Way to go ladies! You're the face of high standard bloggers!

Ashley Cecil, the Painting Journalist
www.ashleycecil.com

As an independent female blogger, I suppose this day had to come, when a group of women would vocalize in favor of civilizing the Internet. I do wonder when civility turns into managed conversation that is controlled by the social powers that be. As a woman alone, I naturally am wary of that creeping control and question the trade-off.

Then again, the early women's movement suffered a schism of sorts when Susan B. Anthony went conservative and started thinking it was best to use existing institutions to further women's aims, while Elizabeth Cady Stanton was speaking before the Senate on the freedom of the individual. I suppose it is a debate that will never end among women.

Congrats, ladies! :) I'm so glad to see BlogHer represented in an article like this!

Carmen Van Kerckhove
NEW DEMOGRAPHIC
carmen@newdemographic.com
www.newdemographic.com

New Demographic is an anti-racism training company that goes beyond diversity buzzwords to tackle the real issues behind race and racism.

What happened with Kathy Sierra isn't a failure in civility - death threats are not okay in any conversation and I applaud the call to eliminate bullying behavior.

But in following the news and fallout around this event, I feel a certain sadness and disappointment. What happened to simple manners? To please and thank you? To agreeing to disagree? I've observed a real decline in civility in Life In General - it's not limited to blogs. The fact that a public call to behave is necessary for supposedly grown humans is very sad.

Nerd's Eye View

Hi Elana, ashleycecil, donna, Carmen:

Thanks for your post Elana. Sounds like some of you think the ethos of civil disagreement we embrace on BlogHer is working for BlogHer's community. I'm glad to hear it.

I feel the need to add some comments I made to Brad Stone that didn't make it into his NYTimes story. Stone (no relation) said his focus was the code of conduct recommended by Tim O'Reilly, who invoked the BlogHer Community Guidelines we launched with http://www.blogher.com on Jan. 30, 2006.

I told Stone that, as the author of the guidelines, I don't believe in an overarching, one-stop-shopping code of conduct for all blogs or all Web sites. Graphic images that are appropriate for a blog devoted to the war in Iraq would never work on a parenting site, for example. They shouldn't have to play by the same rules. And you only have to see the First Amendment repeated in my personal blog masthead to know how I feel about it.

That said, I appreciate the leadership Tim and others are trying to show when it comes to asking people to take responsibility for the communities they create. As I told Brad Stone, "Turns out there's no law against being a jerk. However, there are laws against cyberstalking on the books in 45 states."

Don't miss Elisa Camahort's eloquent comments here.

BlogHer's community guidelines look a lot like any journalistic code. We don't allow harassment or stalking, libel, copyright infringement, plagiarism, revealing a third-party's confidential information or spam (stupid annoying pointless messages, typically e-commerce and porn). However, we don't screen comments before they go live on our site and it's still your right to violate our guidelines - we just reserve the right to delete your content. (Note to the sales guy who spammed us about the lovely rocks he wants to sell: What relevance does this have to Beth Kanter's award in non-profit tech, sir? Buh-bye.)

The rest of my opinions on the topic can be found here:

Lisa Stone
BlogHer Co-founder
Surfette

I'm so proud to be a member of this community! Great article, great coverage!

What a great conversation.

Donna, you said "I do wonder when civility turns into managed conversation that is controlled by the social powers that be. As a woman alone, I naturally am wary of that creeping control and question the trade-off." I find that truly thought provoking.

I've been trying to figure out what I really believe is "the right thing", and I must confess that I'm not sure. The closest thing I've come up with so far is the "store front" metaphor. Is it reasonable to think of a website or a blog as a store front? If so, you can draw some conclusions that might make sense:

- Nazis can get a permit to parade down the street in front of your store, but they can't get a permit to spray paint on your windows.
- You can choose to put offensive material on your windows, but there are limits to what can be put on public display.
- You can say "XXX" on the outside and do stuff inside that you couldn't do in front of a window.
- You can, as a store owner, "reserve the right to refuse service to anybody".
- You can, as a store owner, moderate what happens in your store.
- You can't limit offensive conversations in the next store down the block, as long as those offensive conversations don't break any laws.

What's interesting about the internet is that your little one-person store front has as good a location as Home Depot. In other words, it's no harder for a "shopper" to visit your site than it is for a shopper to visit Home Depot. On the internet there's no such thing as "prime" real estate.

Women settled the wild, wild west and now they are settling the wild, wild Internet by being the first to establish the concept of civility.

I hope that when the wiki rules of order are more or less set, that the women who took the first stand in this "civil" war, Lisa, Elisa, Jory and lightening rod Kathy Sierra are given the primary recognition they deserve as founding mothers. (not a footnote)

Community building is far more important than nation building. If we are to proceed as an intelligent species, then a few rules to keep us talking are in order. Otherwise, as my husband commented this morning, "We're just wrapping our tails around tree limbs, shaking branches and screaming at each other."

Very fun to see the three of you looking serious about internet civility on the front page of the NY Times. I sent the article to my brother Rand, who's a blogger and a big fan of Blogher.

Kalyn Denny
Kalyn's Kitchen

Having just launched The Women's International Perspective, The WIP, we have yet to establish our own etiquette guide. We'd like to think that the current level of civility we're seeing on our site will continue as our readership grows, but we also know that we won't always be spared from someone's vitriol or hate speech.

We've struggled with this concept before, because even though our contributor guidelines maintain that we will not publish hateful content, we have not done the same for our commenting feature.

I'm sure that in some ways, popularity begets the ranter or troll...it seems that many people who post these ugly diatribes are just looking for a platform and someone to listen. Like any bully, the best defense is to avoid contact and keep them at arm's length. But does that amount to censorship in cyberspace?

I remember sighing to myself last summer while closely following Beirut Live and the unfortunate devolvement of the conversation that at one time had been so informative and respectable. It wasn't long before a troll named, Sam, joined the discussion and took every opportunity to personally attack each commenter, including me.

The sad thing was that people responded to his taunts and gave in to his school-yard tactics. The adults reverted to child-like behavior, began responding to his attacks and thus managed to completely derail an important dialog.

Even the avoidance tactic has its limitations. While one commenter told another who'd been riled up to "just ignore Sam...eventually he'll go away", the opposite proved true. Sam never went away and many of the really thoughtful, well-spoken commenters moved on instead. All that was left in Sam's wake was a ranting, driveling, dying discussion.

So what's worse...a little moderation or a complete loss of the dialog?

First let me say congratulations.

While the phrase "managed civil dialogue" bothers me, I still marvel at people who seem to think each individual website having a set of standards defining its understanding of civil discourse to be a threat to free speech. Do they not realize that in hard print editors and publishers manage speech all the time by not publishing letters to the editor with unsubstantiated allegations against private citizens?

If you're a member of certain website and feel their code of conduct rules are too strict for you, or if you really like websites where members are allowed to harass other members through personal attacks and vitriol then you're free to drop your membership at sites with code of conduct rules you don't like and join sites with loose conduct rules.

Also, this is still America. If a blogger deletes your comments and locks you out from conversation, you can always get your own blog and promote whatever cause you wish or criticize as many people as you like. It's not illegal to be ultra critical. It's illegal to stalk people and threaten others with physical harm or solicit or directly encourage people to commit crimes against others.

Freedom of speech does not mean you have the right to verbally vandalize other people's publications or website and as a blog owner, I don't have to tolerate nastiness posted by others in my blog's comments section any more than I have to tolerate spam posted in my comments section.

"Love is liquid. Brew and be drunkards!" ~~Nordette And here's a link to the blog.

Congrats, ladies! :D

--
Bill Cammack
Video Editor
BillCammack.com

Love these examples. I think the article does talk about activities that do indeed cross the line from talking about what we all can (and probably should) do to define our own online spaces, to talking about creating a rating system or set of standards (or code) that everyone should choose to follow or not. As per Lisa's comment above, we subscribe to the former idea, and not the latter.

As for BlogHer: we think the guidelines have worked remarkably well at encouraging civil discourse, even civil disagreement. But as you point out, we are all free to not frequent sites with policies we don't like...including sites whose policy is to have no policy!

Elisa Camahort
BlogHer and Worker Bees
elisa@blogher.org/elisa@workerbees.biz

Congratulations!

A subtext of both sets of rules is that bloggers are responsible for everything that appears on their own pages, including comments left by visitors. They say that bloggers should also have the right to delete such comments if they find them profane or abusive.

This is so true. You wouldn't go to someone's house, break a lamp or pour sangria on the carpet. (Well, you could, but chances are you wouldn't be invited back.)

Five Dollar Camera

So many points have already been made that mine would be redundant. I do want you to know that I am proud to be a part of this organization and the standards it is setting.

Another thing I learned is that from that picture, I would NEVER get into a scrap with any one of the 3 of you. You are three tough women, to say the least! :-)

~Jenn~
Mommy Needs Coffee | Mommybloggers
BlogHerContributing Editor, Mommy and Family