A little off topic but interesting none the less. Some of the internet’s biggest gurus are pushing for “Blogging Code of Conduct” to impose civility on the Internet. You can read the entire article here.
The idea came in the wake of anonymous death threats posted on the blog of author and speaker Kathy Sierra, O’Reilly’s friend.
“A culture is a set of shared agreements that allows us to live together,” O’Reilly wrote in a blog posting calling for a code of conduct.
“Let’s make sure that the culture we create with our blogs is one that we are proud of.”
The release this week of a first draft of rules of behavior for online commentary is riling bloggers who accuse its authors of acting like new-age media overlords disregarding precious rights of free speech.
“It’s simply unbelievable what’s going on here,” a blogger writing under the name “Marcus” said in a comment forum at O’Reilly’s website.
“So-called ‘community standards’ are merely the latest example of the agents of normalcy and entrenchment subconsciously attempting to organize, dictate, tame and pacify.”
Thoughts?
The thing that I don’t like about the Yahoo article is that it doesn’t tell the full story.
Sierra - the victim - blogs on a tech website. The comments she received was much worse than usual troll garbage. Not only was she receiving death threats, she was also receiving threats of sexual violence. Her victimizers also found pictures of her and photoshopped them with nooses around her neck, they published her ISP number, and even her social security number and her address. She afraid for her life.
The scary thing is, this kind of thing happens way too often, and it mostly happens to women. (There is another well-known case concerning female law students being victimized by members of an online noard frequented by ohter law students.) I’m not quite sure if I agree with the Code of Conduct proposal, but I do believe that this kind of action should not be tolerated and all threats should be taken more seriously.
First it was Net Nannies..now it’s Blog Nannies..oh well,I suppose it had to come.
Seriously though,it is getting to be a problem.