After reading through all this stuff and the NY Times post on the matter my initial thoughts were that O’Reilly was simply taking advantage of a hot topic to gain a bit of exposure and while I still think that’s true I’m not sure it’s not without some merit and the whole thing seems to be a reactive responsive to the dramtic impact Sierra’s experience has had on the blogosphere. Having thought about the matter off and on today I did have some thoughts and as much as I probably shouldn’t get involved, I’m never at a loss for an opinion. O’Reilly makes some good points in his proposal but I run two forums for celebrities, one that’s pretty well known in her field. My opinion of this entire matter is it doesn’t just pertian to blogs and bloggers, but it pertains to forums as well and it’s a problem that’s not just cropped up recently. This problem has been around for a long, long time.

At first I thought I’d just hit each of the six proposals and comment on each, but that’s quickly turned into one large post. So to save everyone that bothers to read this the agony I decided to break it up into six parts based on each of the six proposals. So, with that said, here we go.

1. We take responsibility for our own words and for the comments we allow on our blog.

We are committed to the “Civility Enforced” standard: we will not post unacceptable content, and we’ll delete comments that contain it.

We define unacceptable content as anything included or linked to that:
- is being used to abuse, harass, stalk, or threaten others
- is libelous, knowingly false, ad-hominem, or misrepresents another person,
- infringes upon a copyright or trademark
- violates an obligation of confidentiality
- violates the privacy of others

We define and determine what is “unacceptable content” on a case-by-case basis, and our definitions are not limited to this list. If we delete a comment or link, we will say so and explain why. [We reserve the right to change these standards at any time with no notice.]

Practically speaking a blog is very similar to a forum in that it’s essentially a bunch of threaded conversations. The major difference is the “threads” are usually started by the blog owner and/or associates and not just anyone that comes along and signs up, so at least to a degree the conversational topics are somewhat controlled. Those topics however, are usually slanted towards the posters opinion and/or viewpoint very much like forum posts are. So while they are different they are very much alike as well.

This proposal pretty much mirrors my forum policies. We represent real people and I’ve a strong opinion that by chosing to build a site around their name and their image that a certain responsibility is assumed and that by extension we do represent them. In two years that’s been proven times over, and I could easily start all sorts of rumors or validate them with a simple post. We established early on what the limits would be and that meant heavy moderation on certain subjects. I’ve been accused of censorship by any number of individuals but I maintain my sites aren’t public sites and therefore, unlike an endorsed or official site, I can exercise a bit of “latitude” in how things are handled. Things of a nature that’s been deemed “inappropriate” are summarily removed, most of the time with notification but many times without and it’s very much on a case-by-case basis.

I think this is a reasonable expectation for any site but I think the terms should be left up to individual sites and not dictated to by a consortium of individuals who are considered “defacto” anything simply because they’ve been around longer. The rules I apply to my forums wouldn’t necessarily apply if I were operating a gossip site, since what we define as unacceptable or inappropriate content would conflict with the very things a gossip site would be looking to post.

Should such a site have rules? Absolutely, without them there is too much incentive for individuals to just run off at the mouth and like it or not sometimes we need to be filtered, but again, that should be left to the individual sites. I know sites that go against the main stream and they are very popular and are very leanient in what they allow, but even those have limits to which they’ll allow their members to go.

So I’m cool with this proposal. I think it can be made to work for any site out there with a bit of work to the terminology. For the gossip site I use as example, gossip implies a level of knowlingly false information that more often than not the saterical nature mis-represents the person it’s being posted about. This is no different than the countless late night comedy shows that thrive off this same thing and claim to vett most of their information. I could cite countless instances where they’ve made assumptions based on appearances and were very much wrong. So a bit more clarity on the specifics may be necessary but the idea behind it is reasonable.

What’s your opinions on this proposal? Whould you subscribe to it or do your own policies currently reflect it’s basis?

Update: Tim has posted a followup to the original post, this one titled Lessons Learned So Far. I’ll be finishing up my thoughts on the original proposals in the next day or two and then we can look and see how it’s eveolved in a very short amount of time.