On Trolls...

After reading Tim O'Reilly's post from today, "Call for a Blogger's Code of Conduct", the thing I most agree with is:

4. Ignore the Trolls

People suck. In large crowds like the blogosphere or the Internets -- a mesosphere of the blogosphere -- there's an increasing probability that the one dickhead in the crowd will be able to "get" you. And, as the yogics out there will recognize, reaction to these types of things does nothing for you.

Also, once we start to enumerate a set of behaviorial criteria, it's easy to be overinclusive. For example, O'Reilly mentions that we should consider eliminating anonymous comments. That's far from my own ideals. Yes, anonymity can be abused and it will be abused, but there is much good that flows from anonymity and I think it's irresponsible for us to eliminate it as a value we hold dear. I think a code of conduct like this should be constructed much like a license and include only what we need.

What I fear is that the blogging community might start to sign on to a dynamic code of conduct that only gets larger. We might then be moving the blogoshphere more towards a wikipedia model of interaction where everyone points to part of a policy to justify their behavior or a line of argument. Yuk.

I don't know Kathy Sierra, but some of my friends do. And they seem to be particularly concerned with this incident. It seems that many of us who don't think this incident was particularly remarkable have been hesitant to speak out. Don't get me wrong, misogyny can be extremely brutal, usually moreso than misandry. Death threats, even joking, are completely unacceptable social behavior, online or off. However, I don't think one dickhead should cause a phase transition where we start to enumerate the norms to which we subscribe. We should work hard to be just as vigilant about what we let get under our skin as we are about vocalizing what we feel is irresponsible behavior.