Code of Conduct: Lessons Learned So Far
Rather than responding in detail to the many comments on my Draft of a Bloggers' Code of Conduct or the earlier Call for a Blogger's Code of Conduct, as well as some of the thoughtful discussion on other blogs, I thought I'd summarize some of my chief takeaways from the discussion so far.
These include:
- The poor choice of the "badges" I proposed, together with a reiteration of why I thought badges might be useful.
- The need for a more modular code of conduct, a set of axioms rather than a single monolithic "code of conduct" or "terms of service."
- A suggestion of some moderation mechanisms that might be more effective than a code of conduct.
- A discussion of constructive anonymity vs. "drive-by anonymity".
- An acknowledgement that a "code of conduct" should be reviewed by lawyers lest bloggers incur additional liability for commenters.
- Why I think civility matters, despite all the nay-sayers.
Since this post is so long, I've put my extended comments "below the fold." Click the link below to keep reading, or use the links above to jump to a specific section.
"We don't need no stinkin' badges" - or do we just need better ones?
A number of commenters have been unable to resist a nod to Humphrey Bogart's famous line from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and to be sure, the image based on a sheriff's badge appears to have been ill-chosen. It framed the issue wrongly, suggesting suppression of bad behavior rather than encouragement of good behavior. I really liked Philippe's suggestion: "I would prefer a positive image as a symbol of respect between bloggers instead of a symbol of repression."
The Sheriff's badge was also a bad image both because of its local cultural context (the American west) and because it might imply that the internet as a whole is some kind of untamed frontier. In my conversations with mainstream press, I've been at pains to suggest that the internet is no worse than other media -- you have only to look at the excesses of political talk radio to see uncivility as bad as anything online. Nonetheless, as a number of people pointed out, it wasn't a good idea to reinforce the tendency of mainstream media to exaggerate internet risks.
I have to confess that we didn't put as much thought into the images as we should have. We were a little rushed by the timing of the New York Times story, and wanted to put something up for people to react to. And they certainly did. While people might have reacted as strongly were some other image chosen, it seems that the framing of the issue may have contributed to the negative reaction by many people.
The original idea was simply for a shorthand mechanism akin to that provided by Creative Commons for sites to state their copyright policies. A site can simply use the logo(s) with a link to the license text, rather than reproducing the entire text somewhere on their site. For example, the three logos to the right are a shorthand way of saying that a document is available under the "attribution required, non-commercial use, share-alike" license terms.
I'm particularly perplexed by folks like Jeff Jarvis saying (in his entry No Twinkie Badges Here): "And when I moved into the place that is my town, I didn’t put up a badge on my fence saying that I’d be a good neighbor (and thus anyone without that badge is, de facto, a bad neighbor). I didn’t have to pledge to act civilized. I just do." A quick look at buzzmachine shows that Jeff does in fact have just such a "badge" on his site. In fact, he has two. It's just that they are text badges rather than graphics. There's one prominent link entitled Rules of Engagement that states "Any email sent to me can be quoted on the blog. No personal attacks, hate speech, bigotry, or seven dirty words in the comments or comments will be killed along with commenters." And there's another one entitled About me /Disclosures that lists all of Jeff's financial entanglements.
Many sites have such disclosures and statements of policy. (In addition to the Blogher Community Guidelines that we modeled our draft on, take a look at the Yahoo Answers Community Guidelines, FM Publishing's Author Mores, Wikipedia Policies and Guidelines, Amazon's Guidelines for Reviewers and Dan Gillmor's Principles of Citizen Journalism.) My goal here was to propose a system that would make it easier for sites to state their policies without having to write their own. There's no intent to create a single code that every blog is somehow supposed to sign up for, any more than the idea of Creative Commons is to say that every site must abide by their own policies. (See Mechanism, not policy, below.)
The "code of conduct" needs to be much more modular
Where we fell down, apart from the negative framing given by the Sheriff's badge, is the lack of granularity in the proposed assertions and associated images. There are actually several different values that a site might or might not want to express. For example, a site aspiring to a higher level of journalistic integrity might want a logo that linked to a statement of their fact checking policy; a site that allows anonymity for good reasons might want a logo that links to their commitment to protecting the identity of posters; a site that wants to enforce civility might want to say so. The advantage of a widely agreed-on set of "rules of engagement" with associated logos is that people don't have to read someone's "terms of service" to understand what the policy is on a given blog. It's conveyed by shorthand via a symbol.
As with Creative Commons, for shorthand to be useful, any proposed symbols need to point to individual policies rather than to an aggregate. We made a mistake by lumping a bunch of things together that need to be treated separately. Copyright, for instance, has little do with civility. And it was a particular mistake not to make anonymity an optional element. (I caught this as soon as I posted the first draft and mentioned that in the comments the next morning, but left the draft to stand as there were already many comments on the subject.) But anonymity is a complex subject, so more on that in a moment.
I'm hopeful that we can isolate particular axioms, so to speak, that a site might want to assert. I'd be delighted if some of the very smart people reading this blog would propose their own list of modular axioms that a site might want to assert about its policies. I'm also going to spend a bit more time thinking about how to frame this idea more positively, with logo buttons that are less charged and more functional, and more specific as shorthand for particular policies. If you want to help with this effort, please go to the discussion page for the draft code of conduct over at blogging.wikia.com/bcc.
It's possible, though, that it will be very difficult even with a set of modular axioms to create the outcome we want through a set of policy statements. Gail Ann Williams' pointed me to the Well's Online Moderator Guidelines and Community-Building Tips with the comment "After 15 years in management at The WELL, in a context where there is close to no anonymity, paid participation, and twenty two years of debate about what Stewart Brand's famous WELL aphorism, "You Own Your Own Words" or YOYOW really means to participants and volunteer conference hosts, some things that seem simple turn out to be more complex."
Mechanism is better than policy
I picked up on Kaylea Haskall's original suggestion of Creative Commons'-like logos because it seemed like a way for sites to easily articulate their standards (assuming we get the standards correctly modularized.) However, even better would be actual community moderation mechanisms that would allow the community of readers to flag comments that they think are inappropriate, much as is done on Craigslist or eBay.
Slashdot's moderation system may also be a good model. It uses community moderators to promote or demote comments to help discriminate between valuable comments and noise, but allows the reader to set his own threshold for what he or she wants to see.
So rather than a blogger's code of standards, perhaps what I ought to be calling for is moderation systems integrated with the major blogging platforms.
John at librarything wrote:
"One technical suggestion, employed by my employer: letting users flag inappropriate comments, which then become click-to-see. This lowers the visibility of the trolls, without censoring them. For an example, see this thread:http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=8702
Message 5 is no longer immediately visible, because it was flagged by a certain number of users as inappropriate. But it can still be seen, if you want to, by clicking on the 'show' link. It's a compromise, but perhaps a practical one.
Similarly, it might help the situation to let users configure whether or not they want to see flagged content, and set the default for flagged content to some sort of reduced visibility.
I really like this, as it addresses one of the biggest hesitations I personally have about deleting comments, namely that deleting part of a conversation can make it impossible to reconstruct what really went on. And there have also been problems in the past with blog owners selectively editing conversations to present themselves in the best possible light. A mechanism that preserves comments while hiding them "in the back room" so to speak would seem to me to be a really useful tool.
I immediately wrote John about the availability of the code, and he said it was from "LibraryThing's groups/talk section, which was built in-house. Tying comment visibilty to user flagging was added last year, in response to a spate of abusive behavior." But more importantly, he added, "Creating blog plugins for this is a great idea," and offered to help anyone who wanted to do it. I've introduced him to the folks at Movable Type, Wordpress, and Blogger, and hopefully we can get something going.
Comment moderation by the community of readers, especially when offensive comments are not deleted but merely made less visible, seems to me to be much better than top-down deletion by the site owner, even if the latter may sometimes be the only way to keep the conversation from going off the rails.
Constructive Anonymity vs. Drive-by Anonymity
Another place where we clearly erred in the first draft is in the suggestion that anonymity should be forbidden, as there are most certainly contexts where anonymity is incredibly valuable. (Some that come to mind include whistleblowing, political dissent, or even general discussion where someone might not want to confuse their personal opinions of those of an organization to which they belong. As one commenter remarked, it might even be useful for a shy person to whom anonymity gives a bit of courage.)
That being said, there is a strong connection between "drive-by anonymity" and lack of civility. Jaron Lanier just sent me a pointer to a thoughtful article he wrote for Discover Magazine in March, shortly before this controversy erupted:
People who can spontaneously invent a pseudonym in order to post a comment on a blog or on YouTube are often remarkably mean. Buyers and sellers on eBay are usually civil, despite occasional annoyances like fraud. Based on those data you could propose that transient anonymity coupled with a lack of consequences is what brings out online idiocy. With more data, the hypothesis can be refined. Participants in Second Life (a virtual online world) are not as mean to each other as people posting comments to Slashdot (a popular technology news site) or engaging in edit wars on Wikipedia, even though all use persistent pseudonyms. I think the difference is that on Second Life the pseudonymous personality itself is highly valuable and requires a lot of work to create. So a better portrait of the culprit is effortless, ¬≠consequence-free, transient anonymity in the service of a goal, like promoting a point of view, that stands entirely apart from one’s identity or personality. Call it drive-by anonymity.Anonymity certainly has a place, but that place needs to be designed carefully. Voting and peer review are pre-Internet examples of beneficial anonymity. Sometimes it is desirable for people to be free of fear of reprisal or stigma in order to invoke honest opinions. But, as I have argued (in my November 2006 column), anonymous groups of people should be given only specific questions to answer, questions no more complicated than voting yes or no or setting a price for a product. To have a substantial exchange, you need to be fully present. That is why facing one’s accuser is a fundamental right of the accused.
Furthermore, sites make traffic tradeoffs when requiring registration versus the additional flow they get from not requiring it. And of course, on the net, identity is very easy to spoof, so even if an email address or other form of identification is required, it doesn't mean that there's a real or easily traceable person on the other side.
However, sites that have problems with vandals disrupting their online discussions may prefer to make the choice to require proof of identity in exchange for participation rather than shutting down comments entirely.
There are some nuanced legal issues to be looked at
Jeff Jarvis makes the claim that the code of conduct I've proposed "threatens to give back the incredible gift of freedom given us in Section 230." He points to the EFF page explaining section 230 and says "Go read about that," but he didn't follow his own advice, since the page says, among other things: "Courts have held that Section 230 prevents you from being held liable even if you exercise the usual prerogative of publishers to edit the material you publish. You may also delete entire posts."
That being said, I can see that when I converted the wording of my original exhortation to "take responsibility not just for your own words, but for the comments you allow on your blog" into the statement that begins "We take responsibility..." I might well be proposing something that would weaken legal protections.
(A reminder about the context of the original statement. It was inspired by Chris' Locke's assertion regarding the threatening images of Kathy Sierra that had appeared on his site that he wasn't responsible for what anyone else said or did on the site. That seemed to me to be an abdication of responsibility.)
A site owner obviously doesn't want to take legal liability for the actions of commenters on their site. But at the same time, it seems to me that we need to eschew the idea that we bear no responsibility for the tone that we allow on our site. A site owner does have the ability to delete inappropriate comments, to ban IP addresses, and to impose moderation systems or shut down comments entirely if the greifers get out of hand.
Still, the legal implications do need some attention. A lawyer of my acquaintance wrote in email:
Under US law, there's potentially an overlap/conflict between some aspects of the proposed code and existing legal protections for ISPs, bloggers, and others who provide forums for user-generated content. It's worth thinking about how to take those protections into account in discussing the code. Issues include:
- how to avoid losing or weakening legal protections against liability for infringement (and even defamation, in some circumstances) that now exist for ISPs, bloggers, and others, and that are partly based on the assumption that posted content is not being monitored
- coordinating the code with existing legal tools--such as the DMCA take-down procedure under Section 512--that benefit people who provide forums for user-created content
- avoiding situations that force people into making legal judgments in public about [issues] that they really aren't prepared to make, or that force them into appearing to have made legal judgements (e.g., explaining that they've removed a post because it's
infringing or libelous, when it's really not)Also, outside the US, things are different.
If it hasn't happened already, it might be worth convening a small group of congenial and sensible lawyers to talk about it.
In short, there's some thinking to be done here, but it's better done by real lawyers rather than the all-too-common would-be lawyers of the net.
There's a lot of strong feeling on the subject, but civility still matters
A number of posters are obviously not familiar with Godwin's Law, and in particular, the idea that (per Wikipedia), "There is a tradition in many newsgroups and other Internet discussion forums that once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically 'lost' whatever debate was in progress." Even apart from that strike against their argument, those commenters who equate the idea of a code of conduct with censorship seem to me to fail to understand what I proposed: not some kind of binding code that bloggers would somehow be required to follow, but a mechanism for bloggers to express their policies.
That being said, I am trying to encourage a kind of social self-examination on the part of the blogging community. Many people have written to say that they have no compunctions about deleting unpleasant comments. But I believe that there's a strong undercurrent on the internet that says that anything goes, and any restriction on speech is unacceptable. A lot of people feel intimidated by those who attack them as against free speech if they try to limit unpleasantness. If there's one thing I'd love to come out of this discussion, it's a greater commitment on the part of bloggers (and people who run other types of forums) not to tolerate behavior on the internet that they wouldn't tolerate in the physical world. It's ridiculous to accept on a blog or in a forum speech that would be seen as hooliganism or delinquency if practiced in a public space.
I'm not a big fan of political correctness. I love intense, passionate discussion. I believe that there's a lot of great discussion in the comments on this topic, even when the people concerned are disagreeing with me. But I've taken a stronger stand myself as a result of this discussion in saying, "if there's no substance to the comment, just insults, I'm not going to give it space." If more people feel empowered to make that decision about their commenters, that's not a bad thing.
I challenge anyone who reads the comments on the two entries about the Code of Conduct that are linked to at the start of this entry to tell me that I'm suppressing discussion just because I deleted a couple of comments by potty-mouthed kids who didn't have anything to say but epithets.
It concerns me that Kathy Sierra, whose bad experience triggered this discussion, thinks that a code of conduct such as I proposed would do no good. (She points out that the threatening comments about her are not on sites that she controls.) But I believe that civility is catching, and so is uncivility. If it's tolerated, it gets worse. There is no one blogging community, just like there is no one community in a big city. But as Sara Winge, our VP of Corporate Communications pointed out, it's not an accident that "Civil" is also the first two syllables of "civilization."
What's more, when an exchange of ideas turns into an exchange of insults, everyone loses. As Colin Rule wrote in a post entitled The role of manners in a divided society:
So is it true that civility and politeness should go out the window when confronted with deep and intense feelings? Well, not to sound too much like "Mr. Manners," but I think it's at that point that civility and politeness come to matter more. When emotions get the better of someone, and that person uses language intended to incite and shock rather than reason, it creates an easy target for the other side; the most likely response becomes a similar provocative statement, and then the exchange becomes focused on the excesses of each statement rather than the issues at hand....This dialogue gets us nowhere. It makes it easy to dismiss the other side as foolish, nonsensical, and incapable of rational dialogue. This, in turn, worsens the disagreement and encourages further extremism. The only way out of this situation is for reasoned individuals to say enough is enough, and to rebuild a moderate majority who insist upon civil, polite dialogue.
Colin has neatly summarized what I hoped to accomplish with my call for a code of conduct. The mechanisms I proposed may not be the right ones, but I am convinced that the goal is worthwhile. Let's figure out the right way to reach it.
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¬†I was going to write a lengthy post on Tim O’Reilly’s proposed code of conduct, but then I discovered Toondoo, which lets you drag around icons to create cartoons. And being a cartoonist is so much more fun than being a writer. So, for th... Read More
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I'm a proponent of Tim O'Reilly's blogging code of conduct. I understand there is a storm of disagreement with some of the provisions O'Reilly proposed, which are seen by some as violations of internet freedom. Others don't see a reason for trying to... Read More
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I applaud Tim O'Reilly in his effort to quantify a code of conduct to encourage respectful participation in open communities on the Internet. It sounds more than reasonable to me. In fact, I see no downside whatsoever. Tim O'Reilly: "A lot of p Read More
Comments: 166
[04.11.07 05:16 AM]
Point of information:
"Joey", one of the main accused in the Kathy Sierra incident, has now posted his side of the story:
http://misobserver.wordpress.com/2007/04/08/25/
"My comment was never intended to be harmful and was, in fact, taken out of context"
"Internet Bullying. Nice framing of criticism, indeed."
But he's not an A-lister, so nobody cares :-(
[Tim, does your Code Of Conduct help justice here in any way? I don't see it. Can you see why, frankly, it looks like empty pontificating at best, and attention-grabbing at worst?]
[04.11.07 05:18 AM]
Point of information:
"Joey", one of the main accused in the Kathy Sierra incident, has now posted his side of the story:
misobserver.wordpress.com/2007/04/08/25/
[Sigh ... I can't get a live link through moderation - feel free to delete this comment in favor of the live link one]
"My comment was never intended to be harmful and was, in fact, taken out of context"
"Internet Bullying. Nice framing of criticism, indeed."
But he's not an A-lister, so nobody cares :-(
[Tim, does your Code Of Conduct help justice here in any way? I don't see it. Can you see why, frankly, it looks like empty pontificating at best, and attention-grabbing at worst?]
[04.11.07 06:08 AM]
I tend to think that codifying ethics is a fairly large undertaking that will be very hard to push into mainstream adoption. Many people who do not know the background story might feel that it's too much work for them to formally and quantifiably agree to continue to be good citizens.
Sometimes we have to assume that most people will do the right thing without a badge or membership to a group.
[04.11.07 06:09 AM]
Tim, please verify whether this email quoted by FakeSteve is real or a forgery/parody:
fakesteve.blogspot.com/2007/04/oreilly-dear-fsj-youre-busted-arsehole.html
On the one hand, I have to assume it's a fake; it is, after all, posted on a "fake" blog. On the other hand, given how "tone deaf" your original draft was, I can't quite rule out the possibility that you threatened someone who didn't want to play along.
Please confirm whether that quoted email is accurate or not. It will set the tone for the rest of the discussion here.
[04.11.07 06:11 AM]
Tim,
Thanks for updating. I was one of the few who seemed to have noticed that your original post said "first-draft".
I also had a very modular Blogger Code of Ethics posted a week or so before this happened, and I reacted to your original post and its aftermath on my blog today.
Yehuda
[04.11.07 06:12 AM]
Regarding badges, something similar to Creative Commons like "Blog Editorial Standards" would be good - such as policy on comment moderation, anonymous comments, trackbacks, etc.
Don't mean to trivialize the discussion, but the line was by the bandits posing as sherrifs in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre", not by Humphrey Bogart.
[04.11.07 06:13 AM]
http://jergames.blogspot.com/2007/03/blogger-code-of-ethics.html
and
http://jergames.blogspot.com/2007/04/much-ado-about-something-blogging-code.html
for anyone interested.
Yehuda
[04.11.07 06:27 AM]
Tim, personally, I think your heart is in the right place, and you're well-intentioned. So I offer these comments as a world-weary long-time netizen, meaning no disrespect, but having been through this sort of discussion many, many times.
I don't like the way you seem to be framing this as you're for motherhood and apple pie (or defense of the "cute kitty", to borrow CNN's phrase), and anyone who points out that frankly, your proposals seem knee-jerk, uninformed, naive, somewhat arrogant, and irritatingly, ONLY HEARD BECAUSE OF YOUR STATUS, is then going to be cast as some sort of bad guy for not joining the Shiny Happy People train about backscratching each other regarding the terrible terrible problem of nasty blog commenters and how the A-list should fix it (note: making fun of that sort of platitude-pushing is basically what led to the satire sites that went awry).
You have a hash of several (admittedly interrelated) issues, which makes it very difficult to discuss, because when a problem with one is pointed out, you can just shift to another. Just for example, there's:
1) The specifics of the current Media Event - which has a lot more to due with inflaming mob action than comment policy, despite the media storyline to the contrary.
2) Bullying By A-listers From Their Platform On High - a topic that's dangerous to discuss, since there's essentially no effective way for anyone lower down to fight back.
3) How To Build A Good Comment Community - a very worthy topic, of course, but much has been written about it over the years, and there are many difficult problems (e.g. how do you protect minority rights with a majority-rules moderation system? what if trolls start ganging-up on targets? how to tell the difference between sincere harsh criticism and trolling?)
It would also help to be sensitive to why some liberal politics bloggers are somewhat leery on this topic, since it's a rhetorical weapon sometimes used by right-wing hate-mongers (a phrase I mean literally and not hyperbolically) against liberals (e.g. propose interning a group in a concentration camp for their ethnicity, someone in that group is likely to get very upset, then the hate-monger has an attack of the vapors that their civil proposal to enhance national security has been met with such swearing and uncivil reactions).
Anyway, I've just scratched the surface. Take it in, err, a civil spirit.
[04.11.07 06:35 AM]
Some (many) of the code critics have overlooked basic things: 1) it was put out there for comment, not as a finalized piece. when they attack/accuse you of "laying down the law" or "playing sheriff", well that's just kind of silly. you welcomed their opinions from the git go, and 2) you're the only one i've been aware of who took the initiative to put *something* out there for folks to shoot at. Good on ya! Just wanted to throw my $.02 of gratitude for your leadership on this, and on top of that some admiration for how well you are handling the sometimes quite obnoxious humor and criticism.
[04.11.07 06:36 AM]
Two questions I have not seen answered:
If this is about the Kathy Sierra thing, can someone explain to me how this "Blogger's [sic] Code of Conduct" would have prevented it from happening, or even changed the course of events one iota?
What is to ensure that people who put these badges or post this Code of Conduct on their site actually adhere to it? Does this Code of Conduct not become meaningless without enforcement?
I'd like to see answers to all three of these questions, please.
[04.11.07 07:01 AM]
"We were a little rushed by the timing of the New York Times story, "
You weren't a little rushed, you were a lot rushed. If the draft wasn't ready for public consumption, you should have told the Times to frak off. It really wasn't. That was not a first draft, that was a preliminary draft, as observed about how black and white everything was. Evidently it is was for MSM showboating from this statement.
[04.11.07 07:01 AM]
I strongly believe that there is a need for a single, ranked, online identity - with the option of anonymity on a case by case basis in exceptional circumstances.
It's time there was a single shared, open, service which tracked a user's identity between multiple sites, and also tracked their online 'karma'. Not only would this get rid of the tiresome process of registering again and again for each blog or forum in which you wish to participate, but it has other benefits too. For instance, you could accumulate online 'karma' points, whenever your postings are rated as knowledgeable or helpful or insightful, and loose them when rude or offensive or misinformed. Perhaps a pagerank like algorithm could be used, so that the karma awarded by high karma users is weighted more than low karma users.
A system like this would enable you to quickly gage the credibility of information posted by an individual - something that's sorely lacking in the online world today.
[04.11.07 07:05 AM]
Laura, a big problem is that the presentation DID have an aspect of "We're a gonna clean up this town, since ma purty little gal been done wrong by the Comment Gang".
Leadership shouldn't mean tossing out a half-baked rather inflammatory proposal, and then taking refuge in the defense of starting a discussion. That may be well-intentioned, but it's not leading, it's potentially only attention-grabbing. And ultimately it can even be counter-productive.
[04.11.07 07:22 AM]
Had I known about the Times article in advance, I would have rushed work on my piece, too. But I did take the cue from the "modular" design in Community Management Responsibility. Comments welcome.
[04.11.07 07:32 AM]
Whoops, wrong link. See Community Management Responsibility -- a bit early for me to write the proper URL.
[04.11.07 08:34 AM]
I don't know if a code of conduct is needed. From my experience in gaming communities for many years, I expect 90% of people to talk rubbish, and the main challenge being how to filter them.
I do though strongly believe that the "liberal" thinking of the 60s has created a generation of parents and in turn a generation of children that has grown up with little or no boundaries. Nasty comments is just a minorly inconvenient tip of a big iceberg that we will have to deal with for a long time.
[04.11.07 08:40 AM]
=="Also, outside the US, things are different."
Big deal.. really.. so these efforts only apply to the US blogosphere ??
IMO, this is a just an attention grabbing, kneee jerking post..
[04.11.07 08:56 AM]
So, if so many of you are against Tim's proposal, at least initially, then what solution(s) would you propose?
[04.11.07 08:57 AM]
For what it's worth, I think there is something to be said for recognizable community standards, be they in badge form, or ethos or a written Code. An enforced utter lack of boundaries is as disenfranchising as a tyrannical set of rules. Boundaries mediated by a group of people, rather than a central authority, are the best kind, because they have to serve the needs of the group.
It is very clear that the group of people on the internet have some needs that need serving. A code of conduct is not unreasonable in a modular format. It's not being forced on anyone, and it's lack isn't saying anything in particular. But quashing an (apparent) minority's attempt to create an environment in which they want to dwell, one that is harming no one, is the worst form of tyranny.
Kathy's incident wouldn't have been avoided unless this was a prevalent social custom. But that doesn't mean we should avoid the development of customs.
[04.11.07 09:37 AM]
I don't understand who this "Code of Conduct" is supposed to be aimed at and how it will have any effect whatsoever. None of my blogchums have the slightest bit of interest in following it, and I really can't see the "trolls" taking any notice ó it's just another thing to take the piss out of.
Anyway, blogging about blogging, urrfgh, is there anything more tedious?
[04.11.07 10:07 AM]
Mark, of course the fakesteve blog posting is fake.
[04.11.07 10:16 AM]
Tim - nice idea in spirit, but in practice this is just a complete waste of energy. Bottom line is it comes down to:
1) Having a public presence means you are likely to be subject to negative/hate messaging. This is not going to change. If you don't think the "actually" famous people in the world get death threats, you are sorely mistaken. Why do you think they have bodyguards?
2) Allowing for anonymous comments on a blog is ultimately the blog owners' decision, and with the good comes the bad.
3) Anonymity is a power, but one with virtually no recourse. Using it with responsibility is truly up to the individual's decision. Unless you can find a way to force identity tracking on the Internet, you cannot get past this point.
So again, it's a great concept, and I think we know you mean for the best, but this is just flawed from the start.
[04.11.07 10:17 AM]
I just so hate the thought of adding a layer of bureaucracy to this. It's never been a problem for me. Make everyone jump through hoops because of a few idiots. Nuts. Sounds like make work for people with not enough time. I'm going to resist and reject this.
[04.11.07 10:26 AM]
at risk of sounding dull, legalistic, old-fashioned and unoriginal, i still believe that a simple, legal contract can be fashioned for 'commenters' - anonymous, bilious or otherwise - wherein their ability to post is contingent upon whatever 'code of conduct' the site/blog has established - the registration process becomes a contract...commenters who post libelous, defamatory and/or threatening could be held liable for their posts...
...owners of the site would become 'liable' for actionable comments only after a certain grace period and a formal (legal) notification process...
...all that said, 'free speech' cultures can't legislate 'civility'... i find many of the remarks in this comment section alone remarkably uncivil and pathetically arrogant (arrogantly pathetic?) yet i would permit them if i ran the blog...however, i'd be sympathetic if tim (also) thought those comments coarsened and cheapened the conversation and removed them...
[04.11.07 10:56 AM]
A comment on the meta-issue of the Times forcing your hand: This is a case of a reporter making news, not reporting it. It's one of the things that reporters do. What does any press-savvy product company say when a reporter calls to ask about an unannounced product? Nothing (wrapped, of course, in a polite refusal.) It's hard to resist getting mentioned in The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal or Fortune, etc. But consider the price of being mentioned.
[04.11.07 10:59 AM]
thickslab --
Here's how the "code of conduct" would have helped the Kathy Sierra thing:
Social mores are the prevailing values of a group. One of the "values" of the internet is that unfettered speech is better than any restriction. This keeps people who might have spoken up sooner about a conversation getting out of hand from saying anything. If the prevailing value is that you can say what you want to say without being insulting, and comments that are offensive in various ways are deleted, the general tenor of conversation becomes higher.
The point is that we tolerate on our blogs a style of conversation that we would never tolerate from people in our physical presence. Taunting, bullying, nastiness are not OK, and the fact that they are happening in comments on a blog or on a mailing list doesn't make them OK.
I'm trying to change the general perception of what's OK.
Before the Kathy Sierra flap, I would probably have just said, "don't read that stuff." (And that's still good advice. I had some pretty nasty stuff said about me on fuckedcompany.com during the dotcom bust when we had layoffs, and I had to have the discipline just to ignore it. Fuckedcompany's mission was to create a place for that kind of stuff, much as an inflammatory talk radio show does, or a gossip rag.
But if people had said those things on oreilly blogs, I would still have been conflicted about deleting the comments, because I would have been afraid that it would have been interpreted by readers as censorship.
This is why I wanted to try to move the needle to say "let's clean up our act and be a little less tolerant of abusive speech."
And it's also why, in the course of this discussion, I'm getting much more interested in better mechanisms for "demoting" comments rather than just deleting them. Demoting might mean disemvowelment, but I love the way that librarything lets people flag offensive comments so that they are hidden but still accessible.
With mechanisms like that in place, it would be a lot easier to deal with the gray area of "do I let this one stand or moderate it down?" The binary act of deletion is hard. So as a result of the discussion that's been started here, I'm probably going to focus my efforts on getting better moderation tools into the major blogging platforms.
[04.11.07 11:03 AM]
> "A quick look at buzzmachine shows that Jeff does in fact have just such a "badge" on his site."
The way you describe it, he's got some rules for people commenting on his site, and some disclosures of his financial interests. These aren't promises to be a good neighbour. They say nothing about what style of writing he's likely to use.
[04.11.07 11:03 AM]
> "A quick look at buzzmachine shows that Jeff does in fact have just such a "badge" on his site."
The way you describe it, he's got some rules for people commenting on his site, and some disclosures of his financial interests. These aren't promises to be a good neighbour. They say nothing about what style of writing he's likely to use.
[04.11.07 11:04 AM]
> "A quick look at buzzmachine shows that Jeff does in fact have just such a "badge" on his site."
The way you describe it, he's got some rules for people commenting on his site, and some disclosures of his financial interests. These aren't promises to be a good neighbour. They say nothing about what style of writing he's likely to use.
[04.11.07 12:12 PM]
If "lawyers" have to be brought into this ridiculous idea, then it's already too far overboard to be plausible.
A blogger who is threatened can already get the law involved, but when a net nanny wants his ideas to be legalized (no matter how minor), it's just gone from stupid to pathetic and as useless as a boar with teets.
[04.11.07 12:45 PM]
I think the reason why stating that "civility matters" can be such a hot-topic item to many people is because the whole notion of "enforcing civility" has been used in the public debate to shut down the other side by claiming that technical disagreement is actually uncivil behavior.
Which is why trying to enforce a "civility" code of conduct strikes a lot of people--especially in the blogosphere--as an attempt to impose censorship of ideas. We are all passionate about a few strongly held opinions--yet those who have traditionally demanded "civility" often are the ones who use demands for "civility" as a tool for censorship: they wait like hawks for someone whose opinions they oppose to appear to slip a millimeter over the line--then dump all over them as if a single word infraction in 10,000 words of otherwise well-constructed argument negates the entire debate.
I will not enforce any codes of conduct on the two blogs I run simply because I will not use the current cry for "civility" as a shield for the censorship of ideas--and at times I will argue passionately for the jackass and against the mob looking to shut down not just the jackass's behavior, who then smear the entire debate in an ad-hominem attack using the jackass as "evidence" of the incivility of (conservatives | liberals | cocoa programmers | java programmers | fill in the blank here).
[04.11.07 12:53 PM]
I know I'm putting myself into your jailhouse lawyer category, but I think this is about ordinary language.
I don't see taking responsibility as the same as accepting liability. It certainly doesn't strike me as tantamount to declaring that anything a commentor writes on my blog is as if written by me.
[04.11.07 12:54 PM]
Tim, on a personal level, I give you the benefit of the doubt - it seems that you're upset over a friend being upset, and that comes through (grumble ... y'know, there's lots of nice people who get nasty, *hateful* things said about them, every day, and DON'T have a national Media Event made of it, I'm just saying). However, intending to speak just to the issues, can I outline here part of what's wrong with your process? Quote:
"I'm trying to change the general perception of what's OK. ... This is why I wanted to try to move the needle to say "let's clean up our act and be a little less tolerant of abusive speech.""
It can *give the impression* there that you'd like to impose some sort of norm on not your own blogs, but on *other* people* *blogs*, independent of satirical and parody purpose.
Because that's what it *sounds* like. That's how it *comes* *across*. That there's a two step going-on - that on one hand, you'll claim just to be helping blog-owners to moderate their comments better (a reasonable goal, but not helpful to the current affair), but then slip into trying to impose a more far-reaching norm (a very highly charged topic, to say the least). That second part is causing some ill-expressed charges of censorship and so on, even if not rigorously argued.
This underlies what's causing the ruckus. What's "OK" seems defined as self-evidently what the A-list considers OK, which revolves around their feelings and friendships, independent of any objective standard of fairness.
I keep pointing out, one of the people accused of very serious charges has given his side of the story, denying and explaining much of the initial uproar.
DO YOU GIVE A [EXPLETIVE DELETED] DAMN? WHERE'S THE CODE OF CONDUCT?
Is there a community responsibility to "take action" to set things right when toxic charges are made? No, there's no call for anything needing changing there. I keep pounding this. Why not? Well, the relevant BigHeads don't know the nobodies who got smeared, so it's not an issue.
A code-of-conduct that assumes that if an A-lister is upset, that's going to be _ipso facto_ equivalent to wrong, and occasion to call out the mob, is no great advance.
Let me back up a bit, and say, it's not a bad thing in itself to proclaim we should strive to be kinder and gentler. But you're really late to the party there, in a system which runs on narcissism and egomania and demagoguery. And you lose a lot of moral high ground if while giving this sermon, you ignore all the little people, in favor of lavish consideration of the sensitivities of the highly privileged.
[04.11.07 01:02 PM]
The web is a changin' ... and if people want grandma and grandpa to participate (and they probably should) then there should be a way to make it easy and feel comfortable to them. The wild west of usenet is long gone.
Those of us who work "in public" (I run a public library) *must* have a reasonable way of controlling behavior if we're to provide blogs at all.
[04.11.07 01:20 PM]
I having some difficulty understanding where the criticism is coming from. The way I read Tim's latest post, this isn't designed as a law enforcement mechanism. It's not a mandate down from the mountain. Nor is it dealing with something terribly difficult to implement.
If I understand this correctly, Tim's suggesting a highly modular code of conduct, that allows community preferences (or a blogger's own preferences) to be communicated in a simple visual shorthand. Perhaps some technological improvements to the comments can be made if a blogger wants to make them. That's it.
I'm not seeing any super-prescriptive measures being suggested. Also, no one's said this has to be a code of good behavior. It's a code of conduct, through which a blogger might reasonably suggest, "Hey, anything goes on this site." A symbol of anarchy might be sardonically placed in the masthead to indicate that one might be offended if one sticks around.
I'd be awfully encouraged by a site that required use of a real name and expressed some guiding principles, especially if I could see right away what kind of site I was dealing with. That's useful to me, because I'd rather not waste my time on a site full of jerks. True enough, the policy might not be totally effective. I don't see what's wrong about making the effort.
I also don't see what makes the suggestion "flawed." It's a flexible, opt-in system. That's not even been tried yet. If it's really flawed, don't use it. As is always true in a marketplace, experience is what exposes flaws. ot conjecture, and not analogies to prior, less comprehensive attempts.
[04.11.07 01:37 PM]
"Comment moderation by the community of readers, especially when offensive comments are not deleted but merely made less visible, seems to me to be much better than top-down deletion by the site owner"
... like, say, Slashdot? (Not that /. is any beacon of enlightened conversation, but the moderation system has held up pretty well over the years.) Am I missing something? The LibraryThing feature under discussion sounds just like community moderation, which is nothing new (slashcode has been around for years now) ...
[04.11.07 01:39 PM]
I'll never attach my name to these comments since I have already been a target years ago.
We don't need a code of conduct. I didn't need a code of conduct. But I *did* need the people who thought it was wrong to SPEAK UP AND SAY SO, IN PUBLIC, AT THE TIME THAT IT HAPPENED.
That might have prevented the Kathy Sierra issue from snowballing. Or made her feel less threatened about it. No one posted after the images and said, 'Hey sicko, get a life.' No one said, "Hey, is this getting a little far from what this place was supposed to be" or "Can we all take this in proportion"?
I got emails of support. I got phone calls. Text messages.
No one ever said, "Hey, guys, you're getting out of line here" or "This is bs, morons". No one did.
So the morons thought they had a majority and kept going. And kept going.
All I needed was one person. Because then it would have become two. Or three.
I don't believe in the bs comment "Can't we all get along" because the answer to that is NO. But I do believe in people POLICING THEMSELVES.
I remember the internet in 1994. I remember doing stupid things on Usenet and getting called out for it. I remember saying stupid things and getting called out for it. Whatever happened to that?
[04.11.07 01:39 PM]
Hi Tim,
I for one appreciate the effort you are putting into grappling with the issue of online civility. However, one thing that might help (even if it seems obvious to you) would be for The Code to similarly affirm the importance of contrary opinions and passionate debate. That is, "I reserve the right (and obligation) to delete/moderate opinions I deem destructive, but I still affirm your right to criticize the way I've enforced that policy."
I know *you* feel (and live) that way (as we can see from these comments :-), but I suspect you've underestimated the level of concern about such "moderator authority" being abused. I hope whatever mechanism (ethical or technical) you propose to stop abusive comments also includes similar measures to prevent abusive moderation!
Good luck,
-- Dr. Ernie
[04.11.07 01:59 PM]
One other comment: people are going to be jerks, online and off (but more online, as Penny-Arcade showed some time back). There's no way to prevent that kind of behavior - and it probably would be ill-advised if there were.
Civility should be encouraged (just as we should encourage and expect good grammar, spelling and use of language by literate adults), but we need to be realistic about the way people _will_ behave in a pseudonymous forum.
[04.11.07 02:09 PM]
Yochanon -- the point of talking to the lawyers is to understand specifically whether any particular terms of service weaken the protections under Section 230. This is a worthwhile thing to understand regardless of whether or not you think my proposals for TOS are appropriate.
I'm starting to think that one of the "rules of engagement" ought to be "All commenters must read what they are responding to before opening their mouths." I'm getting a bit tired of trying to respond to things I didn't say.
[04.11.07 02:11 PM]
Anony Mouse -- EXACTLY!!!!
That was the entire purpose of my original "call for a blogger code of conduct," to call BS on Chris Locke's "I didn't say it so it wasn't my responsibility" even though it happened on a site that he had the power to moderate.
As you point out, other people with the ability to post on that blog also had the power to speak up and say it was out of line. No one did.
What I'm asking people to sign up for, so to speak, is that kind of responsibility for "the neighborhood."
[04.11.07 02:13 PM]
Essentially, people called bullshit on every point of your “code of conduct." You concede most of their points, but won't give it up. Captains go down with their ships. But so do barnacles.
Your sermon from the mount – really, the apotheosis of an A-lister talking down to the little people – has been rejected by your subjects, and you're the only one who doesn't know it yet.
[04.11.07 02:34 PM]
Some of the comments were taken out of context, and made to sound far worse than they were in context. But to say that, especially at the time, risked the wrath of the mob. So it wasn't said. This is not considered in the "code of conduct" :-(.
Thus we have endless handwringing over a version of the story that is rather far from a full and disinterested account.
Which connects to the unhappiness that views the code of conduct as mostly a rhetorical weapon.
[04.11.07 02:56 PM]
You simply cannot expect to "manage" human behavior on such a massive scale. There are systems in place already to manage outrageous and violent behavior. They are called bans, post deletes, and calling the police if necessary.
Categorizing humans into comfortable categories based on an arbitrary range of accepted behaviors dictated by a random selection of elite digerati will be about as successful as forcing a river to wear a Christian Dior ball gown.
[04.11.07 03:13 PM]
A lot of people feel intimidated by those who attack them as against free speech if they try to limit unpleasantness.
Anyone who's going to let the trolls intimidate them should either not blog, or not have open comments. It really is just that simple.
It concerns me that Kathy Sierra, whose bad experience triggered this discussion, thinks that a code of conduct such as I proposed would do no good.
While it may concern you, it's still entirely true. Psycho internet stalkers don't give a crap about what the "code" says.
I'm trying to change the general perception of what's OK.
But wait, I thought you were just trying to give bloggers mechanisms for implementing their own policies and not trying to impose your values on anyone. That's what you said. I read it. Don't accuse me of not having read your laboriously over-wordy diatribe on how other people should adopt your values.
If your goal is to direct newbs to plugins that can show/hide based on community moderation, that's fine. If you want to implement a certain policy here, on your site - More power to you.
Is it really that everyone so misconstrued your purpose? Is it really that your goal is just so entirely redundant as to be laughable? There already ARE mechanisms for moderation. Blog owners already HAVE the right to delete or edit comments. Death threats and libel already ARE illegal. So what's the point then?
The point can only be, "I'm trying to change the general perception of what's OK." The point can only be "Free speech is enhanced by civility.î
By your definition, my site is Double Plus Unfree™ then, since my very own posts, right on the front page lack civility and are often INTENDED to offend.
You can blather on all you want about what your goal is, but don't insult my intelligence by insinuating your goal has nothing to do with imposing YOUR values on sites that DON'T belong to you.
[04.11.07 03:43 PM]
"But as Sara Winge, our VP of Corporate Communications pointed out, it's not an accident that "Civil" is also the first two syllables of "civilization.""
Oh for the love of god.
The reason civil is the start of the word civilized is the same as the reason that polite shares a root with metropolis.
"Civil" and "Polite" both originally meant something similar to "the behaviour of someone who lives in the city"
This comes from a time of city-states, where cities and towns were the only place where the rule of law existed. Polite is also from the same root as politician and policeman. Sharing a root is not sharing a meaning.
I'm surprised I would have to explain this to anyone.
[04.11.07 03:50 PM]
Tim
I asked this:
If this is about the Kathy Sierra thing, can someone explain to me how this "Blogger's [sic] Code of Conduct" would have ***prevented*** it from happening, or even ***changed the course of events*** one iota?
Nowhere In Tim O'Reilly's response does he show how this code of conduct would have prevented people from posting anonymous comments, from setting up new blogs to harass her, or from sending death threats. How would hiding or deleting the death threats have **PREVENTED** -- notice that key word -- or **CHANGED** -- another key word -- anything?
Tim O'Reilly, you really need to stop talking down to everyone as if what they need to do to solve this nonexistent problem is adopt your idea of this code of conduct and some meaningless, unenforceable badges and things will start getting better.
[04.11.07 04:16 PM]
Badges. Lots of badges (not my stuff, just linking):
http:// emptybottle.org/badges/
[04.11.07 04:27 PM]
This issue has come up time and again. Unfortunately many bloggers ignore inappropriate behaviour till "it" impacts on a close associate.
It would be fantastic to think bloggers could conduct themselves with integrity all on their own, but many of them can't - including many who also double as mainstream journalists.
I've had a gutsfull. Something needs to be done to control mainly male protagonists who cannot operate ethically without guidance.
Many of the topics discussed in the blogosphere generate emotive activity, this will always be so and a good code will not stifle an essential human need for creative self expression.
Bloggers must consider ways to collectively judge the difference between self expression and going too far, blogospheric history is proving that bloggers need a code to help them do this.
There is a very clear line, as far as I am concerned, between having a genuine clash and threatening another bloggers life.
I support a code of conduct.
[04.11.07 05:54 PM]
I wish people would drop the A lister argument.
Yes, Tim has only given this thought because something has happened to directly effect someone he knows. Who cares?
That does not mean that the problem does not exist, all it means is that this discussion is long overdue.
I have been watching some nasty stuff happen in my own little corner of the webverse, and I don't think it is ok, that the victims just need to grow a pair.
It is easy to let the status quo remain, it is very hard to look at something as valuable to us as the internet and say well Ok, there are some problems with it. What can we do?
Yes, we need to think hard about the possible ramifications of a code and try to make it free from future abuses (especially in regards to censorship). Remember though this is a voluntary code and you don't have to abide by it.
[04.11.07 05:59 PM]
Tim,
All do respect, but I think there's something more than just setting up rules. There's a difference between a blog posting their own ToS and some guy making it up for them.
[04.11.07 06:07 PM]
Jeff Jarvis has a vastly inflated sense of his own importance. I like your idea a lot. Those who don't are - wait for it - perfectly free to ignore it.
As for the badge graphic, that can be worked out. It's the least important part of this idea, and a task easily farmed out to your graphic artist readers, while you focus on the actual structure of your idea.
[04.11.07 06:17 PM]
Aside from your snobbery, Tim, if you still have to check that what *YOU* are wanting to do with legalities, my argument still stands head and shoulders above your snide remark to my post. Apparently with more than half the posts saying it's just a plain dumb idea to even think about setting up this 'code' of yours, you *still* think yourself above it all. Dictators and kings think that way too.
[04.11.07 06:34 PM]
"perfectly free to ignore it."
Yeah, accept when people who know about it visit my blog and don't see a graphic, they'll assume I'm not civilized.
[04.11.07 06:52 PM]
I totally support the idea from the beginning. Ironically, many bloggers already have codes of conduct for their readers which are similar.
I liked the badge idea, albeit a positive symbol rather than a negative one. It was nice way to let readers know that this was a site where their opinions would be respected as long as presented respectfully.
I can't see how or why anyone would object to people's right to be treated with respect in favor of their right to say what ever they like.
The internet, while allowing wonderful advances in communication and knowledge mangement, has also created unrealistic expectations.
- One is the expectation that everything should be free, which led to the rise of peer-to-peer music "sharing";
- Another is the expectation that policing is the responsibility of the end user - hence ISPs and others taking no responsibility for content filtering (Free-to-air, pay TV providers, newsagents and bookshops are all expected to restrict content, yet ISPs claim it's not their responsibility and it's too hard. )
- and another the assumption is the one you're railing against, that online I can say whatever I like, that the rules of civility are somehow different.
[04.11.07 06:54 PM]
"Jeff Jarvis has a vastly inflated sense of his own importance. I like your idea a lot. Those who don't are - wait for it - perfectly free to ignore it."
The same way that movie producers are "perfectly free" to ignore voluntary MPAA ratings guidelines. That is, if they don't mind their movie not being shown anywhere ever.
And comic book publishers in the 1960s and 1970s were "perfectly free" not to submit their comics to the CCA for approval. That is, if they didn't mind not being listed in catalogues by comic book distributors.
All voluntary codes like this do is regulate through peer pressure.
[04.11.07 06:58 PM]
Tim,
First, kudos to you for putting up with the misconceptions and anger this has stirred up and for making compelling arguments.
I'm not sure if this will help or hinder your process in all of this but my little Vermont-based blog is getting more "action" over this issue than pretty much anything in the previous three years of blogging. I'm surprised and a little disappointed at the vitriol the subject has invoked in folks (on my blog and elsewhere). I've had a back in forth with a good friend over it that has gotten quite heated. anyway, I'm posting the links here in case you or your readers are interested (or can put up with the debate at all anymore -- it's exhausting). Apologies for the ugly urls...
http://candleboy.com/candleblog/article.php?story=20070409180350573
http://candleboy.com/candleblog/article.php?story=20070410122605449
http://candleboy.com/candleblog/article.php?story=20070410163702825
http://candleboy.com/candleblog/article.php?story=20070411131204380
[04.11.07 07:08 PM]
Another aspect to this is that in the world wide web, there are people who do not come from cultures or ethnicities where contention or advocacy is regarded positively. Of course there are contentious and rude people everywere, as well as kids who are still learning the various strategies for getting their ideas across.
But people from a respect-based or seniority-based culture (notably many Asian cultures) can be intimidated or repelled by too-direct statements of views. Civility is therefore, to a certain extent, an issue of inclusiveness.
Should the benchmark of civility for the WWW be what middling-polite members of the most contentious societies think is acceptable? That seems to be result at the moment.
[04.11.07 07:19 PM]
Tim,
Of course, I read the EFF on Section 230. And in your next paragraph, you acknowledge that you came to the very same conclusion I did: that the wording of your pledge, not to mention the Times coverage of it, brought possible peril. That's just what I was saying.
As for your earlier assertion about me, I do indeed tell people that I reserve the right, which I exercise occasionally -- rarely, actually -- to kill comments that are abusive or even off-topic. But that is not the same as taking a pledge that I am some paragon of civility. There's a difference. I, like other bloggers, don't want pressure to adopt your pledge and your standards. I already have mine. That's just the point.
Like others, I do think your intentions are good. But I think the implications of your effort are dangerous beyond the one you quote. Start with a New York Times page-one headline using this as yet another excuse to view us as a monolith and judge us by our worst and sum up this world in the word "nasty."
[04.11.07 07:23 PM]
i so enjoyed reading this particular response to mr o'reilly's pie in the sky ideas, whilst choking on my fist, that i thought i should point you all to it again from this new thread.
[04.11.07 09:26 PM]
Tim, to me you come off as a moral high-grounder and that puts a bad taste in my mouth. We're not stupid, we understand the Golden Rule.
I'd like to know who anonymously posted these four simple rules, http://asimplecode.com/, but they're short and sweet and really do say it all. It's only for us to do what we already know is right, maybe reflecting on these simple rules would help.
[04.11.07 09:46 PM]
The internet is the only place where libertianism actually works if we look at the big picture from the Utilitarian perspective.
[04.11.07 11:17 PM]
I think I will let the quote below say what I believe.
"If librarianship is the connecting of people to ideas ñ and I believe that is the truest definition of what we do ñ it is crucial to remember that we must keep and make available, not just good ideas and noble ideas, but bad ideas, silly ideas, and yes, even dangerous or wicked ideas."
-- Graceanne A. Decandido
[04.11.07 11:30 PM]
The marketplace of ideas has a built-in civility meter. We don't need censors. Let Jimmy know that if he's planning on building-in some kind of sanitizing element with his new search engine, he ought to pack it in now.
[04.11.07 11:44 PM]
Why not just let it be? Academia, and in general, the pencil-necked-geek crowd, have an obsessive desire to stare endlessly at thier own navels and then announce something incredibly obvious ("Let's all be civil!"). They then proceed to categorize and pidgeonhole everything from bunny farts to internet behavior, thinking this thinking in some way is related to thier intelligence, which they cannot help but point out to everyone. Go DO something. And while you'er at it, stop talking about it.
[04.11.07 11:44 PM]
Still, personally, I liked Yehuda's Blogger's Code of Ethics. If only it had functional modularity, the way CC Licenses do.
[04.12.07 12:09 AM]
Michael (and Tim) --
I had posted a link to to such a modular framework yesterday morning. Perhaps you may have missed it. Here is the link directly to the framework:
Community Management Responsibility - Proposal
I was inspired by Tim's very first post to do this, since that's what I figured he wanted-- not the code of conduct trap.
Jon
[04.12.07 12:11 AM]
ProfessorDino asked: So, if so many of you are against Tim's proposal, at least initially, then what solution(s) would you propose?
My response to this is: solution(s) to what?
The basis of the problem, as I understand it so far, is that some people are not being "civil" when they post to their blogs and, even more so, when they comment on other people's blogs.
This raises the question: at what level is this solvable? At what level can we say that the problem exists, and a solution can therefore be found?
Tim O'Reilly says: Here's how the "code of conduct" would have helped the Kathy Sierra thing: Social mores are the prevailing values of a group. One of the "values" of the internet is that unfettered speech is better than any restriction.
I propose that, as a starting point, this confuses rather than elucidates. It misunderstands the problem and hence makes the search for a realistic solution harder.
Tim seems to see "the internet" (or "the blogosphere") as a single group or a community. This is a category error. The map is not the territory. The analogy is not the reality. The internet is not "a place", and even less is it a single town, or a community in a single town.
There is no "group" that can be asked to be civil, even if those who see themselves as members of a "blogosphere" wish to act as though there is.
I had never heard of Kathy Sierra or any of the allegedly leading players in this saga until last week. I had never seen their sites, and they have almost certainly never seen mine, or any of the many sites that I visit daily.
We do not inhabit the same "place". We simply use the same tools, and because of the global reach of these tools, we may - once in a while - find ourselves within view of each other. We may then interact well or badly; we may then communicate or miscommunicate, understand each other or misunderstand each other.
This should not be surprising. The internet is a set of linked communication tools that different people, and different groups of people, use for their own (similar, different, separate, overlapping and often contradictory) purposes. Contradiction and friction are built into the tools and will be unless they are centrally controlled, and their use licensed and monitored.
The problem then, imho, is: what do we do with people playing different games using different rules, when they come into contact, and start having problems with each other.
Personally, I am all in favour of civility. I am all in favour of rational discussion. I am all in favour of Jan and Dean's status in the pantheon of popular music being revised sharply upwards. Other people may agree with some or all of these.
I believe that civility, and the recognition of Jan and Dean's true worth, are aspects of life that individuals must decide, and act upon, themselves.
For this reason I think that a Code is silly and potentially dangerous. I think realistic solutions include mechanisms to disemvowel comments when it seems like a good idea; to have them user-moderated into near invisibility; or to have run through a Slashdot-like threshold system.
In other words I don't think you can (or should) stop people from being "inappropriate", but I think you *can* filter so that different groups can get different fish from the same pool.
[04.12.07 12:58 AM]
Although posed as voluntary, the obvious risk is that the "Code" will be adopted by blog-hosts, and imposed upon their bloggers. Granted, there's already Terms of Service, but a more rigid Code potentially creates a scenario where you have blog-hosts issuing ASBOs to bloggers - "Someone found that anonymous comment about George Bush offensive - delete it, or we will delete your blog." The risk isn't on the individual level - the Code and the ridiculous badges can all get bent, imho - it's on the larger scale level. Another example - what if a searching service (we'll arbitrarily harass MSN) decided to exclude all non-labeled blogs from its search service? Or only certain ones ("No sheriff badge, no search result link!")?
And tying anonymity to civility is still problematic. For example, Thomas Paine published Common Sense anonymously - I think, in retrospect, we can all agree that, hey, that was some good, thoughtful political debate. Back then, probably more than a handful of people found it fairly offensive that some anonymous guy was hashing on the King (and Parliment).
And, speaking as a lawyer, let me give you a related concept. My jurisdiction (as with most jurisdictions) has a civility code for attorneys published in the fairly-recent past as a panacea for the vitrol inherent in my profession. Guess what - some lawyers still break ethical rules, some still slur other lawyers, some still scream about your heritage to your face, and some will overtly insult the court in questioning rulings. In short, what's the benefit? None - civility in the legal profession, believe it or not, is regulated by attorneys themselves - lack civility, get ostracized. "Well, but what about the anonymous guy that posts a nasty comment?" Same deal - mob reaction. I was amused today reading a baseball-related post, where someone went all ad hominem on people arguing with him about the slugging qualities of a player. As you got deeper into the string, the collective conscious turned on this guy, and wave after wave of poster destroyed him. He stopped posting - self-regulation at its finest. Same in the legal profession - step outside the bounds, reputation gets hammered, people don't deal with you. And nobody has to pull out a copy of the civility rules and conduct a Sermon on the Mount.
Do I have my own blog rules? Sure - to self-regulate, based on my *own* values and priorities, and based upon the nature of the blog - just to give a heads-up to my readers what they will and won't see me write. I don't, however, regulate my reader's comments - there's something counterintuitive about saying "Hey! Look at my public blog! Please comment!" and then saying, "Oh, but don't say A, B, C - and don't post anonymously - and email me first, in private, if you want to call me out on something...etc." One would imagine that civility would also include not demanding that a stranger adhere to some arbitrary speech code in advance - to flip your point, that wouldn't fly in person, why should it fly on a blog? I can't imagine that you actually meet someone new, and immediately give them a Code of Civility for them to review and adhere to before they start talking to you . . .
[04.12.07 01:25 AM]
Thanks for quoting me in this post. I'm really happy to see how open you are for feedback.
Even if I remain not very enthusiast about a code of conduct, I think civility is