The Bigsibling Blog

Ever since a couple of weeks ago when Kathy Sierra was “cyber-bullied” into canceling an appearance, people have been debating on how to combat this type of activity. I even heard a PSA on the radio yesterday about cyber bullying.

Now Tim O’Reilly is creating what he calls a “Blogger’s Code of Conduct“.
I’m not going to go into it’s nuts and bolts. There are plenty of places around the web – both for and against – which dissect the code.

This is a knee-jerk reaction to someone getting their feelings hurt and being afraid. Seriously. I feel for Ms. Sierra. I am not a woman, so I could never imagine what it would be like to receive the kind of threats she has had to deal with. And I am in no way meaning to diminish what she has had to go through in this ordeal.

How can anyone really believe that this code of conduct thing would prevent this from happening in the future? How will a blogger subscribing to this code of conduct keep the blogger, or anyone else for that matter, safe and sound? Bloggers have the ability to moderate, edit and delete comments on their own sites.

Some of these comments were on Ms. Sierra’s own blog. She would have had to read these things if she moderated her comments anyway. Just because they don’t make it out into the general public, does not mean that they were not made.

Of course, what do I know? I’m just a bloke in fly-over country with a couple of readers and an opinion. But it does sound to me that a blogger handing control of their content over to a third party is rather…anti-American.

Technorati Tags: Kathy Sierra, Tim O’Reilly, Code of Conduct, Blogs, Bloggers

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