In an effort to halt an increasing trend of violent and anonymous comments posted on blogs, two online publishing bigwigs have created a list of moderating guidelines to keep bloggers safe, and although some support the list, others say it promotes censorship.
Wikipedia.com creator Jimmy Wales and book publisher Tim O'Reilly compiled the Blogger's Code of Conduct, which describes seven ways to keep blogs safe while stressing respect for all bloggers, including eliminating anonymous comments and finding intermediaries when conversations become heated.
"There's an attitude among many bloggers that deleting inflammatory comments is censorship," O'Reilly wrote in his blog. "I think that needs to change. I'm not suggesting that every blog will want to delete such comments, but I am suggesting that blogs that do want to keep the level of dialogue at a higher level not be censured for doing so.
"Setting standards for acceptable behavior in a forum you control is conducive to free speech, not damaging to it," O'Reilly added.
O'Reilly said the right to remove comments from blogs parallels the right for hosts to remove drunken and obnoxious guests from a party.
O'Reilly said he was inspired to create the guidelines after his friend, marketing blogger Kathy Sierra, allegedly received death threats on her blog.
"We've all got a real problem," David Weinberger, a fellow of Harvard's Berkman Center on Internet and Society, wrote in his blog. "On some sites, comments are so nasty that they are driving people off the web."
Mena Trott, co-founder and president of Six Apart -- an online blog tutorial service that also hosts blogs of its own -- said the guidelines are not meant to be taken as rules written in stone, but are decided at the discretion of each blog moderator.
"If you extend this metaphor into the offline world and a blog was the equivalent to your living room, you would certainly not be accused of infringing the right to free speech by trying to control types of discussion or tones of speech that occurs inside your own space," Trott said in an email.
Trott said restrictions on blogs should not be viewed as censorship.
"Blogs have succeeded because there is an accountability that is derived from the pure ownership of the space," she said.
"[The guidelines are] voluntary," said Massachusetts American Civil Liberties Union spokesman Chris Ott. "Not every blog may adopt them."
Ott compared the guidelines to letters to the editor, which are published at editors' discretion.
"They don't call that censorship," he said. "They exert some control over what they will print."
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