The line from the movie actually goes like this: “”Badges!? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges! I don’t have to show you any stinking badges!!”
It’s been two weeks since Kathy Sierra’s blog post about her taking a break from blogging after some very vicious and threatening things were posted about her on some sites that functioned as the online equivalent of “burn books”. So far, we’ve seen:
- Valleywag showing their worst side. It takes a special breed of dickery to dismiss Kathy Sierra with the line “A cry of misogynism pretty much shuts off debate”, which itself is a good way of pretty much shutting off debate. It smacks of the old canard on neocon blogs, “A racist is someone who’s winning an argument with a liberal”. The tone of their follow-up articles pretty much sums up their editorial stance on the whole thing.
- Dave Winer condemning the “chorus of cowardice”. You know things have gotten weird when Dave Winer is giving lectures on how to treat people.
- That Sierra/Locke meetup on a CNN piece that you could argue was a plot by the mainstream media to make bloggers look like idiots. The piece was awful, and CNN anchor TJ Holmes’ closing remark, “How can you threaten the cute kitty?” was insult pile atop injury to our intelligence.
- Precious little discussion about what I consider Kathy Sierra’s worst call: naming names prematurely. Namely, listing names that were very tangentially related to the sites in question. I stand by my earlier remarks that Chris Locke and Frank Paynter made bad calls in starting those sites. However, her mention of some other names seemed more like lashing out. I understand the sentiment, but disapprove of the actions.
And now, we have computing’s best-known book publisher and conference organizer, Tim O’Reilly, announcing the draft version of a Blogger’s Code of Conduct. This code of conduct has six points, which are:
- We take responsibility for our own words and for the comments we allow on our blog.
- We won’t say anything online that we wouldn’t say in person.
- We connect privately before we respond publicly.
- When we believe someone is unfairly attacking another, we take action.
- We do not allow anonymous comments.
- We ignore the trolls.
The code of conduct has attracted a considerable amount of attention in both the blogosphere, where it currently is the #1 topic on Techmeme, and the mainstream press, where it’s the subject of an article in the New York Times.
As with many movements that start on the web, there is a badge that people who want to adhere to the code can stick on their websites to show their adherence — it’s the “Civility Enforced” badge that appears below:
If your blogging style takes the opposite tack — that is, you’ve got a “free-for-all” blog where “discussions get heated, crude language, insults and other ‘off color’ comments may be encountered”, Tim provides this badge that you can post on your blog so that all the world can know what they’re getting into:
I agree with longtime blogger Shelley “Burningbird” Powers, who wrote this comment in response to the code of conduct:
You created badges.
You actually created badges.
I just can’t believe you created badges.
My response was to create the badge below. Feel free to use it!
More editorializing later, when I’ve got the time.
6 replies on “The Blogger’s Code of Conduct, and Those Steenking Badges”
This whole episode exposed the worst of blogging, from the original puerile, odious insults, to the original premature response, to the chattering, grand-standing responses at large.
High school with global Internet.
Intellectually I realize that Tim O’Reilly must be a smart guy.
But this is effing BLOGS we’re talking about. When we start policing what people can post, we are violating their rights. Comments are another story, I like Lisa Williams’ style on this – her “living room” policy.
But when you start making rules about what people can post in their own corners of the Internets (short of breaking the law of course, which WAS what we were upset about, death threats bad, wasn’t it?), that’s just effing stupid. Don’t like it? Don’t read it.
There’s a YouTube of that classic scene at http://www.youtube.com/v/HaxURLFn6jU.
Nice. It’s now on my blog, as I just had my first nasty comment in over 3 years of blogging about crap.
I’m not sure why you’re complaining about “rules about what people can post” — the only thing there that looks like a rule to me is “We won’t say anything online that we wouldn’t say in person,” and that sounds pretty reasonable to me.
This “code” to me looks like a very sensible effort to codify the standards of civility that large swathes of the blogosphere have already mostly come to consensus on. Evangelizing those standards, encouraging them to be spread and understood, seems like a good idea to me. If any individual blogger doesn’t agree with any of them — oh, say, talking privately before responding publically — nobody’s going to *make* them. But they should understand that there is a community consensus on the “right” thing to do, and be prepared for people to be offended if they violate it.
This is assuming O’Reilly’s code really does describe an existing consensus. If not, it’s good to hash out who agrees and who doesn’t — obviously places like fark and somethingawful are going to go their own way regardless, but maybe there are other more or less argumentative sectors of the blogs that will standardize on different expectations. I dunno.
So basically, I don’t see a substantial difference in intent between O’Reilly’s code and Williams — if anything, Williams’ version is more restrictive. How do you see anyone’s rights being violated?
The rules are asking for trouble. Did you miss the point that things are out of control? People are taking their views on this to extremes. Any community policing is going to end up stifling speech.
I said I liked Lisa’s policy on COMMENTS, by the way. Not on posts.