The big discussion today in the blogosphere is about a proposed Blogger’s Code of Conduct. It is currently the top story on Techmeme. Tim O’Reilly has posted a draft of the Blogger’s Code here on his blog and here on Wikia. Tim O’Reilly says the “code” is a draft based closely on the BlogHer Community Guidelines. The code was devised following the recent blogger death threats. There is a sheriff type of badge for blogs that adhere to the code’s guidelines. There is also an “anything goes” badge for blogs that will not follow the guidelines. This badge contains a stick of dynamite about to explode. Eventually the Blogger’s Code of Conduct and badges bloggers can use will be posted at bloggingcode.org. Here is the first draft of the Code. We celebrate the blogosphere because it embraces frank and open conversation. But frankness does not have to mean lack of civility. We present this Blogger Code of Conduct in hopes that it helps create a culture that encourages both personal expression and constructive conversation. 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.] We won’t say anything online that we wouldn’t say in person. We connect privately before we respond publicly. When we encounter conflicts and misrepresentation in the blogosphere, we make every effort to talk privately and directly to the person(s) involved–or find an intermediary who can do so–before we publish any posts or comments about the issue. When we believe someone is unfairly attacking another, we take action. When someone who is publishing comments or blog postings that are offensive, we’ll tell them so (privately, if possible–see above) and ask them to publicly make amends. If those published comments could be construed as a threat, and the perpetrator doesn’t withdraw them and apologize, we will cooperate with law enforcement to protect the target of the threat. We do not allow anonymous comments. We require commenters to supply a valid email address before they can post, though we allow commenters to identify themselves with an alias, rather than their real name. We ignore the trolls. We prefer not to respond to nasty comments about us or our blog, as long as they don’t veer into abuse or libel. We believe that feeding the trolls only encourages them–”Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, but the pig likes it.” Ignoring public attacks is often the best way to contain them. There has been a backlash against the code by many bloggers and against the idea of badges for blogs. It is most likely that bloggers that choose to ignore the code are not going to post any kind of badge at all or they might alter the badges like Duncan Riley did here on a post at 901am.com. Some parts of the code like not being libelous, not stalking and not infringing on copyright are things that we all hope reasonable bloggers are going to follow whether or not they have agreed to a code. There are also already laws that make many of these activities illegal. It is the parts of the Blogger’s Code of Conduct about anonymous comments and trolls that are the most controversial. A lot of blogs allow the posting of anonymous comments and some bloggers talk to the trolls. Robert Scoble admits to feeding the trolls. Ensuring that commenters are who they say they are is also not an easy thing to do even if you wanted to. Zoli notes that commenters can hide by “just registering with bogus credentials.” The New York Times has an article about the Blogger’s Code of Conduct. Jeff Jarvis points out that the code gave the Times an excuse to use “World of Nasty Blogs” in a headline. The article includes a photograph of the founders of BlogHer.org, where a similar code of conduct has been helpful in building that community. Nicholas Carr has a funny response about how the “Civility Enforced” badget could be used. Boing Boing argues the freedom has been traded for politeness. More coverage of the code can be found on mathewingram.com/work, Crunchnotes, Burningbird and Techmeme. Meanwhile, Om Malik says if you are paying too much attention to the Code and the badges you are missing out on a big Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) revenue cuts story. Posted in Blogging Industry News Permalink | Recent Headlines | WWFeeds.com

Penelope Cruz Wants to Adopt a Baby
Penelope Cruz wants to follow in Brangelina’s footsteps and adopt a child of her own. Penelope opened up about her strong desire to have kids in the April Spanish edition…

Mandy Moore Fractures Ankle
The actress injures herself at a magazine shoot, her rep confirms

Twitterverse Helps Track Twitter Conversations
Ideacodes has blogged the launch of their new Twitter mashup tool called Twitterverse. Twitterverse is an interesting tool that displays keywords that people have been discussing recently on Twitter in an easy-to-read tag cloud layout. The words in larger fonts are the keywords that Twitter users have been entering the most. In its current form, Twitterverse displays popular words based on time and popularity. We?re pulling data every minute from the public timeline RSS feed as it updates. The data is parsed by word match, eliminating certain types of words, and a script generates the cloud based on time frame and popularity. We?ll be adjusting the algorithm frequently as we get more data, as well as limiting out certain words (or display names). For now, words are displayed based on being repeated a certain number of times during the specified timeframe. Even at this basic level, you can start to get a sense of our collective activity and the general zeitgeist of the day. For example, since we cleared our test data and started re-collecting data off the public timeline on Sunday, April 8 at 5:40pm PST, we started to see a shift from people twittering about “easter” early in the day to a growing number of people twittering about “sopranos” as the night progressed. You can imagine checking in daily to see what topics arise. On Twitterverse you can see the top topics for the last hour, the last 5 hours, the last ten hours and for the previous day. We already mentioned today on our Twitter page that lunch and coffee are two of the more frequently discussed topics. Other popular keywords include going, listening, meeting, office, reading, sleep, wondering and working. You can also find discussion of current topics such as the latest film. For example, some twits have been discussing the film Grindhouse. It will be interesting to see what happens on Twitterverse when there is a big breaking news event. Twitterverse also provides a search tool that includes data from Sunday, April 8, 2007 to the present. The search tool will be useful for finding conversations about a particular subject and for ego searches. Posted in Twitter Permalink | Recent Headlines | WWFeeds.com

Avril Lavigne Buys a $9.5 Million Home in Bel-Air
Canadian singer Avril Lavigne and her new husband Deryck Whibley just paid $9.5 million for a ridiculously huge home in California. This massive new house wasn’t just in any old…

Ryan Gosling Opens Up About Rachel McAdams
The Fracture star calls his girlfriend “the most discerning person I’ve ever met”

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 15th, 2007 at 5:20 am and is filed under Celebrity Information. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.