Sigh. Front page of the New York Times yesterday: A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs.
The Blogger’s Code of Conduct has arrived to keep us in line. Look at the initial version of 102 words vs. the current version with 569 words. How big will it get?
I have tons of respect for Tim O’Reilly and I know the intentions here are good, but do we really need a policy document to tell us that death threats are bad? Do we need a manifesto to tell us that we have the right to restrict nasty comments on our own blogs? What will this code actually do anyway?
I hate the idea of an FCC-like mob of nannies determining which word are acceptable (see George Carlin). This document certainly isn’t that bad, but it’s a step in that direction.
Let’s rely on common sense instead of a code. Blog owners shouldn’t be held responsible for content written by site visitors. Blog owners should decide on their own which comments are acceptable or not. Let people post whatever they want and let blog owners delete whatever they want. If you don’t like that someone is deleting your comment, you can start your own site complaining about how that blog is suppressing you. If you don’t like what someone allows at his/her blog, don’t read it.
The web forces us to confront some ugly truths. We see humanity as it really is, good and bad. The same thing that makes the web wonderful is, occasionally, what makes it terrible. That’s the tradeoff we agree to when we get on this ride. And it’s worth it.
It’s like living in a city. You deal with a loss in civility. (Any girl who walks around NYC hears more offensive comments in a day than most bloggers hear in a lifetime). But in exchange you get the wonder of being in a thriving metropolis. The culture, the diversity, the excitement, the energy, and the vitality. Let’s not all move into a gated community just because there are a few bad apples around.
Matt Lee
on 10 Apr 07Matt,
This is a useful piece. Recently, we’ve had some issues with IRC channels, with a few users getting particularly abusive towards others, often seemingly without reason. We’ve had to say we won’t tolerate these kind of attacks, as they make the overall resource less useful.
mattl
Beerzie Boy
on 10 Apr 07You are right; the manifesto does little more than give bloggers right that they already have, and make the less-than-bold statement that Bad People are Bad. I understand that the intentions are good, but the whole thing is a little silly and condescending.
Kevin
on 10 Apr 07It’s funny to see this come up with blogs just now. Forum owners have been dealing with these issues for years.
A lot of people out there have a misunderstanding that a blog or a web forum is a democratic country. But it’s more like private property. If you have guests over to your house and someone is making threats or harassing others you throw them out, no questions asked. Why should it be any different on a website.
Andy
on 10 Apr 07I guess this is all part of the suburbanisation of the internet.
Whereever there are cities, there will be suburbs.
It doesn’t mean the suburbs can’t won’t and shouldn’t exist.
Some people prefer safety, rules and signs telling you not to walk on the grass. I prefer living in the city.
Dave P
on 10 Apr 07Let’s rely on common sense instead of a code.
Yeah, but then I don’t get to wear one of those nifty badges!
Mike Rundle
on 10 Apr 07Great post, Matt, I’m glad you guys posted something on this issue. Once site owners start taking responsibility for what other people say on their site, the legal can of worms opens up and you can be sure people will take advantage of that. I agree with how site owners should deal with comments, and that’s something I’ve done on my blogs for at least 3 years—if your comment is offensive or brings down the quality of the conversation then it’s not posted, simple as that.
dave
on 10 Apr 07agreed! I like the city analogy.
someone
on 10 Apr 07I’m not at all surprised that people are latching on to this. It allows them to feel self-righteous and engages their desire to build up a little Internet social club.
These are people who blog about blogging, for chrissake.
brad
on 10 Apr 07Extending the city analogy, if you take it as a given that 80 percent of the people in the world are idiots (a percentage that some might see as a gross exaggeration and others might see as far too conservative), it follows that when you live in a city you will be exposed to lots of idiots—not because the proportion of idiots is higher in cities but simply because there are more people. Same goes for the web. Establishing a code of conduct is futile. Didn’t Guiliani try to do something like that in New York? I didn’t notice any change when I was last there.
Derek DeMarco
on 10 Apr 07As always the diversity of postings brings me back to SVN. And as always the levelness of head shines. The youth of the medium is still in the air of this tube system we call home. This first reflex is to code or hinder, but in the end I echo the flavor of the post. We must ourselves ask how it is we want to be with one another. Thank you for your insight.
Geoff B
on 10 Apr 07My problem with the bloggers code of conduct is that it only bans the most obvious things. Threats, extremely abusive language, ad-hominem attacks? Well yeah, that does tend to degrade the quality of discussion.
I’ve given up on a few discussion forums that I used to enjoy, largely because the discussion has degraded to the point where there isn’t much insight left. Thing is, I’m not sure the bloggers code of conduct would do much to help. A determined troll can destroy a discussion without threats, foul language, or ad-hoc attacks.
It takes effort and talent to manage discussions where disagreements are intense and emotions often run high. A good moderator never wants to censor a point of view, but needs to maintain an environment where respectful discussion of the issues prevails. A well monitored blog that manages to strike this balance is actually a non-commody product, and is a major business asset for companies like 37Signals.
Josh
on 10 Apr 07Speaking of which, whatever happened to the “Troll Cap” that you guys rolled out last year?
Darren
on 10 Apr 07From this weeks business week, article entitled “Web Attack”
Counter Vigilantes “Other businesses hire outfits such as BuzzLogic, which uses algorithms to analyze which bloggers and social media are driving the conversation around issues that matter to marketers. For executives there’s a new, $10,000 premium service from ReputationDefender.com that can promote the info you want and suppress the news you don’t. The company also claims it can make information disappear altogether.”
hmm…
Karl
on 10 Apr 07I just love the Troll Cap!
And I really like to know if my comments might be consored when posting (just like in this blog). THAT part is good, right?
Erika
on 10 Apr 07I think what is useful about the code of conduct is that it is something people can use as a pre-built comment policy on their own blog. I think what is not useful is the expectation that some people have that everyone should follow any particular code of conduct.
I liked an idea I saw on one of the many discussions of this topic. Someone should put together several codes of conduct that people can choose from like Creative Commons licenses. The standardization would allow people to know immediately what an “anything goes” or “don’t be a jerk” or “comments may be deleted on my smallest whim” policy means and could encourage blog writers to choose when they create their blog.
Ben
on 10 Apr 07Kudos for not caving to this ridiculous idea. I think it’s dumb and will ultimately not survive.
Steve M
on 10 Apr 07I hate regulators and the hate they hate for hatesake!
Just kidding. I love blogs and forums and wikis and scoring and tagging and websites, minisites and banner ads and photosites and videosites and … the last thing we honestly need is to listen to someone talk to us about the web for the webs sake.
If someone has something other than commentary based on fundamental basic observation to say, then I will listen. But, lets stop listening to the voices that are simply famous for being famous about talking about something they observed. The last time I looked, “watching the web” was not a science.
This topic is again just another set of observation-commentary and not interesting or innovative. Take for example, “Web 2.0” as a web observation. Companies are now advertising jobs for people with “web 2.0” skills. When people ask if I have “web 2.0” skills, I tell them, “I just upgraded to Web 3.5 Beta, so I don’t work on Web 2.0 anymore.” I think it is time to expose the rediculum of issues like this, when, like Kevin said, the web has been successfully dealing with this since BBC forums existed.
I recommend we just keep blogging and letting commentary be just that: commentary.
Jay
on 11 Apr 07I very much agree that in the legal sense bloggers should not be responsible for their comments section, but it has been my experience that in most controversial bloggers are very biased when deciding which comments need to be deleted. In those cases, it’s pretty hypocritical to disavow responsibility for the remaining comments.
For example, most political blogs draw some pretty heated commentary which often goes over the line into blatant insults, threats, or bigotry. I’ve found that quite a few popular political bloggers will tend to delete inflammatory posts directed at certain groups or viewpoints while allowing equally inflammatory posts directed at other groups. When accused of extremism, these sorts of bloggers tend to disavow the extreme comments that they allowed even thought they were selective in deleting posts or banning users.
I’m thinking of a few popular blogs – I realize that this phenomena is far from universal. Just offering a different viewpoint on the comments thing.
Colin
on 11 Apr 07I agree that we shouldn’t have a “FCC-like mob of nannies” evaluating blog content (although I feel it might be unfair to call the current proponents of the code “nannies”). But don’t guidelines have a role in helping users, especially beginning users, understand what “common sense” is in terms of blogging? I coordinate website services for a school district about to implement student blogging; although my colleagues and I believe that our student blogs should be self-policing and that student respond should not require constant moderation, we feel that providing guidelines (as we do for all other types of behavior) is an essential part of the learning experience. We don’t tell our 1st graders to use “common sense” to govern their behaviors towards one and other. We give them guidelines to try to develop their sense of right and wrong.
In other words, I think we shouldn’t be too quick to dismiss the values of the code of conduct completely; they could be valuable (and productive) guidelines. My two cents worth.
sloan
on 11 Apr 07“You deal with a loss in civility.” That is a choice, not a requirement. I think that it all has to do with what standards you set. I don’t believe in a police state, but the broken windows theory does have some validity. To my point… when comments that are insulting are allowed it opens the door to worse comments and acts. When people think certain behavior is okay and given anonymity on top of it, bad things happen when a statistically significant number of people are thrown in. How many of those people are real threats? Probably not many, but that doesn’t matter.
The whole Imus thing is case-in-point. You’ve got political pundits calling people *ags, suggesting people be assasinated, and all sorts of other garbage and they’ve been rewarded for their behavior. Hopefully his suspension will help create a much needed backlash.
Having lived in NYC and LA I will echo earlier comments about percentages of idiots. I always think of it as you don’t recognize the 1,000 people you walk by in NYC that are totally normal and polite, you remember the guy screaming at a pigeon because they are evil.
Tony Mars
on 11 Apr 07Thanks for the interesting post. Your analogy is exactly right. The Internet is like a city. You take the good with the bad. The gloss with the grit.
We just launched Version 2.0 of our online content discovery service over at http://www.auditoriumA.com yesterday – and it includes our newly minted blog … NotBots (humans – not bots – editing the web). http://www.auditoriumA.com/blog
So I guess it’s just a matter of time until we encounter both the good and bad of blogs and comments. Whatever happens, though, it should be an interesting ride!
anon
on 11 Apr 07I think blog/site owners should be held accountable for their content. Here’s an example..
http://www.ripoffreport.com
People can post whatever they want on the site, w/o burden of proof, complaints about companies and people go unchecked.
Last year, someone stole one of our personal checks, made fakes and used them in a mail fraud scam. As if dealing with that wasn’t bad enough, some of the recipients made posts to that site with our name and address calling US the scammers—meanwhile we were busy dealing with phone calls from check cashing stations, police departments, etc.
I contacted the owner of ripoffreport.com requesting that he remove the posts because we too, were victims and that he could verify with our bank. Now doing web searches on our names results with those posts, affecting our credibility.
The website owner refused to take the postings down even after offering proof, as he just provides a ‘forum’ and I could submit a rebuttal. We’ve also learned that he’s offered to take down bad (and possibly wrong) posts for companies for a ‘fee’. Take notes kids… foster a problem environment, offer to remove the fruits of your labor for a fee.
www.kottke.com posted the other day about policing your content: “Really fucking hard, in fact…it requires near-constant vigilance. If I opened up comments on everything on kottke.org, I could easily employ someone for 8-10 hours per week to keep things clean,”
Apparently he can’t even keep it ‘clean’ himself.
And he continues: ”... to facilitate constructive conversation, coaxing troublemakers into becoming productive members of the community,”
Gosh, why would you ever want to do that?
And guys, stop for a minute and see where this started—from a woman blogger who had some nasty stuff posted about/directed to her. How would you feel if that was your wife/sister/mother? Why just last month you dudes were “hey where are all the women conference speakers”.. and now you won’t even protect them from the cyber creeps.
I don’t want rules and legislation either. I just want to people to acknowledge what’s going on some blogs is just bad and not shrug it off.
JohnN
on 11 Apr 07Yes! well said, lets let common sense prevail. I understand that some people feel that offended by what goes on blogs, but then they just should not read them. We do not want to start curtailing free speech. However, if proof of such downright negative behaviour becomes apparent, something must be done and negative posts must be taken down.
ian
on 11 Apr 07I think it was a former CEO of Burger King who took a few thousand pages of Codes of Conduct and Dress Codes and Behaviour Codes and dumped them in favour of a simple approach. He called it “UYOBJ” Use Your Own Best Judgement
Martin Kelley
on 11 Apr 07Glad to see this. I too rolled my eyes when I saw the code stuff on Tim’s blog and then the NYTimes. If all it took to get civility was a nifty icon and 500 words no one would read that’d be great, but in the “real world” (different post, sorry) it’s about taking the time to tend to comments—deleting the ones that are inappropriate for the tone you’re site maintains and banning the nutcases who won’t abide by them. Delete the death threats and move on (I’ve gotten more than I can count from peace work I engage in, some quite creepy).
Maybe two years ago a few members of a niche community I helped bring together (http://www.quakerquaker.org) got all excited by the idea of putting together a code of conducts. It was initiated by a fellow who didn’t like that I had banned him from comments, a real jerk who spent the next six months blogging highly idealistic posts whose subtexts were clearly (and sometimes openly) snipes at me. I’m big enough in the community and he’s clever enough in his argumentation that it actually got him visits—it was undoubtedly the most popular era of his blog. Is it a sign of status when you get your own stalker?
The problem with codes is that they legalize what should be common sense. Their nature is to increase in verbiage as clever detractors pick them apart, finding loopholes for demanding that they be given respect. Attention then turns to the code rather than to the work the community is engaged in.
We should just let every website and blogger decide for themselves what’s appropriate and to model that language in their posts and moderation style. That’s what’s going to happen anyway: I can’t see this catching on in the mainstream unless someone like Myspace jumps on board. And even if every site had a nifty icon, we’ll still be weeding through comments and saying no to bullies.
Rod Knowlton
on 11 Apr 07I agree that this whole thing is getting out of hand.
As an alternative, I humbly present A Simple Code.
Feature complete at 54 words, no badges, just common sense. (DNS still propogating, also available on S3)
Dracolytch
on 11 Apr 07Like Rod, I prefer simple codes too. I run ModernWiccan.com, a fairly large pagan community.
For a year or two we didn’t have rules… but eventually I had to come up with some. They’ve stood without modification for quite some time.
The rules themselves are 13 words, a warning not to say “But he did it!” is 10.
Forum Rules
Rod Knowlton
on 11 Apr 07s/pog/pag/
Doh!
Gordon
on 11 Apr 07I hope that one day (soon) these self-appointed codifiers will look back on this the same way people look back on huge lapels and platform shoes: “What the hell were we thinking?”
It seems to me that this is just more of the piffle that the Bloggers Orating On Blogging (BOOBs) use to fuel their irrelevant pastime.
Laurel Fan
on 11 Apr 07I don’t really have anything to say about the code or anyone’s common sense codes. I find it interesting that when you talk about offensive comments you use the female gender. And I think that reflects reality. Women are targeted more often and in different ways than men, both in reality, both for “just” comments and for actual violence. So I would humbly propose that the experience for women living in a city is different than that for men.
Ken Kennedy
on 11 Apr 07Huzzah, Matt. Well-spoken. I think I’ll just link to you and Dave Slusher, and be done with it.
Heggsta
on 13 Apr 07It’ll be interesting to see how the court proceedings pan out in the current Australian case, where a plaintiff is taking legal action against a blog owner for allegedly racist comments that were posted on their blog (not by the owner).
I don’t know the exact details, but under Australian law blog owners (and other publishers) are protected by an “innocent dissemination” clause, which in this context means blog owners aren’t liable for any damage caused by posters’ comments. However the clause can’t be used as a defence to racism, so “publishers” of racist comments are liable for any “damage” caused by those comments.
Not sure what the result will be, but if the blog owner is found liable, it’ll be interesting to see what the ramifications are for blog owners in Australia (I guess all comments would need to be checked and approved before publishing, which would be a real pain in the ass.)
This discussion is closed.