What you need to design Loren is a “I’ve been called a douchebag by Loren” badge for guys like O’Reilly to have proudly display on their sites. Get your designers on it now!

By Jim Kukral on Apr 9, 2007

OK I don’t know much about Tim O’Reilly, but he appears to be an intelligent guy. So I disagree on the “stupid” thing. I don’t think he’s crazy either, but I do think he’s a little naive.

He talks about bloggers being responsible for the comments people make to their posts. Right away that is unworkable. The only way to do that is to have moderated comments, and people don’t like that. I won’t post on a site where I can’t see my comments go up right away. Why put in the effort when someone else might decide they don’t like what I said? Maybe it didn’t even work at all. You just don’t know.

He then goes on to say that we should ignore trolls. So wait a minute now. We are supposed to regulate the content of the site AND not engage in debates or arguments with people who post things that aren’t acceptable. These two positions seem mutually exclusive.

Not to mention, it’s hard enough sorting out all the legal aspects of running a blog site, now we’re going to be responsible for every comment made by every goofball who visits? Are we supposed to run around making sure that every statement that every visitor makes is true?

Maybe this is the way the Internet will end up, but I hope not, and I don’t think that hurrying it along is a good idea.

By jvon on Apr 9, 2007

THAT made the front page of the NY Times and Drudgereport?

By Todd on Apr 9, 2007

Ouch. That was harsh.

I’d say O’Reilly’s gone all Deputy Dawg.

By Vince Williams on Apr 9, 2007

When I was a kid, I could do Deputy Dawg, but I lost the touch.

By Vince Williams on Apr 9, 2007

Does this guy think he is the blog police or something? The world is full of rude people. On the street, on TV, in person — I guess we can expect to see rude people on blogs, too.

I personally think it’s much ado about nothing. The blog police are not really needed.

By David Zemens on Apr 9, 2007

I agree with you. Tim O’Reilly thinks he’s the one-man standards body for bloggers because he happened to be one of the first people to say Web 2.0, and it happened to catch on.

By Ilya Lichtenstein on Apr 9, 2007

Ann Althouse has some good comments on this here:

http://althouse.blogspot.com/2007/04/bloggers-code-of-conduct.html

By jvon on Apr 9, 2007

Is it safe hosting this on Podtech given where the Scoble’s stand on this? On the video: couldn’t agree more.

By Duncan Riley on Apr 10, 2007

Some more comments on comments from Frank J.:

http://www.imao.us/archives/007625.html

By jvon on Apr 10, 2007

Hi,

I have taken the LIBERTY to create a wiki for those who oppose draconian measures on the internet. Please help to build this up if you feel that this is important!

site: http://nobloggerscode.pbwiki.com
password: “knowfascism”

By Matt on Apr 10, 2007

Forget the victims. Long live the right to be rude. But Tim O’Reilly has done this debate no end of good

By Don on Apr 13, 2007