You want to link up with other bloggers who adhere to a certain common code of conduct? That’s fine. Have a good time. Heck, if enough people band together, you might actually have an impact on behavior. But don’t even for a second think that everyone should join your little thought-control club… That’s just silly.

I have been going online since 1993 and had some Usenet exposure. This may be an “in the eyes of the beholder thing,” but it is my view that the level of uncivility has increased expodentially with the explosion of the blogosphere, but then I would say the same thing about society in general.

In the end, I come down on this issue with Michael, who articulates my own view regarding my blog, Kiko’s House, which is figurately a house but like a real one is a place where people have to play by my rules: That means no putting their feet on the furniture, giving dinner scraps to the critters, leaving with their car keys if they’ve had a bit too much to drink . . .

I suspect that what happened to Kathy Sierra might not have happened had she taken the same steps from the beginning. Once the mob has taken over a blog it’s too late to boot them out.

Also, I do not think blogging is any more contentious now than it has been in the past. I’ve been blogging for five years, and I don’t notice any real difference. If anything the right-wing sites are a shade more subdued than they were two or three years ago. And compared to the Wild West era of Usenet, the blogosphere is relatively genteel.