Doc Searls Sheds Some Light

[Wednesday, March 28, 2007, 5:17 p.m. EDT — Edited to correct grammar and to boldface a very important point.]

There’s a reason that I like to call Doc Searls “the adult supervision of the blogosphere”. He’s taken a reasoned and very measured approach to the Kathy Sierra affair in his posting titled Getting Past the Bottom of What Went Wrong. Now he reprints a letter by Alan Herrell, a.k.a. The Head Lemur, which sheds some light on what happened. Here’s the most relevant snippet:

…just about every online account that i have has been compromised. Most importantly my digital identity and user/password for typepad and wordpress. I have been doing damage control, for my clients. How the fuck i got to be part of this mess is revolting.

The Kathy Sierra mess is horrific. I am not who ever used my identity and my picture!!

Be sure to read the whole thing, and pass it around.

This brings me to an important point, one that I should have made extremely explicit, especially in light of the strong emotions that this subject brings up. The evidence for the “who did it” part is still circumstantial, and it’s awfully tempting to point fingers and name names — it’s slander, and it ain’t right (Kathy herself did this, but I’m going to wait a little longer before I comment).

For the moment, the best points to discuss are:

• Balancing freedom of speech and its unintended consequences
• Identity and anonymity
• Snark, satire, lampooning and so on — where do each of us draw the “too far” line, and why?
• The nature of the commentary so far

Let me know what you think. There’s been a little-back and forth going on in the comments to an earlier post — take a look and if you’re so inlcined, feel free to join in.