conduct, codes, carbon

There has been a lot of talk lately about a Blogger’s Code of Conduct, and if you haven’t been hearing it, you might want to hunt around and look, because some of the conversations about it are actually fairly interesting. I’m not going to recap the whole thing, because I’ll get it all wrong and all, but the thing that seemed potentially useful to me was the institution of a standard set of badges (or buttons, or whatever they are called) that would easily and clearly indicate what a particular blog’s policies are. There would be a limited number of those, so each blogger who wanted to use the system would probably need to adjust his or her policies to match one of the badges, which (in YHB’s opinion) wouldn’t be a bad thing.

That’s all unclear. Let me attempt to explain by example. This Tohu Bohu has a (n unwritten) policy that I will not delete any comment of substance based on its content, but I will attempt to delete or filter any spam comments. I curse, not as much as some, but freely, and I have no objection to any Gentle Readers cursing in the comments. I am most interested in substantial argument (even about rhetoric), but I occasionally give in to the urge to make cheap shots, and I have no objection to Gentle Readers making cheap shots in the comments, although of course y’all are Better Than That. I have never had to deal with personal attacks on this site; I suspect that if I do have to deal with them, I will resort to disemvowelling rather than deletion. That’s a very vague and bullshitty policy. I see no reason why there should be a badge for that one. But if there were a badge that said “This blog follows the same policy as Making Light”, then I would probably adopt that policy and put up the badge. That is, if there were some pressure to have a badge of some kind.

And I think there should be. I think it makes it much easier for a websurfer if, upon landing at a blog, there’s a quick way to know if the comments are unmoderated, community moderated, held for administrator moderation, limited to registered users, disemvowelled, unfettered, or whatnot. Sure, and there’s no way to know that the policy is actually followed (although it might be, in some sense, ideal to have a (for instance) Making Light badge be endorsed by the Making Light folk, with such endorsement subject to removal, but even if it were set up to thwart counterfeiting, I can’t imagine them wanting to bother with checking up on their stuff). But it would be something. Similarly, a badge indicating “I say fuck now and then, but I care about racism and sexism and attempt to avoid making racist and sexist scare-quote jokes end-scare-quote” would be helpful. To potential readers, I mean, not to me.

In short, the thing I find interesting is the attempt to make some sort of standardized signposts to help weary travelers find their way to places they feel welcome, and warn them from the biker bars of Blogovia. The signs. The signage. The signification. Such signs are not, as we all know, equivalent to the thing being signified, but that doesn’t mean they are without meaning. They point, they advise. And the move to come up with a handful of standard signs could be tremendously useful, not only because the standard signs would point more clearly to their intent, but because the lack of standard signs would be highly significant in itself. If you have come to expect a “civil discourse” badge, or an “anything goes” badge, or a “beware the disemvoweller” badge, or whatever badge the blogger or bloggers have picked, and you see no badge at all, that tells you a good deal about the relationship of that blog to the community.

Which brings me at last to my real point, because it has nothing to do with the blogger’s code of conduct, I’m afraid. Gentle Reader hibiscus has had an idea for a new community standard on-line which he’s calling slash-co2. The idea is for everybody—everybody—who maintains a web presence to have a page at www.theirsite.ext/co2 with their plan to reduce their carbon footprint. For this Tohu Bohu, the plan would be something like (1) vote Democrat! and vote in primaries for technogreens Dems!, (B) drive less, (iii) change more lightbulbs to the new whatsits, (four) try to budget for more local produce/meat. Oh, and (last) work on the plan. Who cares, right? But it’s not just me. It’s a standard.

Nobody cares, and nobody should care, what my plan is for reducing my carbon footprint, because even if I do manage to reduce it, we’re still looking at 1350. But if a bunch of us do it... let’s say all of my Gentle Readers, and then they post it on their sites as a Really Good Idea, and then the people who read their blogs like it, and then Making Light would likely be the first A-List to pick it up, and they post to http://nielsenhayden.com/co2, and then maybe http://boingboing.net/co2 gets a plan, and then there’s something at http://www.dailykos.com/co2, and then most likely we get a plan at http://johnedwards.com/co2, and then naturally all the candidates have to do one, and then—then—we get http://www.gap.com/co2 and http://www.benetton.com/co2 and http://www.abercrombie.com/co2 and http://www.mtv.com/co2. And then http://www.coca-cola.com/co2 and http://www.gm.com/co2 and http://www.cl-p.com/co2 and http://www.coned.com/co2 and even http://www.halliburton.com/co2 because people will expect a slash-co2 page.

And yes, most of those pages will be bullshit public relations, just as most of the blogger codes of conduct are, in essence, bullshit pr. But there’s a funny thing about bullshit pr... sometimes it’s a good way to get things done. When we change expectations we change behavior, and anyway information (even about co2) wants to be free, right?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.