I’ve read Tim O’Reilly’s Blogger Code of Conduct and agree with a fair few other folk that it is not for me, although it may be perfectly useful for Tim’s sites. I assume these are group written sites, otherwise the use of the Royal ‘we’ is amusing.
However Kathy Sierra rightly adds to the comments that having such a policy on her site did nothing to stop what happened:
This Code of Conduct would have had no effect on what happened to me. I had a comment policy in place, and deleted the threats that came directly to my blog. But if people are determined to hate, harass, intimidate, or threaten you, it’s easy enough to do on other blogs.
And I far prefer the style of Johnnie Moore’s policy:
1 If you look at the entire content of this blog, you’ll get some notion of how I conduct myself. It varies a bit.
2 You’ll also see how visitors conduct themselves. It, too, seems to vary.
3 The past is not necessarily a guide to the future.
combined with a hefty dose of common sense that means it should apply equally to how I conduct myself elsewhere as well as how i expect people to behave around me.
Meanwhile, Kathy has written a post looking for ideas about where to go next. From what she says, it looks like she is going to stop public speaking, which is a shame as I’ve loved it everytime I’ve seen her. Hopefully she’ll continue to publish in some format going forward.
