Just when you thought that there were things in life that were untouchable by bureaucrats and regulations, along come Tim O'Reilly (Web guru) and Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia founder) to stick their oar in. No! This medium is not for the free spirited, and most definitely not a blank canvass where you can use colour.

Their ill-conceived Blogger Code of Conduct is a knee-jerk response to the recent threatening comments that were written on Tim's friend's blog. Not bored yet? Read on.

If you adhere to their set of rules, you get to wear a badge that only grown-up blog owners can have. You could even go one step further and give stars to commenters you particularly like.

This proposed code is essentially a controlling mechanism. Nice people only allowed on the Internet please. One could be forgiven that this is all being sponsored by the Chinese government's Dept of Censorship. Any blog worth its salt does some sort of moderation anyway. Tony Blair once said that he particularly dislikes the nasty stuff that protesters shout through the gates at 10 Downing Street. But he said in the next breath that he was happy they had the freedom to do so.

One of main aims of all of this is to destroy the whole notion of anonymity on the Web, whether that be on the part of bloggers or commenters. Take this away and you lose a huge part of what's liberating about reading and writing in these spaces.

* Seems that journos at the Sindo may not be too fantastic at adhering to their own codes according to Twenty Benson ...

"Sunday Indo 'journalist' plagiarises Irish blogger"

tags:code of conduct

Published by Colm.