PROPOSING A BLOGGER CODE OF CONDUCT:

Last week, Tim O’Reilly, a conference promoter and book publisher who is credited with coining the term Web 2.0, began working with Jimmy Wales, creator of the communal online encyclopedia Wikipedia, to create a set of guidelines to shape online discussion and debate.

Chief among the recommendations is that bloggers consider banning anonymous comments left by visitors to their pages and be able to delete threatening or libelous comments without facing cries of censorship.

Sounds like I’m ahead of the curve already! Though that sounds more like a commenter code of conduct, really. I certainly don’t believe that deleting nasty comments is an assault on free speech. Commenters can always get their own blog — why should they have a “right” to have their comments appear on other people’s blogs. The downside, though, is that once you start deleting comments people will tend to hold you more responsible for any comments that you don’t delete. I certainly think that this prediction will be borne out: “What I foresee is endless argument about the meaning of the terms in the rules and how the rules apply. These discussions will be tedious and full of self-serving assertions.”

Meanwhile, a related issue involving the Yale Law Journal.

Plus a potentially lucrative opportunity for InstaPundit!