I did not say that I avoid sites I disagree with. On the contrary!

I said that I avoid sites where bad manners overwhelm constructive discourse. People really seem to get “into” flaming and bitching and games of “gotcha” and I hate that.

I don’t think anyone should be censored ever. But managing your own site is not censorship. How could it be?

Once again, the original proposal was a call for voluntary controls that support civility. For the same reason that we throw rowdy filmgoers out of the movie theater and send bratty kids to the principal’s office, we can stop disruption on our sites. If we wish to. That is NOT censorship.

I’m a big supporter of banning and deleting misbehaving posters. A misbehaving poster is NOT necessarily someone I disagree with. It’s someone with bad manners, who posts off topic, who basically behaves like a little prick.

Inherent in that kind of responsibility — a publisher’s responsibility — is the need to recognize that the measure of acceptability is not our individual preference, but our understanding of our audience. Content written by others — comments — should not be edited or deleted simply because it stakes out a postion contrary to ours or our readers.

We should not publish content that might put ourselves or others, including the people who wrote the content, in legal or physical jeopardy. We should not publish content that appears to have been created for the primary purpose of delivering patently offensive attacks on other people. (Admittedly, these our judgment calls, but making those is part of what we sign up for when we become publishers.)

It’s only our choice that allows others to publish content on our blogs without our prior intervention. The technology provides us the opportunity to vet comments before publishing. That we usually choose not to moderate is analagous to a newspaper choosing to publish all submitted letters to editors without reading them. Would anyone reasonably argue that newspaper is not, then, responsibile for the published content of those letters?

That said, on a practical note: A lot of commenting pyrotechnics are confined to long, usually off-topic, threads started by a comment that triggers the avalanche. I’d like the ability, as the blog owner, to collapse that thread into a single line on the comment’s page. I’d like readers to be able to expand it, but only in their browser. That would mimic a capability that seems to available in a lot of forum software, but it would be a handy tool for bloggers, as well.

It seems to me that the people who most need to abide by such a code are the least likely to agree to it. This is like saying that if a country is in the United Nations, it won’t do anything bad.

Tim,

First of all, thanks for starting the discussion here. While I generally agree with the idea that more civility would be nice, I am still concerned that certain people might think that honest disagreement is equal to uncivility. I’d like to quote some of the portions from my dissection of your original proposal, which I believe this posts does not address yet:

he establishment of rules (or codes) seems to act as a way to “close” conversation, even if it is in a way that is limited by certain boundaries and while I agree that frankness and lack of civility are not equals, a question immediately arises as to who considers what proper civil discourse? Looking back at the creation of the United States and the institution of the Federalist papers, civility has generally been seen as the enemy of openness. The discourse between the US founding fathers was far from civil (even, in the celebrated case of Hamilton vs. Burr, ending up in a disagreement on civility ending up in a duel that greatly shortened the life of one of America’s greatest genius.) So, from the opening statement, we are already faced with an interesting challenge: how do we “encourage both personal expression and constructive conversation” while at the same time trying to clamp down on disagreement through that dangerous weapon called civility?

I think, if I hear you well on this that you would deal with this by making the code more granular. Am I correct in my understanding? If the system is about expressing a policy, as you mentioned, isn’t it about that policy being more restrictive (or will you have binaries on each of the items, allowing for opt-in and opt-out on each item?)

let me harp on who gets to define those terms. What constitute abuse? Is saying that “I believe so and so is a dimwit for saying…” considered a type of abuse?

The question I have here is that it seems like a very tricky ground, one person’s entertainment is another person’s abuse.
Let me take an extremist example here to amplify this point: battles around porn have often found feminists and religious conservative in the same camp opposing nudity in magazines. They see it as a form of publication demeaning women. However, a substantial portion of the male public sees it as attractive and does not consider it demeaning.
The reason I am taking this extreme example is that the extreme is generally where most people feel uncomfortable (witness “People vs. Larry Flint”). Community mores are difficult to deal with, especially when it comes to the internet (and its subset the blogosphere) because each community may have different standard. So, for example, what is considered acceptable (or even civil) forms of speech on a left-wing blog would be considered a violation of civility on a right-wing blog (and vice-versa). How does your code cover those areas? This is where some of the really difficult issues arise.

3. We connect privately before we respond publicly.

Does that mean that every person that’s talked about it contactable? If the president of the United States makes a comment, how do I connect privately to him before responding publicly? Does my sending him a letter constitute such private communication or do I need to wait for an acknowledgment of receipt?

When we encounter conflicts and misrepresentation in the blogosphere, we make every effort to talk privately and directly to the person(s) involved—or find an intermediary who can do so—before we publish any posts or comments about the issue.

Same as above. What if the attempt is not answered? Does that make it OK? Do we need to vet every comment beforehand? Should I send this to Tim and wait for his comment before I publish it? What if he sits on it: does that quash the story altogether?

You are still not answering the questions raised to that effect. What if one doesn’t have the contacts. You are privileged in that you generally can reach out to the people you write about due to your status/role in the industry. However, most of vast unwashed are not. How can they connect or be connected to? And what happens if a person does not want to be connected to? Can one write about them or not?

For example, I did send you a copy of my post over email but still haven’t seen a response. Was I irresponsible in posting it before you commented? If that’s the case, could one easily quash entries/articles they don’t want to see by simply refusing to respond?

4. When we believe someone is unfairly attacking another, we take action.

What type of action? What constitutes an unfair attack?

So I disagreed with your post and thought it was an unfair attack on the people on the Internet who believe in a more open framework. I took action by posting my reply to you about it. However, I broke the previous point of connecting (in that I didn’t wait for you to get back to me). The other question is what’s an unfair attack. In that previous sentence, I called the attack you made on those people unfair. Does that make it so? If that’s the case, what if someone else now says that it wasn’t? How do you arbitrate about those two points of views?

We prefer not to respond to nasty comments about us or our blog, as long as they don’t veer into abuse or libel. We believe that feeding the trolls only encourages them–”Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, but the pig likes it.” Ignoring public attacks is often the best way to contain them.

If that’s the case, why should they be deleted then? This last section seems to contradict the rest of the code…

Is that now part of a more granular framework?

Also, a question is as to how you do this on a global basis. In a follow up comment I made on my blog, I asked another complex question:

A follower of Moktada al-Sadr posts an entry on his blog on wordpress.com asking to join the protest and force the US troops out of Iraq. A Kuwaiti commenter disagrees with him and says that people who follow the party line from Iran should be executed.

In this case, you have two promotions of illegal acts (forcing the US forces out of Iraq through violent protest and execution of dissenters) from two different parties on a US-based blogging service.

One could argue the commenter is cyber-bullying the author of the post.

Which body of law applies in that case? Iraqi? Kuwaiti? US? That’s the kind of can of worm such argument opens.

How do you address such a thing?

Rob: Thanks for the Kudos.

Bill: In the initial post, the mysterious we was a point of contention. I think that your analysis of it as equivalent to the “support EFF” type of campaign is on point and part of the reason that, while I am a supported of the EFF, I do not have a badge for it on the site. The reason being that I support a fair number of the EFF activities but also have some disagreement on some others. So my support is not 100% (unlike my support for Creative Commons). And that’s where it get difficult, especially on something as broad as a code of conduct.

Doug: A well reasoned argument on labeling people as bad.

Yehuda: I’ll read it and comment on your blog.

Eli: Isn’t that the way every online forum has always run

blogesota: I am indeed parsing with a microscope (dissection, microscope… god, my blog is feeling more and more like a lab every day ) but what you point to is that you don’t read sites you disagree with. However, do you think they should be censored?

Taodon: isn’t that in itself and extremist attitude

TDE: Agreed

NanuqTV: Kathy Sierra was not censored; she self-censored. A very big difference. And it’s not just women getting the rough end of the stick. By recent count, I’ve been outed as gay (I’m straight) and called a child molester (I’m not) in public forums (fora?) all because of stuff I put online. All this had done is helped me grow a thicker skin.

Jon: I’ll read and comment on your site.

Derek: I think your analogy about choice is a good one. Self-regulation is OK (look at that little CC badge in the corner of this site ) but my objection to the initial offering was that it was presented a centralized regulation, which I disagreed with.

Doug: This site only has the “appearance” of unstructured free for all. I still moderate comments on the site, though I do let most of the stuff through (basic rule: spam is a no-go, personal attacks that do not further the dialogue (ie: “this guy’s a jerk” and no other commenting vs. “this guy’s a jerk because …”) don’t make the cut and things that are outright falseness (like the 3 Tim O’Reilly with free email addresses that were obviously not really Tim) don’t pass either). That said, I can probably count the number of times I’ve censored stuff that wasn’t spam on both hands (the fake O’Reillys moved it past 1 hand )

Bob: Anonymous comments should still be OK though. However, they should be taken with a mountain of salt (that’s a lot of grains )

j_king: Well put but haven’t you ever run into situations where that’s been tested, where your own boundaries were confronted with that reality? For me, that’s where the difficult test is. During the Republican convention in New York, I volunteered for the ACLU and found myself defending the free speech rights or people I thought were complete kooks. It was a weird position to put myself on the line to protect speech I completely disagreed with. Since then, though, I consider myself changed in the sense that I see the true value of free speech and am wiling to lay on the line for it. The US founding fathers were willing to die for it and so it is our duty to attempt (as closely as we can) to follow that tradition and protect that right.

Jeff: Thanks

Paul: I think you’re on the right track here. Basically, house rules

Gail: Will read your post and comment on your site

I also think that you have to distinguish between whistleblowing and telling secrets. FWIW, I think that raising whistleblowers to an elevated status is a mistake. I also don’t subscribe to the view that there should be no secrets, which is an view implicit in teh critiquie above. Sometimes people telling secrets are blowing the whistle, and sometimes they are telling lies to cover their own mistakes. Sometimes people are telling secrets that they shouldn’t be. People who have an obligation to maintain confidences shouldn’t be publishing them on a blog or on the web.

I’m no stranger to death threats or being beaten to an inch of my life. I’ve received some online and many more right to my face. While I was in high school, or out in the world scraping to get by. Every once in a while I’d meet someone who didn’t like me, my ideas, what I stood for — and wished me harm.

Not once have I ever asked for assistance from the law or some regulating body. I’ve always felt that the law did it’s job well enough to protect me in the event something should happen and someone actually does something illegal (like attempting to inflict harm upon me). The police are a phone call away in such events. And if the threats ever became consistent enough to bear warning; it could be investigated at my discretion with just a simple phone call.

Our world does not need more regulation. We don’t need more babysitters and whiners reaching out and making sure we’re monitored and in-line with the regulated norms. I don’t want someone telling me what ideas are acceptable, what speech is acceptable, where and when I’m allowed to talk freely. The moment that happens is the moment we’re no longer free. In such a world, don’t be surprised if suddenly you’re no longer able to challenge the laws governing you. You’ll become a prisoner of your own fears; and worse — you could lose your humanity.

Governance is not a tool to control the behaviour of others.

We control our behaviour.

We don’t need a code of conduct to control speech online. If this woman felt harassed and thought this person would do something to her; there are already methods at her disposal to protect herself. I’m certainly not giving up my freedoms. I’m not afraid to keep them.

Question is, are you?