Of course we don’t. But it does strike me as odd that many of the same characters in the ‘tropolis who criticized – and openly mocked – Tim O’Reilly’s suggestion of a blogging code of conduct – are now criticizing Mike and Om and Paul and Fred (Abbey Blog?), as well as FM, with such abandon and sanctimony.
The central message of the blogging code of conduct story, you will recall, was that a code of conduct is a bad idea, because: free, unrestricted speech is good, the reader can make their own decisions about what to read and what not to read, blogs are merely blogs (and not traditional media outlets, ‘with all of their rules, man’), the blogosphere is a new media paradigm and as such shouldn’t be regulated, and so on – you get the picture. How odd now to see many of those principles shuffled out of the way of a good opportunity to spend a little quality time on that high horse.