A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs

A CALL FOR MANNERS IN THE WORLD OF NASTY BLOGS
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Brad Stone]
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. A recent outbreak of antagonism among several prominent bloggers “gives us an opportunity to change the level of expectations that people have about what’s acceptable online,” said Mr. O’Reilly, who posted the preliminary recommendations last week on his company blog (radar.oreilly.com). Mr. Wales then put the proposed guidelines on his company’s site (blogging.wikia.com), and is now soliciting comments in the hope of creating consensus around what constitutes civil behavior online.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/09/technology/09blog.html?hp
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* Aiming for a kinder, smarter online encyclopedia
http://www.latimes.com/business/printedition/la-fi-citizen9apr09,1,2224061.story?coll=la-headlines-pe-business