O’Reilly has published Blogger’s Code of Conduct after recent happenings of threat calls to Bloggers, especially after Kathy Sierra event. here are the points –
- Take responsibility not just for your own words, but for the comments you allow on your blog.
- Label your tolerance level for abusive comments..
- Consider eliminating anonymous comments.
- Ignore the trolls.
- Take the conversation offline, and talk directly, or find an intermediary who can do so.
- If you know someone who is behaving badly, tell them so.
- Don’t say anything online that you wouldn’t say in person.
I don’t believe in such codes of conduct especially when you are living in a country where you have right to speak freely. It is a kind of restriction on the expression of your thoughts. Tim O’Reilly sounds good when he says –
Sometimes you need to stand up to bullies, but at other times, the best thing to do is to ignore them.
But on other place in very first point, he says,
Take responsibility not just for your own words, but for the comments you allow on your blog.
I want to say, although they are comments on your blog but they are personal opinion of someone, and that person has full right to express his views, be it you blog or any other place over Internet which encourages participation. You have responsibility to tell him back that he is wrong somewhere and what you originally meant.
Nah, I am not with the call!