One odd outcome of the (very confusing) situation with Creating Passionate Users and a couple of deliberate snark sites (remember when I left one post at the top of the blog for a week?) was a proposal from Tim O’Reilly for a blogging Code of Conduct.
With badges, no less.
I’m not linking to specific blogs or posts here because there are too many to consider, and I sure don’t want to encourage people to get all excited about O’Reilly’s proposal.
I do plan to write a Cites & Insights essay (or part of a Net Media perspective) on this whole mess, and am accumulating appropriate posts toward that end. I don’t want to spout off on the whole situation here.
Except, I suppose, to offer my own bottom line, which you may be able to infer from the title of this post (which I believe to be the correct quotation from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre; if the title’s cut off, the quote is Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges. I don’t have to show you any stinking badges.).
To wit:
- I think a formal Code of Conduct is a particularly bad idea (wait for the essay for my own take on why that’s so)
- I might or might not do a post about changes in my own standard for comments here, but those changes would be what I consider appropriate here, not “Here’s what y’all should do.”
- I do not intend to take part in any voluntary labeling to show that this blog is either a Good Guy or a Bad Guy.
In other news (oh, why not?):
- That essay will not be in the May 2007 Cites & Insights, because I’m putting the finishing touches on that issue already. Expect it this weekend. Seven essays, some of the varied stuff that’s been missing lately, and a brand new section devoted to current library issues, “Making it Work.”
- If posts over the next few weeks or months seem even more peculiar than usual, there’s a reason having to do with certain disruptions in my everyday life. You may not notice. If so, you bettah off. If the disruptions aren’t taken care of reasonably soon (at the very latest, by the time I turn 62), their nature will become more public.
Walt, I used to use the badges quote back when I was a reference intern and had to wear a pin stating I was a “library intern”. Other students in other campus libraries didn’t have to. So I stopped. My experience at the reference desk improved exponentially. I also found this site that attempts to trace all uses of the phrase since its inception. Cute. And I digress.
I also wonder about the efficacy of a code of ethics on the Sphere. I still reserve the right to moderate what comes across my server space (thankfully have only rarely had to use it), but not what goes across yours. In any case there’s much more to say but…. for now I do hope the “disruptions” improve, go away, get better, leave you alone, whatever makes you happy. j
Jennimi,
“I still reserve the right to moderate what comes across my server space (thankfully have only rarely had to use it), but not what goes across yours.”
That’s a very good way to put it. I’m likely to broaden the situations in which I feel free to delete or edit comments (I think Sarah Houghton-Jan’s explicit policy is probably close to what I’ll use–not surprising, since she thinks clearly about these things), but in any case that is and should be my decision.
The disruptions will go away, sooner or later, for better or for worse. I’m hoping for sooner/better. And, frankly, based on past experience, I expect that writing and the like won’t be disrupted significantly. (Which may be a sign of an insufficiently integrated personality, but I can live with that. Me too.)