rotten bananas

I guess I’ll jump on the bandwagon. This whole code of conduct thing is ridiculous. Honestly, I find it a bit pretentious. We’re really not that important. Bloggers make up a community, or a series of communities, but there’s very little legal pretense in what we do. Sure, you wouldn’t want to make a habit of slandering everyone you can get your hands on or make death threats, but those that matter already know that.

I’m in agreement with Ben Yoskovitz. Any ‘guidelines’ or ‘rules’ that you try to press on the blogosphere will only be followed by those that don’t need said guidelines. Like my grandfather used to say, “Locks keep honest people honest.” In both cases, the security measures only work on those that accept them. The people breaking the rules and causing trouble won’t care about a code of conduct that the rest of us follow.

Lastly, please, please don’t try to impose a set of rules on the blogosphere, or the internet. There are more than enough rules in this world. The internet is a free and wonderful place, where even the rules that they try to impose don’t work; anyone can publish any content they want, regardless of who thinks it’s good or bad; where there’s a hole in some corner where three water stained walls come together that holds a congregation of any name-your-random-fetish. Sure, a lot of it is pretty nasty. A lot of it is obnoxious. A lot of it is prepubescent teens screaming curses and racial slurs at each other during arguments over anime and Honda Civics.

I would shed no tears if 90% of it burned to the ground, but once we start imposing rules on some parts, others will follow. Whether it’s censoring bloggers, ending net neutrality, or limiting your WoW time, we all know how the snowball effect works. The internet is still a canvas for each of us to paint our own landscape. If we voluntarily put chains on our easels now, we’ll end up staring at the default Windows XP wallpaper for the rest of our lives.