Unpredictable. Unfocused. Just like life.

I thought about titling this post "We don't need to stinking badges." as an answer to Tim O'Reilly's post about a Blogging Code of Conduct, complete with badges. You won't see any of those badges on my site, thus the "Enter at your own risk" title.

Seriously, if you don't like what you read here, stop reading. Change the channel. Turn it off. Whatever.

Jeneane Sessum, whose blog I continue to enjoy even as she was tarred by a broad brush on the whole mess that led up to Tim's post, has captured some excellent points, with this favorite from Ronni Bennett:

And if that badge idea takes hold, then are those who, like me, stand as First Amendment absolutists against imposed standards of speech to have their blogs labeled – as Tim O’Reilly suggests - “dangerous territory”? One person’s insult is another’s satire. What constitutes foul language is highly individual, as is what is nasty.

Censorship is a trecherous undertaking. Once imposed, it doesn’t take much to go from banning individual words to opinion, books and soon, ideas. And then it has arrived at groupthink.

It was amazing how quickly a mob of vigilante bloggers formed after the events that occurred, based merely on a few written words. I understand that they all wanted to do the right thing, but sometimes the right think is to be patient and think things through.

I wonder how quickly and loudly that vigilante mob would act if someone broke the blogging code of conduct?

My code of conduct is pretty simple. I try to exercise common sense - to the extent that I have it anyway. But everything is offensive to someone, and we only say things the offend nobody then we would never say anything.