Should Blogs Have a Seal of Approval?

April is the 10th anniversary of the blog, and there is no better indication of how contentious the medium has become than the growing number of calls by bloggers themselves to regulate it.

The current darlings of wannabe regulators are so-called codes of conduct, guidelines on what is and is not appropriate in online discussions and stuff like whether people are allowed to comment anonymously.

The issue has come to a head because of an epidemic of cyberbullying, mostly infamously including death threats and other forms of intimidation directed at Kathy Sierra, who blogs on high-tech issues and found herself in the crosshairs because of a dispute on whether inflammatory comments made on blogs should be deleted.

Leading the charge for codes of conduct is big-time blogger Tim O’Reilly, who perhaps not coincidentally is a PR man. O’Reilly has posted a draft of a sample code on his website and is soliciting comments.

Please click here to read more at my own blog.