place, there would be less freedom, not more. There are certainly other examples of restricting some freedoms to allow greater freedoms.
No, the government shouldn't have to step in and make us civil. Yes, sometimes (maybe often) the restrictions on freedoms go too far. But everyone using their freedom to say anything often results in nothing being heard. As long as everyone has their say, I see no problems with some restrictions on speech.
Whenever I see talk of banning anonymous comments, I wonder "What corporation or industry is behind this idea?"
Think about it.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
http://www.digitalgamearchive.org/games.php?game=b alance_of_power_ii
Ash-Fox wrote:
Yeah, my thought exactly. I knew of one or two a long time ago, but that went by the wayside when nearly everyone started using webmail services.
Allow me to ask the question though: what if you really, really wanted to know you have a real person on the other end of the wire. How would verify that?
I think the only thing we've got these days is credit card numbers, but I'd like to be wrong about that (you don't want to beg for a credit card number unless you're planning on charging money -- no one is going to believe you).
Tjp($)pjT wrote:
And how can you expect the Pentagon 'Media War' Unit to "set the record straight" if they can't post anonymously? Asto-turfing is the American way of life! The internet promises to be a bold new frontier for bogus grass-roots movements, and these people want to nip it in the bud by prohibiting anonymity!
Oh wait: but they're not really prohibiting anonymity. They're just demanding a "valid email address". Oh well, never mind.
(Perhaps they've never heard of yahoo mail?).