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Monday, April 9, 2007

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It's just the 19th nervous breakdown about the blogosphere

Brad Stone has a front-page story in the New York Times about the the fact that the some people display bad manners in the blogosphere:

Is it too late to bring civility to the Web?

The conversational free-for-all on the Internet known as the blogosphere can be a prickly and unpleasant place. Now, a few high-profile figures in high-tech are proposing a blogger code of conduct to clean up the quality of online discourse.

Last week, Tim O’Reilly, a conference promoter and book publisher who is credited with coining the term Web 2.0, began working with Jimmy Wales, creator of the communal online encyclopedia Wikipedia, to create a set of guidelines to shape online discussion and debate.

Chief among the recommendations is that bloggers consider banning anonymous comments left by visitors to their pages and be able to delete threatening or libelous comments without facing cries of censorship.

A recent outbreak of antagonism among several prominent bloggers “gives us an opportunity to change the level of expectations that people have about what’s acceptable online,” said Mr. O’Reilly, who posted the preliminary recommendations last week on his company blog (radar.oreilly.com). Mr. Wales then put the proposed guidelines on his company’s site (blogging.wikia.com), and is now soliciting comments in the hope of creating consensus around what constitutes civil behavior online.

You can take a peek at the proposed code of conduct by clicking here. Comment away there or here. I hereby predict it will go nowhere -- I'm certainly not going to be banning anonymous comments anytime soon.

The one fascinating thing about Stone's story is what's not in it. Despite endless complaints about rising partisanship in the blogosphere, no example was given of declining civility in the political blogosphere. That doesn't mean it's not happening, of course, but it's still surpring that Stone failed to offer up such an example.

UPDATE: Katherine Mangu-Ward has an interesting take over at Hit & Run.

posted by Dan on 04.09.07 at 08:11 AM

Comments:

Dan wrote:

The one fascinating thing about Stone's story is what's not in it. Despite endless complaints about rising partisanship in the blogosphere, no example was given of declining civility in the poliitical blogosphere. That doesn't mean it's not happening, of course, but it's still surpring that Stone failed to offer up such an example.

Did we read the same article? Because Stone definitely wrote about the recent Kathy Sierra affair and provided many other examples, of harrassement and other vile behaviour. Or do those not count because most weren't political bloggers? About the Sierra affair stone wrote:

Mr. Wales and Mr. O’Reilly were inspired to act after a firestorm erupted late last month in the insular community of dedicated technology bloggers. In an online shouting match that was widely reported, Kathy Sierra, a high-tech book author from Boulder County, Colo., and a friend of Mr. O’Reilly, reported getting death threats that stemmed in part from a dispute over whether it was acceptable to delete the impolitic comments left by visitors to someone’s personal Web site.

Distraught over the threats and manipulated photos of her that were posted on other critical sites — including one that depicted her head next to a noose — Ms. Sierra canceled a speaking appearance at a trade show and asked the local police for help in finding the source of the threats. She also said that she was considering giving up blogging altogether.

posted by: Kent on 04.09.07 at 08:11 AM [permalink]

When the ratio of spam to "real" email coming into my mailbox is below 10%, then I'd be willing to ban anonymous commenting.

Let's not even talk about it until it gets down to 1:1.

posted by: bud on 04.09.07 at 08:11 AM [permalink]