Code of Conduct - a proposal I plan to follow

I have had the opportunity to discuss blogging and anonymous comments in particular with several bloggers with ties to the Outer Banks. Their experience has been similar to mine, finding that the veil of anonymity leads quickly to irresponsible use of the comment feature of this and other blogs. I was reminded of those discussions by a piece written by New York Times tech guru Dave Pogue. Pogue discusses a proposal by tech publisher Tim O'Reilly for a blogging code of conduct. A code that enforces civility but not censorship. You can read O'Reilly's post at his blog: O'Reilly Radar ; Call for a Blogger's Code of Conduct O'Reilly lists 7 rules that are worth considering.

1. Take responsibility not just for your own words, but for the comments you allow on your blog
2. Label your tolerance level for abusive comments.
3. Consider eliminating anonymous comments.
4. Ignore the trolls.
5. Take the conversation offline, and talk directly, or find an intermediary who can do so.
6. If you know someone who is behaving badly, tell them so.
7. Don't say anything online that you wouldn't say in person.

Some time ago I put my real name on my blog and dropped the pseudonym I had been using. More recently I have stopped allowing anonymous comments on this blog. Both of these choices were made to increase accountability for postings and comments. I was tired of the really ugly nature of some of the comments. I didn't want to delete comments because I don't believe in censorship and one of the goals of this site is to foster discussion about issues of interest on the Outer Banks and beyond. Tight control over comments doesn't foster discussion. If readers can't comment freely and fairly a blog quickly becomes a one-sided propaganda vehicle. I have, in the past, deleted comments that were abusive but I did not have any clear guidelines for the action, nor had I clearly stated any standards for acceptable comments.
O'Reilly's proposed guidelines (I don't like the term rules) make sense to me and I plan to put them into use on this blog. I will also use the standards suggested in his post as the test for what is appropriate content and what is not. O'Reilly refers to standards developed by the site BlogHer.org. Their simple community guidelines are:"We embrace the spirit of civil disagreement and we decline to publish unacceptable content. " They go on to list what constitutes unacceptable content:

We define unacceptable content as anything included or linked that is:

* Being used to abuse, harass, stalk or threaten a person or persons
* Libelous, defamatory, knowingly false or misrepresents another person
* Infringes upon any copyright, trademark, trade secret or patent of any third party. (If you quote or excerpt someone's content, it is your responsibility to provide proper attribution to the original author. For a clear definition of proper attribution and fair use, please see The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Legal Guide for Bloggers at this URL: http://www.eff.org/bloggers/lg/.)
* Violates any obligation of confidentiality
* Violates the privacy, publicity, moral or any other right of any third party
* Contains editorial content that has been commissioned and paid for by a third party, (either cash or goods in barter), and/or contains paid advertising links and/or SPAM or "Stupid Pointless Annoying Messages." For BlogHer's purposes, we define SPAM as anything that qualifies as nonsense unrelated to the discussion, either in comments on a blog or in our forums. This nonsense may take classic forms (e.g., simple links to unrelated content that are often advertising or e-commerce), or more insidious forms.

They also say that they are the arbiters of what constitutes unacceptable content on their site and that they are responsible for enforcing their guidelines.
I am going to use O'Reilly's Code of Conduct for this blog and will start of using the standards from BlogHer to judge the acceptability of comments. This is an effort to promote civility and not enforce censorship.
Let me know what you think and if there are other elements that need to be included. Conduct is an important element in keeping people engaged. No body wants to be involved in a ugly shouting match in person or on line. I hope clearly stating the standards for participation I will foster more discussion and less diatribe.