O'Reilly has a change of heart – latest on bloggers code of conduct

Tim O'Reilly, the Web 2.0 guru who almost created a firestorm of his own when he recently called for a Blogger's Code of Conduct, complete with badges and all, in the wake of the Kathy Sierra firestorm, tells Wired he has changed his mind (interesting article, worth reading in full):

I've come to think the call for a code of conduct was a bit misguided. A lot of sites have their own terms of service that are a lot like what I proposed for the code of conduct. And I was just saying, let's get the best of the breed, let's figure it out, so somebody who wants to have one of these doesn't have to think it all up for themselves.  People have interpreted that as a call for some kind of MPAA ratings system or something. That's not at all what I was proposing. I was proposing a modular set of terms of service, so somebody could say, "I don't want this kind of behavior." Now, a lot of people already do that, so it's really much ado about nothing.

The risks of NOT engaging
Meanwhile, journalists at both The New York Times (NYT), and the normally blog-savy Guardian, used O'Reilly's proposal as a hook for attacking the nasty world of blogs. In a rather ill-informed piece for The Guardian's Comment is Free, Jonathan Freedland claimed "The blogosphere risks putting off everyone but point-scoring males." I often wonder if journalists who write articles like this and the NYT piece ever read blogs, and if so, which blogs: yes there are some trolls around, but they are rare exceptions, not the rule (for the UK, maybe they only read Guido, who does attract an unusual high number of trolls in the comment section).

These ignorant attacks on the blogosphere only serve to strengthen the perception of MSM as Big Bad Media that has shut itself off from the community it is supposed to serve. Luckily, there are some excellent commentators out there, like this one on Freedland's piece, who can put the house right:

"Must have been so nice to be a journalist or commentator in the old days. Just lock what you say in print and damn the masses. Times have changed. You can lock the doors, but then there’ll just be you." (via Guardian's blogs editor Kevin Anderson, who called it the best comment ever and said: "Certainly there are risks to opening up and engaging, but this comment succinctly highlights the risks of doing nothing.)

The conflicts between journalism and blogging
Interestingly, Martin Stabe, normally a top-notch blogger, wrote a piece about the 'code-of-conduct-debate' that was so journalistic that BBC Today invited him to defend the code, which he was actually against, on air. Must have been a weak moment where his journalistic training got the better of the blogger in him, can't say it hasn't happened to me.