Connect
My real name is Seth Wagoner and I'm from Christchurch, New Zealand
I blog at sethop.com
I was the sysop of a highly argumentative BBS for 10 years back in the dialup days.
I've been thinking about "best practices for online moderation and debate" for ages, but have been terribly busy with a bunch of other things so haven't really done much about it. I did notice that Clay Shirky was talking about it from the moderation perspective, some of the material on their wiki may provide insight here. Being awfully fond of KS and her blog, I've been following the latest fracas with some interest. I hope a net win can come of all this, although it will be awfully hard to make up for losing Kathy if she decides to leave the 'sphere.
I think the bloggers code of conduct is a good idea, but it needs to be handled with care.
For instance, we could go as far as defining a structure similar to creative commons, where there are multiple different types, and version numbers, of conduct codes. Just so long as the badges are distinct and link to a page with enough explanation, I think that would be a more effective long term solution than one set of rules that people keep arguing over.
I can certainly sympathise with those who feel this is all a bit of PC nonsense. When I was a pseudonymous political blogger I appreciated it when my opponents used ad-hominems and made off colour comments, since it essentially demonstrated their lack of any substantive arguments, and gave me all the excuse I needed to go to town on them if I wanted to. But it led to a collosal ammount of wasted time from all sides, and well, my time was probably a lot more valuable than theirs, so while I usually won tactical victories, strategically it was a bit daft. These days, I just don't engage.
I guess a key question is whether it's worth trying to write a CoC that would be useful to people who are happy to see "robust debate" on their blog (that includes a *lot* of political bloggers), but want some way to stop it from going *too far*, as opposed to bloggers like Tim who would prefer a much more "civil" debate. My opinion is that there should be more than one code, and each code should have versions. But that sounds like a lot of hassle which is why probably nobody's bothered yet. Which leads to the question of whether it's better to have one code for the moment because it's just simpler, and people can adopt it or not as they see fit.
Currently I'm supposed to be finishing up the launch prep for my new startup Interclue so my contributions here will be necessarily brief! But it's something I have a bit of insight into so I want to participate.
BTW Anyone who wants to try the beta of our awesome firefox addon, it's over at beta.interclue.com