As part of the fallout of the Kathy Sierra debacle, a bunch of folks thought that the world would be a friendlier, happier place if there were some sort of blogger code of conduct. This weekend, Tim O’Reilly put fingers to his keyboard and published such a document, complete with some really cheesy badges.
I note that it is a “draft” and I hope that means it will change… a lot… before anyone takes it seriously. I’ve got several issues with some points in the code of conduct, addressed here in a random order:
- There’s nothing wrong with anonymous comments. People can be abusive using their own name, and people can make some good points when posting anonymously. Making it harder to participate in the discussion will hamper overall quality.
- It’s absurd to think that every blogger who wants to write about something else someone else has said is going to contact them privately for permission before blogging about it. I didn’t write Tim O’Reilly to let him know I was going to make this post, and that’s OK. O’Reilly claims the policy is about “frank and open conversation.” In my world, frank and open doesn’t mean needing to ask permission to speak.
- Bloggers aren’t responsible for commenters. Intelligent people can separate the differences between the two. Only allowing comments that happen to meet some vague standard for acceptability.
- The proposed code of conduct states:
We define and determine what is “unacceptable content” on a case-by-case basis, and our definitions are not limited to this list… [We reserve the right to change these standards at any time with no notice.]
That’s just lovely. There’s nothing quite as beautiful as a set of rules which change on a whim and aren’t really defined.
Fortunately, it seems that pretty much everyone realizes this is a load of crap. At Deep Jive interests, Tony notes that folks are really talking about comment policies. Scoble explains why he can’t adhere to the code, and Michael Arrington lists out the various ways in which he won’t abide. I see that local bloggers Jack and b!X chime in as well.
[tags]oreilly, timoreilly, codeofconduct, bloggers, blogging, kathysierra[/tags]
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Arrington and Scoble raise some VERY good points.
It seems like this went around once before, and it didn’t really get anywhere. I stand by my original assessment: We don’t need no steenkeeng badges!
Its definitely the anonymous comments code that seems to get under everyones skin.
Bloggers who blog for non tech savvy people would have the most concerns with this one. People dont like leaving their name on the web and especially dont like posting their email address even if it says “Never Published” next to the field.
Regardless, it useless anyway as people could simply write a fake name and enter a non-existent email address.
“This is G o o g l e’s cache of
http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/04/draft_bloggers_1.html as
retrieved on 23 Apr 2007 13:11:52 GMT.
G o o g l e’s cache is the snapshot that we took of the page as we crawled the web.
Google is neither affiliated with the authors of this page
NOR RESPONSIBLE FOR ITS CONTENTâ€.
End Quote
Google owns Blogger.com. Has Tim O’Reilly contacted Google with the section of his proposed code that must (by ipso facto) also apply to the platform as well as the blog administrator?
In an interview with Wired on Friday (13th) to promote his latest web 2.0 conference, O’Reilly said: “I’ve come to think the call for a code of conduct was a bit misguided.”The admission came two days after a post on his Radar blog entitled “Code of Conduct: Lessons Learned So Far”. In it he wrote: “I was proposing a modular set of terms of service, so somebody could say, ‘I don’t want this kind of behaviour.’ Now, a lot of people already do that, so it’s really much ado about nothing.”
Despite coming to the above conclusion, The O’Reilly Saga continues in his comments section with fake commenters posting ridiculous off-topic subjects and silly Youtube links.
O’Reilly says he knows the person who attacked Kathy Sierra. He gets the victim and the perpetrator together on CNN – then somebody pumps up the NY Times publicity machinery for both the victim and the perpetrator. It doesn’t take a genius to see who may be benefiting from this little fracas.
Then O’Reilly starts blaming a random responder as being one of the attackers…and…when bloggers respond, most of the track backs lead to O’Reilly’s Radar Website – and (duh! – as an Internet expert!) he is unaware that there are persistent error messages generated in
his responders’ posts, so that it becomes a hit and miss game whether the post actually gets published or not.
Perhaps Tim’s involvement relates to this little gem.
Sierra’s current gig, along with her partner Bert Bates, is developing and producing the bizarre new Head First series of books for O’Reilly.
P T B Anonymous