The he’ll want some power. But seriously more than enough air and synapses have been thrown down in response to Tim “I Coin words” O’Reilly’s new suggestion of a voluntary blogger code of conduct. I’d first off like to think that the man’s heart is in the right place with this. He really does not want to see the web turned into the British tea room of socio-political discussion. Ahh the old battle flag of content ratings on the web. I am both for and against this policy. I stand firm with that too.
I see the need to label clean content as such, and I could even see the need to label explicit content as such. Most people I know online and in RL would have no problem labeling their own content, for a piece of mind. Not to mention the over litigious society we live in. I can see the PTA Moms now hounding me for dropping the F bomb on a blog and having their children happen to glance at it.
But some of the conditions which he puts out are a bit overzealous. No Anonymous comments? How would sites like Techdirt and Slashdot function without this? Not even to venture into the realm of socio-political blogging in an oppressive state such as China, or North Korea
{Here is one for the censors over there, Freedom Democracy, Voting, Badger, Emu, Aardvark. That aught to fix their wagon. Sorry in advance to all of our Chinese Listeners.}
Also I don’t like the idea of actually being responsible for what people may or may not post as a comment on my blog. Imagine again a blogger under a totalitarian government, such as Elbonia. Blogger-A is happily plodding along supplying content to cover their daily life in the mud mines only to have their comment section besmirched by filthy anti-regime doctrine. Blogger-A would be responsible for this content and might even get sent to the gulag. Not a good thing.
I think the idea of a blogger code of ethics is at its core a good one. I like the idea of self policing as well. Its up to you to mark your page as unfit for children, if you wouldn’t want your own progeny reading it. Other than that it’s hands off. No one outside of the editors list on your blog should attempt to categorize it. As soon as you try and get more than two people to agree to anything based on values your in for trouble. What type of trouble? Try reading the comments section on Tim’s post to see an example.
You do have to give Tim credit for trying. Instead of credit he gets devoured by the ravenous blog beasts. Apparently he realized his misstep within the fickle world of flickr and twitter and decided to take a small step back. He proposed a system of users voting comments as good thus rising their place in the hierarchy. I actually prefer the dig method of digging down, that way hateful speech is by en mass removed from the public threshold without being destroyed. However each system is prone to abuses. SO I hope this clears that up. Or it doesn’t either way I only ask you to simply consider it. And thank you for your time.