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!
"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
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 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.
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...
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.
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.
Just disable anonymous, non-registered commenting while setting up your blog and thats that.
Read radical news here
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!
Richard Kyanka has, what I think, a better reaction to the situation.
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.
Too late dude, it's already been loosed. I think the article is about the attempt to deloose it
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
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.
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?