The Code of the Brethren, The Code of the Bloggers

” … the code is more what you’d call guidelines than actual rules. Welcome aboard the Black Pearl, Miss Turner.” - Captain Barbossa, in Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl

There’s been a lot of talk recently about creating a code of blogging conduct with Tim O’Reilly leading the charge. He’s got a great post up today that deals with a lot of the (not so nice) feedback he’s received for the idea.

One of the issues that I have with any uniform code of blogger conduct is that it gums up the works for individual bloggers who want to retain editorial control. There’s something to be said for developing a loose set of best practices that cover the same basic territory and then allow individual bloggers to work with them as they see fit.

I think the central best practice that we should be working as a community to establish is clearly stating our general attitude towards online behavior and commenting somewhere on our blogs. More generally, I think the blogging community already does a great job of rallying around people who are being treated unfairly, as it did with the recent controversy involving Kathy Sierra.

Obviously, larger cultural change is necessary, but that doesn’t come through creating hard and fast rules. Just as religiously motivated legislation does not do anything to change people’s basic moral compasses, a uniform code of conduct will not address the underlying problems of trollishness and misogyny. A loose set of guidelines and a community that is willing to police itself is probably a better solution.