The Blogger’s Code of Conduct, and Those Steenking Badges

The line from the movie actually goes like this: “”Badges!? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges! I don’t have to show you any stinking badges!!”

It’s been two weeks since Kathy Sierra’s blog post about her taking a break from blogging after some very vicious and threatening things were posted about her on some sites that functioned as the online equivalent of “burn books”. So far, we’ve seen:

• Valleywag showing their worst side. It takes a special breed of dickery to dismiss Kathy Sierra with the line “A cry of misogynism pretty much shuts off debate”, which itself is a good way of pretty much shutting off debate. It smacks of the old canard on neocon blogs, “A racist is someone who’s winning an argument with a liberal”. The tone of their follow-up articles pretty much sums up their editorial stance on the whole thing.
• Dave Winer condemning the “chorus of cowardice”. You know things have gotten weird when Dave Winer is giving lectures on how to treat people.
• That Sierra/Locke meetup on a CNN piece that you could argue was a plot by the mainstream media to make bloggers look like idiots. The piece was awful, and CNN anchor TJ Holmes’ closing remark, “How can you threaten the cute kitty?” was insult pile atop injury to our intelligence.
• Precious little discussion about what I consider Kathy Sierra’s worst call: naming names prematurely. Namely, listing names that were very tangentially related to the sites in question. I stand by my earlier remarks that Chris Locke and Frank Paynter made bad calls in starting those sites. However, her mention of some other names seemed more like lashing out. I understand the sentiment, but disapprove of the actions.

And now, we have computing’s best-known book publisher and conference organizer, Tim O’Reilly, announcing the draft version of a Blogger’s Code of Conduct. This code of conduct has six points, which are:

1. We take responsibility for our own words and for the comments we allow on our blog.
2. We won’t say anything online that we wouldn’t say in person.
3. We connect privately before we respond publicly.
4. When we believe someone is unfairly attacking another, we take action.
5. We do not allow anonymous comments.
6. We ignore the trolls.

The code of conduct has attracted a considerable amount of attention in both the blogosphere, where it currently is the #1 topic on Techmeme, and the mainstream press, where it’s the subject of an article in the New York Times.

As with many movements that start on the web, there is a badge that people who want to adhere to the code can stick on their websites to show their adherence — it’s the “Civility Enforced” badge that appears below:

If your blogging style takes the opposite tack — that is, you’ve got a “free-for-all” blog where “discussions get heated, crude language, insults and other ‘off color’ comments may be encountered”, Tim provides this badge that you can post on your blog so that all the world can know what they’re getting into:

I agree with longtime blogger Shelley “Burningbird” Powers, who wrote this comment in response to the code of conduct:

You created badges.

You actually created badges.

I just can’t believe you created badges.

My response was to create the badge below. Feel free to use it!

More editorializing later, when I’ve got the time.