If you can’t say anything nice, continued

Posted April 9th @ 4:00 pm by Andy Print This Post

The discussion about civility on the web (sparked by this incident, if you missed it) is picking up steam—web gurus Tim O’Reilly and Jimmy “Wikipedia” Wales are weighing in on the question of cultivating civil discourse online. They’re calling on bloggers to help them put together a blogging “code of conduct”. What do you think of the code of conduct so far? A good idea, or a futile effort? How might it be improved?

Filed in: Blogging

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4 Comments

  1. Jimmy@relevantchristian.com
    April 9, 2007 at 17:23

    I don’t know about imposing a “code of conduct” for the blogoshpere.
    From the beginning we decided that we wanted to have control over what gets put on out site. We have the opportunity to either approve or deny comments at anytime. We have only had to deny comments only a handful of times and only when we felt they were personally attacking or straying too far off subject.

    So…I said all of that to say this….I am undecided.

  2. James
    April 9, 2007 at 18:34

    I’m all for a code of ethics to restore credibility and civility to the blogsphere.

    I would add a clause that bloggers attempt to verify all information on their sites with at least two reliable sources.

    I also commend the Legal Guide for Bloggers A few courts have ruled against blogs for libel. This site offers guidelines to separate free speech and criminal libel.

    If bloggers don’t police themselves, you can be sure the government will!

  3. Greg Wright
    April 9, 2007 at 20:16

    The issue should not be “imposing” a code of conduct. A voluntary code of conduct could easily be established so that visitors to blogs and forums would know that they’re in a “safe” or “no-tolerance” zone. Sites that don’t want to subscribe to the code wouldn’t need to—and that would say a lot about such sites.

    In every publishing field, codes of ethics have eventually needed to be developed. This is just one of those cases, and it’s a good thing.

  4. Andy
    April 10, 2007 at 17:37

    Quick note—you guys might be interested in this argument against a blogger code of conduct.

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