The Dark Furie

We've all read the stories recently about a blogger who was so upset by death threats posted on her page that she shut the page down and had to cancel several public appearances. I don't want to sound like a complete bastard here, but what's the big deal? If this woman has reached such a level of celebrity thanks to her blogs that she's making public appearances then she should have been prepared for death threats and other negative effects of her newfound fame.

I'm not saying it's a good thing that she received these threats, on the contrary part of me feels sorry for her. But it was overly naive of Ms Sierra to not expect something like this to happen. One of the unfortunate things about the world we live in is that when people achieve any level of fame they can and usually do become a target for someone bored and disturbed.

Maybe I'm in the wrong for expecting everyone to take things like this with a pinch of salt. Maybe if I'd been in the exact same situation, I'd have reacted in much the same way. I'd like to think that I'd be cool about it, but the truth is I can't honestly say that until I'm in the same situation and it's going to take a lot more visitors to my page before that happens.

The saddest part of the entire story for me is that a Blogging Code Of Conduct has been drawn up, based on this one pretty much isolated incident, that certain people are trying to enforce as a Parental Guidance sticker for all of our blogs, both within and outside of the Opera Community.

Luckily the code is in draft form at the moment and is open for people to amend any points they find ridiculous. Already a large debate has broken out over a point in the code that effectively bans anonymous comments. The place to have your say on how this all turns out is the Blogging Code of Conduct Wiki which can be found at http://blogging.wikia.com/wiki/Blogger%27s_Code_of_Conduct

I would like to take this opportunity to give my views on these sorts of sites and their preventative measures. Yes, I agree the security should be there, but it should be an optional extra not an obligation. We should be focussing on tools, not rules.

1) IP numbers should be logged for all comments (anonymous or not) with the ability to ban that person from accessing your page if they go too far. The IP numbers would be kept hidden from the author on the server with a simple BAN button being added to comments left on the authors page.

2) The ability to post comments should be available or not on a post by post basis with the author setting the security level for that post (from no comments all the way up to anonymous comments allowed). Obviously a default setting could be applied to most posts with some having less or more security.

3) Authors should be able to set a blacklist of words and phrases they won't allow on their page. Each should be assigned a priority level that automatically affects any infractions with minor ones being ****red out, medium ones blocking that post from appearing and major ones completely locking the comment maker out of the page.

4) The ability to password protect any posts would be a nice addition to the current privacy (public, friends only, private) settings.