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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.
just for those that don't get it, here's the expanded, collectors edition of my "hmmm":
/. is that it doesn't delete the trolls/flames; it's uncensored, but it works.
who does the managing?
as a subset of that: can we trust them? what about potential abuse? etc.
how does restriction produce greater freedom?
how can you get more free than uncensored?
and now the special features, aka rambles:
one of the things i love about
Of course, it only works because of the millions of users willing to forsake their right to speak for the greater good... how this would work with mom 'n' pop's blog site that some viagra spammer is targetting, I don't know. Actually. I do. It wouldn't
I've had the feeling for a while that net communication would work a lot better if *everything* was anonymous. In the truly anon sense; "user24" is not anonymous. My internet footprint is massive.
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.
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.