Fiat Lux – Page 75 – It's Latin for 'Let There Be Light'

It’s Not That Hard

So in the wake of the Kathy Sierra situation, Tim O’Reilly has created a draft of a Blogger’s Code of Conduct.

Frankly, I don’t see why deciding to moderate one’s comments is such a big deal. We all do it already in order to mitigate spam; this is not all that different. It doesn’t need badges and it doesn’t need a long, painfully worded Code.

Here’s mine, from December 2005:

I reserve the right to remove any comment left on this site, for any reason or for no reason at all. I pay for the web hosting; I get to decide how my disk space and bandwidth are used. However, I do not edit comments; that seems unfair. If they do not get tossed into the bit bucket, they remain as their authors wrote them.

I see no need to change that policy. I support the rights of free, anonymous, and/or pseudonymous speech online. However, that doesn’t give you the right to say something I don’t like on my dime. Don’t like it? Go over to Blogger or Vox or WordPress and get your own site. Problem solved.

UPDATE 1:50 PM:

Tony Hung gets it absolutely right:

Bloggers don’t need a code of conduct, because it isn’t the content of blogs that are in the question. What’s being called into question is the cowardly personal attacks that are sent by email, and left in the comments sections of blogs.

And if that’s really the issue, then calling for a Bloggers Code of Conduct is pointless.

I Hope It Doesn’t Suck

On the advice of friends who are in the beta, I just pre-ordered two copies of Lord of the Rings Online.

I really, really hope it doesn’t suck.

The Bad Guys Won

Sadly, Kathy Sierra has decided to shutter ‘Creating Passionate Users’ and do more thinking about when or if she will return to blogging. As much as I honor her right to choose her own course, I can’t help but feel that this sucks, because the people who drove her away are going to consider that a ‘victory’. And that is not how it should be.

Damn.

Friday Cat Blogging

Birthday edition.

Not mine (that was last month).Gimi turned 3 while we were in NY.

Travel Didn’t Used To Suck

We’re home.

Jet lag kicked me in the butt all week and I’ve gotten less than 6 hours sleep a night since leaving San Mateo. I swear, going to NYC messes me up worse than going to Europe does, despite the much greater time difference.

In addition, there was a time when I liked flying, but these days, flying has all the glamor of a Greyhound Bus ride and I hate it. I still like the “being somewhere else” part of travel as much as always, but I can’t say how much I wish we had better options for getting there.

I’m going to try to fight off going to sleep for a couple more hours so that I don’t wake up at 3:00AM, but I’m not really coherent enough to blog on anything else right now.

Friday Cat Blogging

My camera and lens aren’t really powerful enough for good zoom / macro work (or maybe I just haven’t figured out how to do it right), but this close-up of Bear’s rear paw came out OK.

We’re leaving for NYC tomorrow. Expect light blogging the next few days.