The proposal for a Blogger’s Code of Conduct again provokes cries of censorship (via the New York Times). But I’ve never understood how deciding the rules for debate on your own blog could be the same as censorship. As publisher you are responsible for your blog, who else could be? So I have no problems with the opening “clause” of the code of conduct:
We take responsibility for our own words and reserve the right to restrict comments on our blog that do not conform to basic civility standards.
Still, the initiators O’Reilly and Wales quickly reach difficult waters with clause 5 “We do not allow anonymous comments.” Importantly, they qualify this: An alias is allowed, but commenters have to supply a valid e-mail address before they can post. Demanding from people that they must always identify themselves with their full name creates a very high barrier against a free debate online. And it would effectively stop people from commenting who have every reason to guard their identity (such as whistleblowers).
Actually, Norwegian news website Dagbladet recently adopted clause no. 5. They went from no restrictions on commenters to making a valid email address mandatory. The first results: The amount of comments were reduced by 40-50 percent, but the discussions gained a lot in civility (see report in Norwegian. I was interviewed in the piece). I’m looking forward to hear about the long-term effects.
The issue is about something larger than blogging, then. News websites that allow readers to comment face the same challenge: Keep the debate lively and open, but combat trolls and vandals. Just reproducing the old reader’s letters page from the printed newspaper is not the answer, that much we know now.
UPDATE: Dan Gillmor joins the discussion:
If I invite someone into my living room, that’ls not permission to spit (or worse) on my carpet. I will invite anyone who does that to leave.
(About my own policy: In fact, I moderate comments before they go online, but that’s because of an inadequate anti-spam system, not to stop uncivilized comments. I hope to install a better anti-spam solution. Then I will allow direct publishing and moderate afterwards).
Fighting cyberbullying
Tim O`Reilly (the author behind the term Web 2.0) and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales now proposes ethical guidelines for the blogosphere. These guidelines will probably be viewed by some as an attack on the general freedom of speech on the internet.
How…
One trend I’ve noticed recently is potentially very problematic to a daily newspaper like Dagbladet: increasingly, anonymous commenters seem to be resorting to name-calling and verbal abuse of people mentioned in articles. If that sort of thing goes on unchecked, people could have reservations about being interviewed by Dagbladet. Which can only benefit its competitors, many of which does not have the same policy.