So, as many of you have probably seen by now, The New York Times has an obnoxiously titled, front-page article A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs. Oy vey. Where to begin?

My first reaction to the article is how it demonstrates once again that the established media really, really condescends to the blogosphere. Since when does an article on blogging receive front page treatment in the New York Times? Apparently, when it is about "nasty" bloggers, and their need for "manners." The story does describe a pretty odious event, and one of the more telling cases of our chronic problem with blogospheric misogyny to take place in recent months. My complaint centers more on how this is the typical story on blogging to receive front-page treatment, as it details an event describing how blogs are dangerous, evil and nasty. Anything that portrays blogs as in need of adult supervision generally gets wide play within the established media. Of course, were it ever revealed just how frequently journalists read blogs themselves, one might quickly wonder who was supervising who.

My second reaction is that, no matter how much many members of the media and political establishment are obviously drooling over the prospect, professional codes of conduct and the blogosphere will never mix very well. While there is no denying that the blogosphere is experiencing a strong degree of professionalization and even super-blog consolidation, ultimately blogging is not a practice over which you can hope to establish broadly accepted rules of engagement. Improvements can be made, but the problem will always remain to some degree.

More in the extended entry.

Let me try to further explain that last point. I am a professional blogger, at least in the sense that I derive most of my income from blogging rather than in the sense I have any formal training in the field. As such, I actually find all of the "rules" O'Reilly suggests for respectful blogging quite obvious. If you don't behave in those ways, and you don't intuitively understand those "rules," you just are not going to have a lot of credibility, and / or your site will quickly be overrun with trolls. In the same vein, I thought the sentiments behind Online Integrity were also obvious, even though I refused to sign it, and I also recently made some of my standards on MyDD clear for all to see. If you don't set and follow standards of this sort, then once you reach any noticeable size your blog will begin to suck. Among the professionals, in order to succeed, or even just survive, we all have to follow some pretty obvious rules, like moderating comment threads, maintaining focused content, and not tolerating abusive / anti-social / illegal behavior.

Still, even with the increasing professionalization of the blogosphere, very few bloggers are professionals. The vast majority of bloggers on any topic will always be amateur, occasional hobbyists. There are only a few of us crazy enough, lucky enough, and dedicated enough to try and do this for a living. It is easy to set, and follow, a code of conduct when something important like your livelihood, beloved cause, or personal credibility is on the line. However, if you if are just a blog hobbyist you might not care as much, and there is no way to regulate amateur, occasional hobbyists in environment with virtually no entrance costs. Forcing someone with virtually nothing at stake and nothing to lose to do anything at all is practically impossible. Further, the culture of the online world, in which blogging operates, was created largely by libertarians and other quasi-anarchist types who hate things like professional associations, accreditation programs, and social regulation. As such, any attempts to oppose the latter will be severely resisted and create backlash.

This comes around full-circle to why many in the established media are so condescending toward bloggers. No matter how "serious" and "professional" a small minority of bloggers have / may become, the blogosphere will always be, at its core, an amateur, unqualified, undisciplined, people-powered operation. Unlike fields such as, say, medicine, the law or, I don't know, journalism, there are no professional societies or degree programs where someone can obtain certification as a blogger. Such societies and programs would not even work online, because bloggers are not accountable to established institutions, but instead to readers who don't care about professional qualifications. As such, even we professional bloggers are simply are not "qualified" in the same way as are professionals in other fields. While media professionals already have adult supervision in the form of professional organizations, academic degrees, editors and "ethics," we don't, and probably never will. This pisses them off, and is why they are excited about the potential establishment of rules in the blogosphere. For several years now one of the main establishment complaints about bloggers is that no one holds us accountable, and some view a code of conduct like this as a way of bringing accountability into the system. However, traditional means of institutional accreditation and regulation just don't work online.

Nasty things do happen online, but unless they violate established off-line laws, they cannot be solved with traditional means of regulation, accreditation, and accountability. Instead, they probably have to be solved in the quasi-anarchist fashion that matters of crime and punishment were handled before the establishment of formal legal institutions in state societies: by the members of the community where the crime took place. It is foolish to expect the blogosphere to establish universally accepted codes of conduct, but discussions of such codes can lead to intuitively accepted standards within communities that will reduce problems of the sort that led to the New York Times article. Hopefully, an event as unfortunate and disturbing as sexually charges threats of violence and death will lead to a helpful restructuring of the tech blogging world, and those who were complicit with the threats will either be forced to change or exiled by most of the community. Further, hopefully, those who actually made the threats will be discovered by the authorities, as such actions violate laws that existed long before the Internet was ever invented. If none of that takes place, the entire tech blogging world will probably experience the start of a chronic downward spiral, as people will begin to leave the community in large numbers. After all, simply leaving the community is the final form of regulation members of an online community can apply, even though it is not the sort of thing that never gets written up on the front page of The New York Times.

It should be clear to even the least tech-savvy off-line journalist that if online communities do not collapse, then there are obviously rules and a social structure in place, whether formalized or not, that the members of that community are already following. It has to be handled inside the community, or else the community will collapse.