Civil discussion


Is the Bloggers Code of Conduct the answer?
My big concern with this is that it should not rely on government enforcement in any way.

Two leading citizens of the Web, Tim O'Reilly and Jimmy Wales, have proposed a "Bloggers Code of Conduct." The reason for this code is the phenomenon of people posting extremely nasty verbal comments about other people on Web sites devoted to political and social commentary. For Mr. O'Reilly, a publisher and activist for open Web standards, the last blogospheric straw involved a friend whose suggestion that it was OK to delete offensive comments from Web sites earned her a backlash of vitriol on several sites, with one posting a photo of her alongside a drawing of a noose.

Many bloggers I know of pretty much laughed at the mere idea. But the telling point came a little later in the article.

That said, it would be overreaching to lay the blame for civility's fall on the World Wide Web. The erosion of our stores of civility occurred over the past 40 years, undermined by torrents of political rage and self-assertion.

In 1968, Abbie Hoffman, the Yippie saint and a founding father of anti-civility, wrote a book whose title alone still stands as the best summary of the new game: "Revolution for the Hell of It." The Web democrats, the public hecklers, the loudmouths are Abbie's children. They know it and are proud of it. No limits. Don't like it? Get over it. If you object, they will, like characters in a Dick Tracy cartoon, scream, "I demand my constitutional rights!"

With the Bloggers Code of Conduct comes the counterrevolution.

As a matter of fact, I am disgusted by some things that pass for public speech today. Civility would go a long way. There are certain commentators and writers I ignore because I don't like their tactics.

I think civility is a good idea, I just don't want it enforced by the state.

I will just use my own judgement on my blogs. The way I see it, I pay for the domain and the hosting fees, so my rules apply. I've only had to delete one comment for inappropriateness and we're almost into year three.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Fri - April 13, 2007 at 06:04 AM  Tag


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