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."

Comments

Why anonymous anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have never understood the need for anonymous posting anyway!

Anonymous

[asninn]

From the slashdot summary:

In partial response, O'Reilly and others have proposed a code of conduct which could include restrictions like the outlawing of anonymous accounts."

From TFA:

5. We encourage anonymous comments.

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.

Re:Coles Notes Summary

[uhlume]

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 something we like to call a "blog".

"There. Fixed that for ya."