Blogging vs. Codes of Conduct

[azurelunatic]

I guess since my blogging habits developed on LJ, with forays into the comments sections of places like slashdot, I'm a little spoiled and a little jaded both on blogging/commenting social conduct, and how to keep a good coherent and interactive blogspace.

At some point when I'm coherent, I expect to take this and subject it to my usual deconstruction. Despite the air of self-righteous arrogance some of the phrasing has, a lot of the principles are ones that I actually do use in keeping the comments here cleaned up.

I don't believe any one person's blog is a forum for pure free speech. The entire internet may have a lot of free speech, but I think of each individual blog as a monarchy. Your right to free speech in my LJ extends exactly as far as I say it extends, not as far as you say it extends. That's how it's always been. It's a courtesy on the part of blogs with comments sections with very liberal rules to allow all kinds of comments and not keep an eye on them, but any blog that goes so far as to remove spam comments is censoring pure free speech.

There's a very delicate art to encouraging open discussion and debate while attempting to keep the whole effort readable and even marginally healthy to be in. I'm attempting to learn that art, and recognize the hallmarks of the comments that I think are entirely wrong-headed and clue-negative but are still a valid and vital part of the discussion, and distinguish them from the comments that are deliberately inflammatory and either contribute nothing to the discussion or are phrased too offensively to do any constructive good to the debate in progress. It takes a lot of practice to learn, and takes active work to maintain.

I believe that online accountability is a good thing to foster civility (I'm far less likely to go and be a complete dick in someone's journal if they can follow my username back to my journal and be a dick right back to me) but that anonymous commentary has an irreplaceable part in almost all online debate.

The Blogger's Code of Conduct as drafted is a little more permissive than the standards I keep in this journal, actually. If I feel someone's in my journal being a dick, I don't necessarily explain if I delete something. I don't even inform someone that I'm taking their comment down, if they're being that bad. I don't call upon someone to apologize. I just take whatever it was that they said away, and if necessary, ban their happy ass out of town.

Comments

[lady-angelina.livejournal.com]

Bravo. I couldn't have said it better myself, and I agree with pretty much everything you said.

I've always been of the opinion that one's personal residence/space/etc. is their own, and they can impose whatever rules they want so long as such rules aren't illegal or breach a binding agreement or contract.

Or more simply put, my personal motto: "Your freedom of speech ends where my doorstep/mailbox/journal/email inbox/etc. begins."

I'd like to think that I'm tolerant of others' opinions posted in my journal, even if I don't necessarily agree with them. I certainly wouldn't arbitrarily delete someone else's comment just because I don't agree with it. But as you said, I can and have deleted spam and strongly abusive or inappropriate comments because of the intent of the commenter. My journal is supposed to be a safe place for other people to express their minds and joke around when they comment, and I want to do whatever I can to maintain that feeling of safety, just as I would in my own apartment.

[azurelunatic]

And as Steph said, there's a lot more feeling of personal safety and security in a personal blog/social space than there is in a public/professional blog.

I don't really expect a fully "safe space" in here, mostly because the majority of this journal isn't friends-locked, but just as if someone accidentally stepped on someone's feet at a party of mine, I'd expect that people at least make an attempt to be civil to each other. I know I have some very, very incompatible people on my friendslist, but this journal is closer to a treaty conference than a DMZ.

[sithjawa.livejournal.com]

The way I see it, LJ is kind of like one's house (while blogspot and the like are more like one's shop window).

In your LJ, you are expected to keep one's front yard and windows - what's visible to the public - tidy (though it may contain garden gnomes). You're expected to provide a basic level of hospitality to invited guests (friends commenting in your journal), but can reasonably slam the door on door-to-door marketers, especially if they are rude or market something you find nasty. In return, you expect your guests to be nice to you and to your other guests, because they're guests in your home, yo.

In a public Blog (like author blogs, etc.), you're doing something with at least a bit of professionalism in it. You tend to talk about things you think the public will be interested in, and you have to keep everything to a public-acceptable level. People who wander into your "store" can diss what you're selling if they want, and you expect strangers to wander into your "store." If people start fighting you can ask them to leave but they're customers so unless they're driving off other customers most things will be tolerated.

ps. Looking through the comments on the post it seems like the overwhelming feeling is "We don't need to be civil, the world is made of pain!" Rudeness is the new emo?

[azurelunatic]

The problem with "the internet is not made of nice" as an argument in favor of being a dick is that it's self-fulfilling. No, the internet is not currently made of nice, nor will it ever be, not without a drastic shift in culture and enforcement. However, there are many good sound reasons to behave in ways that are not like a squirrel brought indoors while on the internet; commodorified has expounded upon these already. Other people behaving like dicks is not a good reason to also behave that way, or to put up with it when it enters your own space.

I think there's also a fundamental difference between cold hard facts ("the world is not made of nice and there will be mean people out there; just being cute and smart is not enough to get you by in the work world; war and poverty exist; the thing you want is not technologically or socially feasible and won't happen; I disagree with your political views") and meanness for the sake of being mean and causing pain to the other party. Hurt feelings are an inevitable side effect of oversensitive people being out in public, but that still doesn't excuse starting out by trying to be a dick.


I think the level of rudeness that gets by on public blogs these days is really unacceptable, and it discourages me from participating. I'm not particularly thin-skinned, but I really have no desire to be trolled at. I know trolls do their thing for the amusement factor, but unless they're terribly, terribly witty or at least have some form of valid point, then the only people they're amusing are themselves and perhaps a group of equally mean-spirited fellows.

[sithjawa.livejournal.com]

I don't participate in most newsgroups for exactly that reason. I just can't find the pleasant.

[azurelunatic]

And I hear that there are good things in newsgroups from time to time.