Information Society Watch

April 9, 2007, The New York Times

Faced with an increasing number of hate messages and threats to a large number of bloggers, there have been calls by prominent netizens to observe a code of conduct while blogging. Chief among the recommendations is that bloggers consider banning anonymous comments left by visitors to their pages and be able to delete threatening or libelous comments without facing cries of censorship. While those who propose this code of conduct say that this is not an attempt to homogenise the blogging world and add that it is merely being done to make the unwritten rules clearer, there are those who argue that getting a multi million strong blogger community to agree to follow these rules will simply not work. It will be very interesting to see how this debate develops.

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