A quick history lesson:

March 26th Kathy Sierra (original post here), a Blogger Of Technological Issues, was threatened “with violence and sex” (sic). And then they sent death threats. The comments and images that were posted about her were a sure sign that someone had too much time on their hands. Now, whether or not they were actually meant as death threats or were simply someone going too far and crossing the line into bullying and unpleasantness is not up for discussion here. And it would be churlish for me to suggest that Ms Sierra was being oversensitive as it was understandably very upsetting for her (although I don’t get the impression from what she wrote that it crossed the line into sending intimidating personal emails or harrassment outside of a public forum of the kind that Rachel North recently suffered.)

March 27th The BBC post a news item on their technology news page about the incident.

March 28th Tim O’Reilly, a Blogger of Technological Issues calls for a Code of Conduct for bloggers, saying that it could be time to “formalise blogging behaviour”. In other news, Dragon, a Blogger of Not Much In Particular, slams his head against a wall in despair although this largely goes unreported by the mainstream media.

April 10th Tim O’Reilly, a Blogger of Technological Issues, publishes a Draft Blogger’s Code Of Conduct which is also reported by the BBC and which more or less says that blogs should come with a content advisory warning. This is hardly original and, in fact, some of us were putting content warnings on our blogs over two years ago although I doubt it’s exactly the sort of thing that the earnest, do-gooder Mr O’Reilly was hoping for. On the plus side, his version comes with a cute little sheriff’s badge too and isn’t American-centric in anyway, whatsoever, at all, no it isn’t, honest guv.

It strikes me as timely that this should all happen during the Easter period, a little under 2000 years since one man stood up and said “Hey guys! Let’s all be nice to each other!”. Let’s have a quick look at what we’ve learned in the intervening two millennia? Are we being nice to each other? No. Are we united in peace, harmony and vegetarian goulash? No. Have we stopped being materialistic and take only what we need while sharing with those less fortunate and more hungry than ourselves? Have we bollocks!

Let’s take a moment and assess the situation.

32AD: One man stood up for what he believed in and told people that being nasty was wrong and that they should love their neighbour. Then he got nailed to a tree for his trouble. A religion sprang up around his teachings and has subsequently become the dominant religion of the world. This didn’t stop people from carrying on being nasty to each other.

2007AD: One man stood up for what he believed in and told people that being nasty was wrong and that they should love their blogging neighbour.

A brief glance a the trackbacks and comments on his draft code see most people (mis)quoting Treasure of the Sierra Madre (see new slugline at top of page), Rage Against The Machine (”Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me!”) or the Spice Girls (“If you wannabe my lover…” “Who do you think you are?”). I’ll add to that list a paraphrased Monty Python quote: “He’s not the Messiah, he’s a very silly boy!” It doesn’t look like many people are taking the idea at all seriously and, in fact, most are ridiculing Timbo quite openly.

Still, could be worse. He could have been nailed to a tree.

S