Apr 9, 2007

Monday's Noted Things

by Cliopatria

Brad Stone,"A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs," NYT, 9 April, discusses the code of conduct proposed by Tim O'Reilly and Jimmy Wales. Two recent commenters at Cliopatria repeatedly violated HNN's guidelines for comments. Their comments have been deleted in order to encourage reasonable discussion.

Dan Bilefsky,"Belgians Hail the Middle Ages (Well, Not the Plague Part)," NYT, 9 April, looks at Belgium's enthusiasm for medieval re-enactment.

At Lawyers, Guns, and Money, Robert Farley has an on-going series:"Sunday Deposed Monarch Blogging". He's covered the House of Hohenzollern, House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg, Lao Dynasty, House of Osman, House of Iturbide, House of Singh, and House of Hesse. His colleague, David Noon, has another series:"Worst American Birthdays." So far, Roy Cohn, Bill Frist, Joe Lieberman, Lee Atwater, George Lincoln Rockwell, Gail Norton, William J. Casey, John Wayne Gacy, Sam Alito, and Tom DeLay have joined David's charmed circle. If pushed, I imagine that he would admit that there are degrees of bad.

"From Bakelite to Plasma: TV through the Ages," Wired, 6 April, is a visual history of television's 75 years. Hat tip.

Charlie Savage,"Scandal Puts Spotlight on Christian Law School," Boston Globe, 8 April. What Pat Robertson hath wrought.

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More Comments:

Nonpartisan - 4/10/2007

Exactly! Oh, but of course their erudition must, as Samuel Eliot Morison once wrote, be taken for granted.

Manan Ahmed - 4/9/2007

I will sign a blogger code of conduct, the day after all working journalists in newspapers and television sign one.

Nonpartisan - 4/9/2007

The idea of a blogger code of conduct is something that should be treated very carefully, if at all. One of the chief benefits of blogs is their freewheeling style and willingness to spit on sacred cows of the establishment; the proposed guidelines would have a definite chilling effect in this sort of discourse given their preference for covert rather than overt dealings (#3), overemphasis on civility (#2), endorsement of ignoring dissenting views (#6), and heavy-handed attempts to shut down blogs that are overly aggressive (#7).

The HNN comment guidelines, on the other hand, hit the mark much more squarely: eliminate obvious abuse and misrepresentation, and give a free hand to the rest. Another critical component of this is the now-defunct Online Integrity pledge, of which I am a signatory. This is important even for sites such as HNN that require users to post (or at least reveal to the editor) their real names, because it involves preserving the anonymity of individuals at other sites. (A dissenting view on OI whom I respect greatly is found here.)