OF COURSE, IF THEY WEREN'T ILL-MANNERED CRETINS THEY'D NOT BE UPSET IN THE FIRST PLACE:

Howls of protest as web gurus attempt to banish bad behaviour from blogosphere: Opinion divided over code of conduct meant to rid postings of offensive and abusive comments (Ed Pilkington, April 10, 2007, The Guardian)

Perhaps it was inevitable. When two leading internet pioneers came together this week to propose a set of guidelines that would filter out offensive and abusive comments from blogs, they were met by a torrent of offensive and abusive comments.

Images of excrement were abundant amid the reaction yesterday to the proposed "bloggers' code of conduct". The anonymous blogger bynkii (motto: because misanthropy is fun) likened the idea to "troll faeces, specifically designed to create a special group of self-satisfied, smug, condescending dingalings looking down their noses". The new media site 910am described it as "weapons of mass stupidity" and carried the health warning "do not read on a full stomach".

The text that has got the collective bowels moving of these and many other bloggers is a draft set of rules on introducing the concept of civility to the blogosphere. It is the combined work of Tim O'Reilly, inventor of the phrase Web 2.0 to describe the next generation of interactive communications, and Jimmy Wales, founder of the communal encyclopaedia Wikipedia.

They have posted a seven-point programme that would attempt, they say, to address the plethora of abusive comments on the web, while preserving the free spirit of the medium. Point one of the code is that anyone signing up to it would commit themselves to a "civility enforced" standard to remove unacceptable comments from their blog.

What the whackos seem not to get is that no one is asking them to stop being [insert favorite expletive here]'s, just telling them they can't implicate those who aren't in their [insert favorite expletive here]iness.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 10, 2007 8:35 AM