Blog News Watch

There’s been a lot - a lot - written lately about the code of conduct proposed by Tim O’Reilly in response to the hateful abuse heaped on poor Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users recently. (Lot of links in that one little sentence. You should see the links I left out. Go on - see for yourself.) And by far, most of the responses seem to fall pretty close to the “don’t tell me what I can say and can’t say in my own blog” point along the spectrum. (A few notable exceptions - Scoble, who thinks it might have some merit but doesn’t like the proposal - Scoble was one of the first to support Sierra with a silent protest on his blog, something I shamelessly copied on my own legal practice blogs as well.)

I have a different opinion. (You had a feeling, right?) I think it’s a great idea. And frankly, I’d be reluctant to frequent any blog whose owner didn’t agree to it. It seems to me the protests generally miss the point. A code of conduct isn’t designed as a form of advance censorship. First of all, it can’t be censorship if you’ve agreed to it in the first place (a point generally lost in the discussion). But putting that aside, what does such a code - any code - really say about the people adopting it? More importantly, who’s the code really for? Hint: it’s not for the blogger.

I think this is getting lost in the discussion because of the fantastic way this all started - with death threats against one well-known blogger. The protests against the code seem to be howls against restrictions, which is awfully misplaced. We’re not talking about feeding trolls here, despite what the more vocal opponents would suggest. We’re talking about death threats. Criminal conduct.

And we’re not talking about censorship, either. We’re talking about agreeing in advance to certain minimal standards of human decency. And if you can’t agree to that, and agree to take some minimal effort to enforce that in your comments, then why would I want to play with you?

At this point, I need to make this clear: I’m not writing specifically about O’Reilly’s proposed code or anyone else’s for that matter. Rather, I’m addressing solely the idea of such a code, in general. Unfortunately, there is no argument to the point frequently made that the blogs that don’t adopt a code will be “more interesting.” (See Scoble link above.) That’s probably true, in a trainwreck sort of way. But here’s the decision we have to make individually and as a society: what kind of world are we building here? We don’t get to complain and sit on our butts and do nothing to change the world we’re complaining about. (Well, we do, but that kind of sucks, frankly.) Nobody can change any situation without putting forth the effort to make a different choice. You can’t quit smoking if you don’t eventually make the choice not to pick up that cigarette. You can’t lose weight if you don’t eventually make the decision to get off the couch (or more likely for this audience, the computer desk chair) and exercise. Similarly, we can’t change the blogging world without at some point making the decision to (A) behave differently and (B) spend our time and effort on blogs that also behave differently.

It’s just that simple.

blogging code of conduct, tim o’reilly, kathy sierra, scoble