In the January/February issue of Backbone, we ran an article called Turning over the Dark Side of the Internet which brought into focus some of the netherregions of the online world. After reading Danny Bradbury's article, it becomes increasingly clear that while the internet is, by its nature, a largely self-policed place, there is still room for organized codes of conduct, especially in the world of blogging.

The Blogger Code of Conduct seeks to clean up the quality of online discourse while by-and-large serving to keep the conversations not necessarily friendly, but a bit more civil. The Blogger Code of Conduct is the brainchild of Jimmy Wales, creator of wikipedia and Tim O'Reilly a conference promoter and blogger who is widely credited with coining the term Web 2.0. On O'Reilly's blog, he states “[It] gives us an opportunity to change the level of expectations that people have about what’s acceptable online,” he is also quick to add "The aim of the code is not to homogenize the Web, but to make clearer the informal rules that are already in place anyway." Think of it as a Robert's Rules of Order for the blogosphere.

While the idea of the Blogger Code of Conduct has been thrown around in certain circles for a while, the impetus is largely due to some very specific death threats received by influential tech blogger Kathy Sierra after she got involved in a dispute over whether it was acceptable to delete potentially liabelous or inflammatory comments left on ones personal website. Sierra was so alarmed by the threats that she cancelled a keynote appearance at a trade show and called the police, who are now investigating.

The Blogger Code of Conduct will most likely exist in many different forms with different types of rules pertaining to different types of blogs. While the Code of Conduct will not necessarily be adopted by all bloggers, having different sets of rules (mostly having to due with self-moderation and comment-censoring) could let readers know, in advance, what is expected of them when they participate in a particular blog.

The Internet can be a pretty wild place, and bloggers are an opinionated and sensitive bunch. If you want to know more, have a look here.

Andrew Rideout