Blog Civility: Origins of The Online Integrity Pledge

On April 11, 2006, some students enrolled at the University of California, Santa Cruz, protested the presence of military recruiters at a job fair on campus. Michelle Malkin declared the students' actions to be sedition,  and published their cell phone numbers and email addresses.  The students then started getting death threats. According to this site, they asked Malkin to remove the information.  She didn't.  She reposted the information.  Some other people then did some digging, and posted personal contact details for Malkin.

Bloggers left, right, and apolitical were disgusted by both incidents, and crafted the Statement of Online Integrity Principles.

If you are a blogger, would you sign?  What do you think, not of l'affaire Malkin, but of the Statement?

The Online Integrity Statement of Principles is simple:

Private persons are entitled to respect for their privacy regardless of their activities online.  This includes respect for the  non-public nature of their personal contact information, the  inviolability of their homes, and the safety of their families.  No information which might lead others to invade these spaces should be posted.  The separateness of private persons’ professional lives  should also be respected as much as is reasonable.

Public figures are entitled to respect for the non-public nature  of their personal, non-professional contact information, and their  privacy with regard to their homes and families.  No information which might lead others to invade these spaces should be posted.

Persons seeking anonymity or pseudonymity online should have their wishes in this regard respected as much as is reasonable.  Exceptions include cases of criminal, misleading, or intentionally disruptive behavior.

Violations of these principles should be met with a lack of positive publicity and traffic.

[snip]
This statement is nonpartisan and nonideological.  It is open to participants and adherents left, right and center.  In an era when online activism and community have more impact, promise and peril than ever, it is essential that we seize upon the best aspects of the internet — its self-policing, democratic nature — and use them to set an example of reasoned restraint and considered civility.

I've added these principles to my blogging principles.

 

Online Civility Here:

Outline of How To Disagree Without Being Disagreeable
Blog Civility
Making An Effective Complaint

Online Civility Elsewhere:
Nancy White: Blog Civility
Brad Warthen's Civility Posts
Praxis101: Civility Wiki
Kathy Sierra: Are "Nice" and "Honest" Mutually Exclusive?
Kevin Drum: Blog Civility
Jane Galt: Kevin Drum's Blog Civility
PubliusTX: Kevin Drum's Blog Civility
Mike Reed's Flame Warriors
Suzette Haden Elgin: How to Disagree Online
Mark Bernstein: Blogosphere's Bad Behavior

The Washington Post had an online symposium on blogs and comments, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2006/01/24/DI2006012400817.html There's the Wilcox-McCandless Laws of Online Discourse.

At South By Southwest (sxsw) Nancy White lead or facilitated a panel, "us and them: a blog conversation survival guide" --the technorati collection of the conversation is here: http://www.technorati.com/tags/usthem

usthem

Comments

[Lisa]

Wasn't Michelle Malkin the one who, during the Presidential campaign, claimed that John Kerry shot himself on purpose to get a Purple Heart? I seem to remember her getting chewed up and spit out by Chris Matthews of CNN for that one.

The whole purpose of her professional existence seems to be to stir up hostility and aggression. So I am not at all surprised that the hostility and aggression eventually came back to her own front door. I'm disappointed that people would stoop to her ridiculously low level. Also surprised that the police were not involved sooner when people started receiving death threats.

[liz]

Yes, Malkin alleged it was a self-inflicted wound; the Matthews Interview is here

Malkin lives and breathes controversy, sometimes manufactured. I do not care for her approach (or another right-wing woman, Ann Coulter: inflammatory quotes list and Wikipedia entry. ) But Coulter doesn't blog.

[fp]

Regarding blog civility, I think you were brought up to behave appropriately and so respect for others, their privacy, their perspectives, is second nature to you. I've been through the online anonymity concerns and made the personal decision to live openly rather than anonymously, since my views are somewhat contrarian and I think they would lose impact if I didn't stand behind them four-square. Still, I have a friend who "went anonymous" after some time blogging and I've always respected his decision. He has a corporate job, a young family with daughters, and he's a contrarian like me. I respect the Happy Tutor's not too perfect anonymity because his satire is risqué and open to mainstream criticism and he lives in the corporate world too. I don't think it hurts to codify and publish rules for interacting, personal credos, and whatnot, because it models good behavior for those who might not know what's expected of them.

All that said, people like Malkin and Coulter and I'm sure I could find examples on the left have empowered themselves to behave atrociously and no simple code of ethics will influence them toward moderate behavior.

I think that remaining concerned for others' feelings, seeking a middle path for conversation has a better chance of influencing change for the better than posturing and pontificating from an isolated perch we delude ourselves into thinking is a moral highground. Malkin is the proof of that.

All that said, I would not sign on to these principles for the reason that I would not swear an oath in court. Rather I would affirm that I generally agree and that my behavior will be the proof of that agreement. (Or, on a bad day, the disproof).