One story I'd been meaning to get to sooner was a follow up to the blogger-threat story: the "proposed code of conduct for Bloggers." In fact, the reason I didn't was that I wasn't sure what to say, because while I think something needs to be done, this isn't it.
Those hoots of derision coming from right and left were part of it. The Times deigning to cover - finally - Sierra's threats somehow managed to eliminate a key piece: that as a woman the threats were different and the fear more immediate. I think that's a key piece of this, and it's instructive that this "solution," such as it is, comes from a group of guys and focuses on things like anonymous postings and not repeating unsourced gossip. Nice stuff, but a bit beside the point; and with it's "ignore the trolls" it misses the point that some of the threats coming from "trolls" are the ones causing the trouble.
I don't necessarily blame Michelle Malkin for being cynical, but her repeated fallback on "they're meaner to us than to you" isn't really getting anyone anywhere; threats are threats and wrong is wrong. She's right that a Code should include obvious things like "call the authorities" when dealing with threats, and I appreciate her call to bravery. But there's more to this than that. On the left, it's even more discouraging to see Markos at Daily Kos so utterly miss the point (a point which multitudes of commenters seem to get). Kos finally responded yesterday to the feedback... but that doesn't seem likely to help.
The net result is that I think this well-intentioned try will turn out not be the right solution; until people can talk about this across the divides, nothing's really going to get solved. And until people make some forthright, up-front statements that death threats and rape threats and harassing behavior - particularly towards women - are not just beyond decency but call for demonstrable action, the problem is not being understood fully or addressed properly. And my own dark cynicism says if we have to have a million man comittee meeting in the blogosphere to get there, we're just doomed.
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