I’ve got a little badge on this blog pointing to a “Blog Honor” code of conduct. It relates to disclosure policy, and in truth I linked to it because I didn’t have time to write my own, and it seemed fairly close to what I believed at the time (and still do).

The “code of conduct” that Tim O’Reilly is calling for does not cover disclosure, but the real question is whether linking to any shared codes of conduct is a good idea. To say the least, it’s somewhat controversial. I think that as posted, it’s impractical and doesn’t show the depth of thought I would expect from Tim, who’s one of the biggest blogospheric thinkers out there. Sadly he’s being more or less shredded in the comments of the assembled masses, who hate even a whiff of censorship far more than they respect Tim or Kathy, it would seem. Seth Finklestein is an anti-censorship crusader (who I generally have admired in the past when I’ve run across his writing), so it’s no wonder he’s one of the loudest critics, and he makes a valid point about enforcability. I think his comments insinuating this is designed to reinforce the tyranny of the supposed “A List” are dead wrong, however. [1]

In my case, I thought “good start, needs more work” and got stuck in over at the Wiki they set up. I think having a voluntary code of conduct that people can sign up to if they want is not a bad idea if it’s structured properly, which to me means it’s got variants and versions, and ideally you can fit it all in a microformat as well as link an online version that not only shows the code but links to the discussion regarding each point so that people can see why those points were arrived at. So if people want to allow anonymous posting, or what to play with their trolls, but still want some sort of set of declared principles to point to when they delete a comment for stepping over the line, then they can do that.

The alternative to a shared Code of Conduct is posting your own individual one, and I think it’d be very hard to go past borrowing and tweaking this one by Allen Jenkins, as Tyme did. Allen has is own wise words about all this.

If there was going to be a shared code of conduct, then you’d want it to be agreed as part of a shared process, not handed down by fiat. What an enormous number of Tim’s commenter seem to have missed is that this is exactly what Tim wanted to happen, and why there was a wiki and a mailing list set up to discuss it. But naturally enough everyone ignored those and fired away on their blogs or in comment sections.

[1] The problem of “enforcement” happens when someone who’s blog is wearing the badge ignores the code. Obviously it can’t be enforced on anyone who hasn’t signed up for it.

SethF appears to be arguing that an “A lister” involved in such a dispute would win any such arguments with the help of the “Pilot Fish” wanting to impress them and scared of being, ah, I don’t know, excluded? Called out? I’m not sure. I’m not buying it. Arguably being attacked by an A-lister is a great way to get noticed – and if they’re wrong to attack you then it’s going to be obvious to some of the other big guns, who will call out that A-lister, and bingo, you’re subscription count jumps up.

The moment another “A lister” comes in on the other side, then any “Pilot Fish effect” will pretty much evaporate because they wouldn’t know which way to turn. And I think it’s a delusion that the “A listers” somehow all conspire in some fashion to stay on top of any given argument. I also think calling the rest of the blogosphere “pilot fish” is pretty damned derogatory – certainly anyone who wants to gain an audience won’t want to be seen to be a slavering toadie, and anyone who doesn’t want to gain an audience is really unlikely to care what these supposed A listers think of them. So I just don’t buy that line of argument at all.

Besides, the reason these people are the “A list” is partly because they usually make a certain ammout of sense. I can only read so many feeds, and anyone who stops making sense just gets deleted.

Of course, the problem with wanting to engage in this particular conversation, which covers a topic of great interest to me (and was long before Kathy’s shock announcement), is that it’s taking time away from Interclue, which I will get back to forthwith!