I agree that a lot of the time, especially in games and forums things can get out of hand. There are many people who post rants that deal with hate, whether it be racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. and put it under the guise of 'free speech'.
Kathy Sierra, a blogger who is well known in the blogging community, was recieving death threats and harrassment on other sites. It seems, that with the advent of the internet, people are often abusing the right of free speech by confusing it with being able to say any hateful/ignorant thing they want. Especially since there's a level of anonymity to it.
As Tim O'Reilly says in this article, "frankness does not have to mean lack of civility. There's no reason why we should tolerate conversations online that we wouldn't tolerate in our living room."
3 comments:
Good post! Considering posts that I've read and podcasts that I've heard about; there is a lack of civility and consideratin going around. I think people don't realize the effect of their verbal abuse.
A Blogger "Code of Conduct" won't work. How do you enforce it? And at what point do bloggers decide that comments critical of them or their beliefs are in violation of it?
I've got my own comment policy, and it's posted on my sidebar: spam comments get deleted. Everything else gets posted. If it's threatening, well, that's what the police are for.
Otherwise, turn off your comments and don't publish an e-mail.
I viewed the "Code of conduct" more as a set of general guidelines that people should keep in mind when on the internet.
I suppose it depends on a blog to blog basis, like you have in your blog with the comment policy. Or on mine with moderating comments. It would depend on the person and the situation... but I didn't mean have people policing, but more of a "keep yourself in check" thing
Blogging is one aspect that this can refer to, but there are also public forums/message boards that have many people on it at a time. Sometimes, moderators can't get to all the postings and read them through.
I think that it is more of a common courtesy thing. Just because people can be rude/disrespectful to others doesn't mean they should.
Kathy Sierra was targeted in many different places, not just her own blog, so unfortunately that was out of her control.
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