Blogging Code of Conduct. Recommend It–Don’t Force It.

Well now, Isn’t this just one of my favorite things here. While one part of the blogosphere is pushing link love and giving something back to those who make comments on your blogs, another faction consisting of Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia fame and Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media is calling for an accounting of these wild, foul mouthed bloggers and/or commenters that we obviously all are. Heaven knows, in all blogs and forums that I have frequented in the last five or so years, the things I must have been exposed to. Good Golly, it’s a wonder I’m not permanently damaged by now. Funny thing though. I just don’t seem to be able to recall all this massive abundance of objectionable material and abusive, slanderous language that pelted me over the years at all.

Okay, seriously…yes, I have heard about Kathy Sierra And I’m very sorry that happened to her and I’m also sorry she appears to be pulling out of her blog and public speaking as well which I believe to be a bad mistake on her part but I’m not her so I can’t say. All my best wishes are with her during this time.

But now back to business.

I really have no problem with the list but the sheriff’s badge with “Civility Enforced” is a bit too much. So is the “Anything Goes” badge and the picture of a stick of dynamite with a lit fuse (click the top link in the window below to take you to the entire article).

clipped from radar.oreilly.com

But because we want a period of review, we don’t want to finalize that code yet. I’ve put a draft below (and you’ll see it’s based closely on the BlogHer Community Guidelines that I linked to last week.) But we’re also working with wikia to put the draft through a wiki-based review process on blogging.wikia.com. (There’s an easy to remember shortcut link at http://blogging.wikia.com/wiki/BCC) Please feel free to join in and edit the wiki as well as encouraging others to do so. We’ll post the final version on bloggingcode.org, along with the html to display the badge and link to the code.

Tell you what—From my point of view, hanging a sheriff’s badge on my site like the one above would be akin to strapping a neon sign on my back that read; “Don’t even think you can mug me” and taking a stroll through the old Combat Zone of Boston back in the 70’s around three in the morning. Why not just send invitations out? Why leave it to a chance visit?

Keep your badges buddy—I’ll handle my own crowd as I see fit. And all of them (so far) are civil, polite, courteous and even have a sense of humor God forbid. Watch them wisecracks and occasional jokes, folks…someone might take offense by jeezum!

Excuse me if I say hogwash to the whole thing.

But…just to say I did…this is the first draft from the site above:

We celebrate the blogosphere because it embraces frank and open conversation. But frankness does not have to mean lack of civility. We present this Blogger Code of Conduct in hopes that it helps create a culture that encourages both personal expression and constructive conversation.

1. We take responsibility for our own words and for the comments we allow on our blog.

We are committed to the “Civility Enforced” standard: we will not post unacceptable content, and we’ll delete comments that contain it.

We define unacceptable content 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 a copyright or trademark
- 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.]

2. We won’t say anything online that we wouldn’t say in person.

3. We 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.

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–see above) 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.

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.

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–”Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, but the pig likes it.” Ignoring public attacks is often the best way to contain them.

Well…I suppose that the day would come where someone would just have to put it in writing but it just seems to me in my years of experience on the web that this has been the status quo of the majority of blogs out there. That most folks who own one or more blogs naturally adhere to a personal set of rules that more or less resemble the ones above. No one had to write anything for it to happen, it just happened naturally. And handing out a set of rules complete with badges, isn’t going to change a thing.

And last time I looked, most Wordpress themes these days require a valid email address in order to comment anyway (I just had to throw that one in).

I’m going to resist the temptation to address these “rules” one at a time as much as I would like to. So just go to Google Blog Search and type in “Blogger Code Of Conduct” and you’ll get all the opinions you want. Now that I think about it, I’ll start you off with this one from Andrew Keene of ZDnet with the following (again, with this Clipmarks thing-a-ma-jig, just click the top link in the window to get to the article. Just an experiment here):

clipped from blogs.zdnet.com

So, in response to the O’Reilly/Wales democratic code of conduct, here is my elitist code of conduct for bloggers. If you want a civil blogosphere, then it needs to be civilized. Bloggers need to acquire a touch of class. They need to be transformed from savages into gentlemen (give me another day and I’ll turn this idea into a musical — My Fair Blogger). So here we go — the first true elitist code of conduct for the blogosphere:

So I think I’ll just leave it there for now. This little news item has been batted around plenty in other venues but I did have to add my two cents worth. This was just too good to leave alone. And that’s exactly what I intend to do—leave it alone.

Happy blogging all.

Note: In a follow up to his original call for a Code of Conduct, Tim O’Reilly re-thinks his idea somewhat in this article.

Technorati tags: rules of conduct, blogger rules of conduct

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Tags: comments, Community, do's and don'ts