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Thanks, priestofmemory: the “Civil Anyway” Badge

Blogger priestofmemory has a great post about the ongoing Blogger Code of Conduct flap. He’s of the same mind as yours truly on the issue, and was kind enough to create a badge to symbolize his adherence to a reasonable, un-regulated, self-applied code of conduct: no nanny badges, just a declaration that you’re an intelligent, reasonable, non-troll.

I wear the badge at the top of my right-hand column. If you’d like to do the same, warm up your right-click-save as - here’s the badge:

And feel free to link it to:

http://techfold.com/2007/04/09/an-alternative-to-oreillys-politeness-manifesto-the-un-code/

…which is where priestofmemory pointed his, or:

http://priestofmemory.livejournal.com/57566.html

…which is his post.

Either way, the message gets across that its OK to be a nice normal person without adhereing to anyone’s arbitrary assumptions of what “nice” and “normal” are. Just to quote quickly from my original post, here’s my “Simple Test” declaration:

THE BLOGGERS CODE OF CONDUCT: A Simple Test

1. “Do online as you would in person.”
Before every post or comment you make, ask yourself whether you would be comfortable shouting it out loud from a well-lit lectern in an auditorium full of 300 people that included, friends, family, and a whole lot of strangers. If the answer is “No,” revise and retest before posting.

blogging, blogosphere, blogs, code, oreilly, sierra techfold

2 Responses to “Thanks, priestofmemory: the “Civil Anyway” Badge”

Martin Edic | April 11th, 2007 at 1:36 pm

The Dalai Lama put it a different way:

“If you can’t help someone, don’t hurt them.”

(don’t know if he blogs…)
Rod | April 11th, 2007 at 2:15 pm

Martin - do you mean that if I don’t choose to contibute to O’Reilly’s Code, I shouldn’t post about my own alternative? Or am I missing your meaning?

If I do have it right, I would suggest that open discussion of solution alternatives is helping both O’Reilly and the community. Everything I’ve said on this blog on the topic I’ve posted to O’Reilly’s original thread, btw.

Just sharing my $0.02, in well-intentioned fashion!