Today is Stop Cyberbullying Day
Yesterday, Neonatal Doc announced he was putting his blog on hiatus...because of a troll and threatened legal action.
This is a shame. Not as much of a shame as the destruction of Alan Herrell's reputation, or the vile things written about Kathy Sierra*, or Eliot Stein's shameful treatment of Cathy Seipp, but a shame nonetheless.
I've been looking for an image to illustrate what I feel the underlying message of l'affaire MeanKids / UncleBobism to be, and found this at Andrew Heenan's Guide to Flaming, specifically the troll pages.
I don't agree that blogging as a whole "needs a code of conduct", as Tim O'Reilly has suggested. Nor do I agree with Sam Sethi:
“It could be that the time has come to professionalise what bloggers do,”.... “It is up to the community to agree the rules and then it would simply be a line at the top of the blog to say only show me sites that adhere to this conduct.”
I do agree with Denise Howell:
"I think anyone who enjoys any aspect of the Live Web would celebrate this fact, and agree its vitality would be impaired if the law expected or required these ordinary people to envelop themselves and their sites in elaborate legal provisos and conditions if they hope to be shielded from potential responsibility for the bad acts of others," she said.
The Kathy Sierra situation is, she said, "forcing bloggers to examine their moral compasses on a number of fronts". But, ultimately self-regulation is the only way forward, she believes.
I met Lisa Williams at BlogHer2005, and listened to her talk about her blog principles, which I later adopted to my own blog.
I have time to weed my comments on a regular basis. But Neonatal Doc makes an important point: blogging is a hobby, and the day job prevents ND from quickly monitoring comments. Troll- and flame-wars break out while ND is in the NICU...so what is a blogger to do?
Recent Comments