Tim O’Reilly has had a lot of good ideas. A very smart guy. And what happened to Kathy Sierra (and lot of less famous people) is obscene. But this Blogger Code of Conduct business? Is an enormous waste of time. Does it move anyone to do anything they wouldn’t already? No. Is there anything stopping someone from throwing up one of those inane badges and then doing what he’d do already? No. But it’s not as if this is the first exercise in pointless wankery on web. So why does this particular project bother me?
It’s giving legitimacy to this idea that form is more important than substance. That so long as you say please and thank you, you ought not be held to account for anything you say between those two words. Oh, there’ve always been delicate flowers on the internet, ready to faint at the first “goddamn.” But more and more, I’ve seen people who spew the most hateful and ignorant things immediately retreat behind a claim that someone is being uncivil, if they’re called hateful or ignorant. And, astoundingly, a fair number of otherwise reasonable people appear ready to give them cover on that.
This was well-illustrated for me in the past year, as I discovered Virginia political blogs. Until I realized the impact that the Virginia Marriage Amendment would have on me, I’d generally treated Virginia politics as mostly irrelevant to my interests. But then we had an issue on the ballot where people from all over the state could decide that I ought not have control over my own life and family. So I got involved in the Virginia online (and off) conversation. And in many respects, I’m glad I did. I discovered good folks like Vivian, Waldo, and the Howling Latina. All great contributors to public life, I think. But I also discovered a whole lot of hate. A whole lot.
I discovered that a vast swath of Virginia political blogs are dedicated to promoting some of the most ignorant, hateful, and harmful lies out there. Islam is dedicated to killing you. Allowing equal rights for all will lead to the collapse of society. Black folks ought to be thankful for slavery. I’m not going to link them, as there’s nothing to be gained by it, but I’ve come across all of these sentiments and worse in the posts and comments sections of Virginia political blogs (and this is to say nothing of the daily homophobia and xenophobia). Ignorance like this ought not to be met with acquiescent silence, or a polite murmur of disagreement. It needs to be engaged head-on, called out for what it is, and exposed to the sort of ridicule that a flat-earther might experience at meeting of geophysicists.
In other words, people who repeatedly claim and perpetuate hateful, ignorant, and harmful things don’t deserve a thoughtful engagement, deconstruction, and explanation every time. They can – and should – be dismissed as bigots. Or liars. Or straight up loons. There is no reason in the world to be patient and polite with someone who claims that some humans don’t deserve the same basic rights as others, or that a whole swath of humanity ought to be killed because it will satisfy their uninformed selves.
You want to improve the blogosphere? Raise the bar on substance, instead of hiding behind form.
Vivian J. Paige
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April
I read the article at tnl, and want to clarify that the concept of “free speech” in the U.S. Constitution only applies to what the Government may and may not limit. The U.S. Constititution does not apply to conduct among private parties, who may or may not limit speech in whatever form they wish according to agreed upon rules of the group. I really hate to see the concept of “free speech” and the Founding Fathers used in this fashion. To my knowledge, the U.S. Government hasn’t tried to limit anything in the incident discussed. If parties to a particular blog group wish to limit offensive and downright terrifying speech, it is their right to do so. The Founding Fathers had no opinion about what private parties could do in a nongovernmental forum.
Whether or not someone wishes to limit speech via a blogger code or otherwise may uncover widely differing opinions, but the constitutional arguments made at tnl are irrelevant when one is speaking about non-government action.
I have belonged to a private listserv for almost ten years where a “code of conduct” is imposed (called “netiquette guidelines”), and offenders are removed from the list. The listserv is a nonprofit group and I have found the rules to be quite helpful to the productiveness of the group and the civil exchange of information. We all know that there are people out there who wish to use the internet to spread venim and I personally would rather not encounter those people. I encounter enough unkind and petty people in the real world and these types of persons are in their element with the anonymity of the internet.
My children have learned about internet bullying at school. Unfortunately, the phenomenon isn’t limited to children.
Waldo Jaquith
MB, what I find compelling about a code of conduct is the aspects in which it could be liberating, rather than those in which it could be restricting. Specifically, I’m thinking of standards by which bloggers can agree that a comment to a blog deserves to be erased, or a commenter deserves to be banned. A great many thoughtful bloggers don’t dare go down that road, because there is no established standard for when such actions are appropriate. They’re wary of people — their peers, especially — crying censorship.
That is, I think, the most important bit in this proposal. The rest of it I’m not convinced has a great deal of merit.
You and I have, I think, similar internet heritages. We’re internet veterans (at least relative to 99% of internet users today), and we’ve seen communities come and go, standards emerge and die. And I suspect we’ve both been involved in a fair share of healthy and unhealthy online communities. Establishing rules often gives trolls a chance to play a game of “I’m not touching you,” but it also provides sysops with grounds to give somebody the boot without much grumbling from the peanut gallery. I’d like that, please. :)
Jason
To Waldo – The problem is the peanut gallery has to be in agreement with the code for it to matter to them and too many people will just thumb their nose at the code and still go about doing business on the web as they usually do and still throw fits if things don’t go their way.
I think the best way to build civility among blogs is to promote it. Link to the blogs that matter to you and promote such ideals, promote those that share them, build a community out of civil bloggers who understand and support one another despite differences of opinions and allow an unwritten code to form so that if someone from the peanut gallery does take offense, there’s this practical army of legitimate, respectable bloggers to step up and defend the decision. I think a broad brush just won’t catch enough people to really matter.
Waldo Jaquith
The problem is the peanut gallery has to be in agreement with the code for it to matter to them and too many people will just thumb their nose at the code and still go about doing business on the web as they usually do and still throw fits if things don’t go their way.
But the fact is that, once the rules are presented (especially if such rules are widely adopted as a standard), it becomes a great deal more difficult for anybody to throw stones at a somebody for enforcing those rules. That has certainly been my experience in 15 years of running online forums ranging in size from 5-40,000 members.
Jason
Forums are one thing, blogs are another thing entirely. It’s easy to enforce rules on a community where one must register to participate. But with blogs, where anyone can be your guest and anyone can leave a comment whether or not they approve of “The Code”, it’s hard to convince the public that they have to stand by that or at least not put up too much of a fight should you enforce it.
I think that you’ll ultimately be hard-pressed to find a code that is developed well enough that it becomes a standard, at least, one that isn’t so vague and wideopen that it really has any merit. The response already has been pretty negative overall, and sure some of it is nitpicking and part of the conversation to help create it, but eventually it will lead to nowhere.
Virginia had this debate almost two years ago and it went nowhere not only because no one could agree on the terms but also because there were many fears that we would be opening ourselves up to actual legislation of such terms.
I think the spirit of a blogger code is good and comendable (especially given where you’re coming from, Waldo), but I think it’s utterly unenforceable. But the conversation on it is good, I think it helps us see who among us really think about this and it’s the mere discussion of such a topic that can help us understand one another and help build a sense of civility and community, whether or not the draft becomes anything more than that.
Jason
Oh, and because I haven’t said it, MB, great post and very true. Improving the blogosphere comes with improving its content and its participants, not with codes but with actual action.
Waldo Jaquith
Good point. I’m reminded of The September that Never Ended, when USENET went to shit after AOL got a newsfeed. I never tried to moderate a newsgroup, but it clearly would have been fruitless; USENET is functionally nonexistent now. It’s just too open.
MB
Thanks for the discussion, all. In following this, I’ve realized that I understand how some could get limited utility out of a generally agreed upon comment moderation policy. Something along a CC-license model, where you can pick and choose your elements, and then stick to and point to it.
But that’s only a tiny part of what this “code of conduct” mess is about, no? And while I understand the attractiveness of the (feeling of) certainty it provides, I think it would ultimately be just as subjective as sorting it out yourself. I suspect a conscientious moderator will struggle with some questions just as much with a written policy as she would without one.
The distinction between forums and blogging comments is an important one, and I wouldn’t touch forum moderation if you paid me to. On the comment moderation side of things, I think a comfort with benevolent dictatorship and thick skin are your only reliable tools.
~
And yes, we can point to the smoldering pile that is USENET as an example of the consequences of any number of things, not the least of which is what happens when there’s no practical means of moderation. USENET was my first real online social experience and great while it lasted (heck, 30 of us flew to New Orleans for a long weekend in 94 to meet each other in person), but when the floodgates opened . . .
sasha
I don’t know. Don’t you sort of miss the whole wild west aspect of the unmoderated, code-of-conduct free internet experience?
MB
With the deranged but smart folks of the mid-90s? Or even Vodkatea crazy? Sure. With the Great Unwashed of the present? No, not really.