Seems the online world is afire about this article on this article on A Blogger’s Code of Conduct, by Geek-Guru Tim O’Reilly

Now it is enshrined at the Bloggers Wiki.

Look who’s talking:
h-t-t-p-colon forward-slash forward-slash slash-dot-dot-org
Amanda Congdon
Michelle Malkin
The Gray Lady (New York Times)

Where this all stemmed from, was an incident where some bloggers got some death threats. (The Huffington Post suggests this was an incident of “Misogyny In The Blogosphere”.)
(While this is awful, and not to make light of… what did these people expect? The internet superhighway is lined with gutters and sewers… all the gunk comes out during a bad storm, and it stinks. Some of it is dangerous. Don’t touch it with your bare hands!) It isn’t new, it isn’t even something that happened with the advent of Blogs. It was around long before then. I first saw it in 1996.

Well, some people have had enough, and are totting this opportunity to make things better, and happier.

Don Imus, call your office.

People like Michelle Malkin, and Mary Katherine Ham are a little bitter, at this point, because THEY have been receiving angry-left hate speech for years. And these folks were quiet then. Now one of their own gets some hate mail, they are determined to stop it.

Check out some of the language:

2. We won’t say anything online that we wouldn’t say in person.

5. We do not allow anonymous comments.

Now, I’m no fan of getting hate mail, or trolls, but at the same time, I dislike laying down guidelines and templates to control behavior. And at this point, these are just words. And 9 times out of 10, every troll and their trollish grandmother will just escalate their level of activity. So what did this just solve?

What gets me, is the press (See the New York Times article) is heralding this Civility Badge Brigade as heroes.
To me they are looking for a kind of virtual utopia. And their ain’t no way to get there from here.

But I think the reason this all irks me, is the following analogy:

• Trolls and Flamers are like Internet Terrorists
• This Code of Conduct Citizens Brigade reeks of a toothless United Nations Resolution or a Sanction.

Personally, The Editors of Jeremy-Gilby-dot-com are in the Malkin camp, when it comes to a Blog Code of Conduct:

1) Report the serious threats to law enforcement.
2) Keep blogging.

The Internet Welcomes Careful Drivers, but drive defensively.

Sidebar discussion:

Tim O’Reilly made the following statement, what do you think?

“That is one of the mistakes a lot of people make — believing that uncensored speech is the most free, when in fact, managed civil dialogue is actually the freer speech, … Free speech is enhanced by civility.”