I don't see any need for a change at Bleeding Edge. I'm happy to leave the moderation of comments up to Charles without the need for any more detailed rules. Given the increase of identity theft and some of the seriously disturbed people who lurk on the web, I want to continue to use a nom de blog when posting comments, rather than publish my personal information web-wide.

There are anonymous comments, and anonymous comments.

Commenters using a blog name, any blog name, consistently should not be viewed as anonymous; the comments can be traced to a single person. Using a login system helps in this regard.

Commenters using a variety of blogs names, anon, or another system to avoid detection are truly anonymous, and should be viewed in a poor light. Regrettably, there is no way to avoid this.

Myself, I use Wilbert across all forums and blogs am a member of/comment on; in the event that is taken I use Wilbert_au or similar. If anything, I think Wilbert is more identifiable than my, relatively common, real name, Peter Wilson.

I must admit you do need a thick skin at times when you are on the web. Chat rooms, Forums and Blogs have all had this problem since the internet’s inception. Blogging is the latest form of open communication and there are far more ‘new users’ on the internet than us old users who might have been online for the past 20 years who have developed a tough leathery outer shell.

What we see with blogging is that most systems are open for anonymous comments that could be spam, flames or just people who feel like giving you a kick in the guts because they disagree with your point of view but add no substance to the content and hide behind an anon alias. Chat rooms have owners that kick the fools out, forums these days have moderators and that is widely accepted that if a forum owner/moderator decides to cull a conversation or comment it typically does not cause much outrage as the core members of the forum would tend to agree with the moderator at the time. Years ago most forums did not require you to register and anonymous posting was widely available and registration started coming in around the time of the spam epidemic of link monkeys and SEO’s.

Back to the blogging code of conduct though and a case to highlight is Robert Scoble and it goes back before he worked for Microsoft when he worked for Userland (With Dave Winer) at the very early stages of blogging. Once Userland’s funding had dried up Microsoft picked him up to communicate with the wider audience out there that thought they never had a channel to talk to Microsoft. Robert kept blogging on his personal site and then with Microsoft bought to life http://channel9.msdn.com which is still currently part of the CNet top 100 Blogs (http://news.com.com/2310-10784_3-0.html )even though C9 looks more like a forum it is fully RSS enabled and to post a comment you must be registered and the site is moderated. It has at times had amazing flame wars go on and only the extreme of extreme comments are deleted. Because it is not authored by a single person with many Microsoft Employee’s and the registered users able to post it benefits that targeting of the site or an individual is rare and infrequent. Whereas a standalone blog with a single author can attract more people who go for the personal attack such as Robert Scoble’s personal blog ( http://scobleizer.wordpress.com ) just because they have an issue with the individual who writes with their own point of view. Robert on his personal blog has had many times where he and his character as a whole has been attacked and criticised quite harshly leading Robert to question this exact subject many times. Yet he continues to power on through the personal attacks.

Flame wars have been around for years and will always be around, I simply elect not to ‘feed the trolls’ and keep clear even though I would like to add my two cents at times it just isn’t worth it. As Mum always said to me “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” and that in my view also relates to the online world of chats, forums and blogs.

If all blogs get a code of conduct it will be of a similar guideline to what many forums have currently. You can’t change society online or offline as easy as that and all of a sudden have the said individuals forcibly act with good behaviour, society just does not work that way in a reality or virtually.

A code of conduct is similar to that of the road laws, they are and will be constantly broken and unlike the real world where you only get one drivers license (typically) in the online world you can get a new license (E-mail) instantly and even use both licenses at the same time to make it appear that someone else even agrees with your view.

I like Wilbert above use Stephen where I can or my business name Netweb across all the things I do online and that makes up an online resume/profile and gives anyone the opportunity to look me up on the web and find out all sorts of things about me good and bad though with any luck all of that gives me some sort credibility and reputation score of some kind.

It’s an interesting time to raise this matter as it coincides with the long awaited 'Wikileaks' gaining some momentum. For the uninitiated, the broad aim of the people behind 'Wikileaks' [http://wikileaks.org/] is to provide a medium for exposing “principled leaks” in the public interest. The theory is that the whistleblowers providing these “principled leaks” will be anonymous and untraceable.

It will be intriguing to watch just how the ‘anonymous and untraceable’ aspect plays out in practice and whether any political force/s will be brought to bear on the owners of the site.

Excuse my little piece of navel gazing.

With respect to B.E, it seems to me that the regulars do no more than express honestly held opinions which are offered in good faith, and they know where the boundaries lie. That said, I don’t think a simple conduct guide for newcomers would go astray.

When it comes to the use of pseudonyms, does it really matter? Surely it’s the content that matters. It seems to me that a sure way to reduce any given blog to ruins [well, at least adversely impact on the participation levels] would be to preclude the use of pseudonyms. In this cyber age no one is really entirely invisible anyway.

As with parties and other social engagements I find the tone is normally set by the host. Of course when politics or religion become the mainstays of conversation there is a tendency away from the civil toward the "nothing is sacred".

I see a blog as somewhere one is invited in to comment, the host therefore has the right to ask one to leave, ie. remove one's post. Posting guidelines may be useful but not always necessary. Intolerant hosts will of course also create their own reputation.

Trolls are a problem, as a moderator one walks a line between removing their more inane and simply emotional dumpings as a waste of space, and people's reading time, or leaving them there as a public display of the poster's stupidity. As a contributor I fully agree with Stephen, don't feed the trolls.

Over at Webdiary, where Aust politics is central, they are moderated and restricted to registered users (NB anyone can register for free). Moreover, they have developed over time guidelines for posting as well as notes on Webdiary ethics and editorial policy (http://www.webdiary.com.au/cms/?q=node/257).

When Margo Kingston was running Webdiary the debate frequently became heated with spillover into flames often aimed at her personally. Margo was highly liberal in what she ran but I'm told there was a fair amount of extremely abusive stuff that just kept coming and mostly never made it on. However, as moderator she had to read it. In such a situation guidelines are crucial to the blog host's sanity. Otherwise at the very least one develops a massive headache, and loss of perspective, trying to continually "fairly evaluate" gross outpourings of sundry contributions of bile.