Blogger's Code of Conduct

About

The Blogger’s Code of Conduct is a proposed code of ethics drafted by American media critic Tim O’Reilly for online writers to adhere to, as well as to enforce, civility and good manners through practices of sound judgement, including moderation of readers’ comments.

Origin

The idea for a blogger’s code of conduct was first proposed by Tim O’Reilly in March 2007, shortly after programmer and game developer Kathy Sierra cancelled her appearance at the O’Reilly ETech Conference due to hostile messages and online harassments she has had received, including death threats and doxxing of her personally identifiable information by hacker Andrew Auernheimer. Throughout March 2007, Sierra’s encounter with cyberbullying sparked a broader discussion in the news media and bloggers’ community about online harassments in general, which culminated with Tim O’Reilly calling for a guideline of online behaviors in a BBC article^[1] published on March 28th.

Draft

On March 31st, 2007, O’Reilly began drafting his idea in a blog post titled “A Call for a Blogger’s Code of Conduct,”^[2] which outlined several protocols for a blogger to safeguard him/herself from cyberbullying and harassments.

1. Take responsibility not just for your own words, but for the comments you allow on your blog.
2. Label your tolerance level for abusive comments.
3. Consider eliminating anonymous comments.
4. Ignore the trolls.
5. Take the conversation offline, and talk directly, or find an intermediary who can do so.
6. If you know someone who is behaving badly, tell them so.
7. Don’t say anything online that you wouldn’t say in person.

Spread

On April 8th, after a week of collaboration and discussion with many others in the blogosphere and online communities, including Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, O’Reilly formalized a draft of the Blogger’s Code of Conduct^[4] in a blog post on his website.

1. We take responsibility for our own words and for the comments we allow on our blog

We are committed to the “Civility Enforced” standard: we will not post unacceptable content, and we’ll delete comments that contain it. We define unacceptable content as anything included or linked to that:

- is being used to abuse, harass, stalk, or threaten others
- is libelous, knowingly false, ad-hominem, or misrepresents another person,
- infringes upon a copyright or trademark
- violates an obligation of confidentiality
- violates the privacy of others

We define and determine what is “unacceptable content” on a case-by-case basis, and our definitions are not limited to this list. If we delete a comment or link, we will say so and explain why. [We reserve the right to change these standards at any time with no notice.]

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

3. We connect privately before we respond publicly

When we encounter conflicts and misrepresentation in the blogosphere, we make every effort to talk privately and directly to the person(s) involved--or find an intermediary who can do so--before we publish any posts or comments about the issue.

4. When we believe someone is unfairly attacking another, we take action

When someone who is publishing comments or blog postings that are offensive, we’ll tell them so (privately, if possible--see above) and ask them to publicly make amends. If those published comments could be construed as a threat, and the perpetrator doesn’t withdraw them and apologize, we will cooperate with law enforcement to protect the target of the threat.

5. We do not allow anonymous comments

We require commenters to supply a valid email address before they can post, though we allow commenters to identify themselves with an alias, rather than their real name.

6. We ignore the trolls

We prefer not to respond to nasty comments about us or our blog, as long as they don’t veer into abuse or libel. We believe that feeding the trolls only encourages them--“Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, but the pig likes it.” Ignoring public attacks is often the best way to contain them.

O’Reilly also suggested that bloggers in support of the code could identify themselves as such by adopting a “civility enforced” badge on their sites, while those against the idea of moderating feedback could use a badge that reads “anything goes.” In addition, the blog post linked to a copy of the draft on Wikia^[3] for further review and deliberation by the online community at large, the finalized product of which would be then formally published under the web domain bloggingcode.org.

Online Reaction

O’Reilly’s proposal instantly led to an intense debate in the comments section of O’Reilly’s blog post, with some openly denouncing the initiative as excessive, impracticable and even harboring of online censorship. In the following 72 hours, the proposal was picked up by several bloggers with their own commentaries^[6]^[9]^[10] and some major news outlets like the New York Times^[8] and San Francisco Gate.^[7]

Tim O’Reilly’s Response

On April 11th, Tim O’Reilly ran another blog post titled “Code of Conduct: Lessons Learned So Far,”^[5] in which he addressed a number of concerns and criticisms brought up by its opponents, including a necessity for a more “modular” and less “monolithic” code of conduct, preservation of constructive anonymity and the legal implications of the code, among others. While acknowledging the existence of shortcomings and room for improvement in the proposal, O’Reilly maintained his position that civility is a desirable attitude in online communities:

That being said, I am trying to encourage a kind of social self-examination on the part of the blogging community. Many people have written to say that they have no compunctions about deleting unpleasant comments. But I believe that there’s a strong undercurrent on the internet that says that anything goes, and any restriction on speech is unacceptable. A lot of people feel intimidated by those who attack them as against free speech if they try to limit unpleasantness. If there’s one thing I’d love to come out of this discussion, it’s a greater commitment on the part of bloggers (and people who run other types of forums) not to tolerate behavior on the internet that they wouldn’t tolerate in the physical world. It’s ridiculous to accept on a blog or in a forum speech that would be seen as hooliganism or delinquency if practiced in a public space.