Hillary 4 Evah!
Haven’t updated this in a while, but a liberal friend wanted to see my blog. Let’s hope she stops reading after the first post.
I just want to say Hillary Clinton is great and deserves to win the presidency. She’s smart, tough, and experienced. I so want her to raise my taxes and regulate the hell out of me. Go Hillary!
Anything Goes Here
Much as I’ve enjoyed some of the technical articles at O’Reilly.com, Tim O’Reilly’s idea for a blogger code of ethics strikes me as a really dumb one. In fact his initial “draft” proposal generated so much criticism he had to backpedal (which is what I’ve linked to), but unfortunately he did not give it up.
A “blogger code” cannot work because a blog is fundamentally about individual expression, so each blogger will interpret the code in his or her own way, rendering the code meaningless. The code idea is intended to provide some measure of standardization, analogous to the Creative Commons copyright license, but since bloggers will have varying interpretations it won’t help them avoid having to set a policy.
The analogy to intellectual property is inapt because people vary infinitely in how they will react to certain words and expressions, but vary much less in how they want to protect their work. Intellectual property licenses lend themselves to standardization; “acceptable speech” does not.
O’Reilly backpedaled and asserted there should be “modular axioms,” designated with icons, instead of a blanket code of conduct. While that is a slight improvement, it fails to recognize the difference between words and actions: a blogger can put an icon in the sidebar, but that icon has no meaning whatsoever unless the blogger enforces it exactly as described — and more likely than not, bloggers will still vary in their interpretations of what is acceptable and what is not.
For the code to work, then, bloggers must cede their independence to the central code-making authority. A blogger cannot be allowed to stain the good reputation of the code by failing to adequately enforce the rules (either not enforcing them, or enforcing them selectively). It is this possibility that has agitated so many people about the code — the possibility of a schism on the web with a cartel of “approved” dominant bloggers setting the standard for what people are allowed to say.
I haven’t felt the urge to blog in a while, but reading O’Reilly’s post irritated me to no end. It’s written in a bland and bureaucratic style, like a corporate press release or CEO pseudo-blog (er, maybe that’s what it is?). He says, “I’m not a big fan of political correctness,” but he is promoting political correctness, orthodoxy and conformity in a major way.
I’m all for civility, but sometimes you just gotta say “fuck that.”
Technorati Tags: code of conduct, O’Reilly
