Tim O'Reilly recently proposed a Bloggers Code of Conduct and invited comments about the idea. You can fine the complete rehash here, and the comments (166 as of today) are well worth perusing.
However...
Be very careful about the interpretation of this information. The blogosphere (by definition) contains a significant bias - the most prolific and popular bloggers have deeper and louder voices and "bloggers" may not represent less vocal participants of the conversational web and certainly not all businesses when it comes to risk and exposure of blogging.
Bloggers and businesses that blog, share some common traits - they both want to participate in the blogosphere and they want to be heard. But businesses that blog do not necessarily have the same requirements as individuals that blog. Having made this subtle distinction, you can begin to imagine some of the things that really matter to businesses (such as legal risk), are almost inconsequential to individuals.
The Premise...
Tim O'Reilly opens the draft of "The Code" with a fairly useful criticism that applies universally to the conversational web --
"We celebrate the blogosphere because it embraces frank and open conversation. But frankness does not have to mean lack of civility. We present this Blogger Code of Conduct in hopes that it helps create a culture that encourages both personal expression and constructive conversation."
Reasonable people would never debate this logic. I have nothing further to add because the definition of civility is relatively well understood in modern civilizations, especially those that are republic and democracy-based. It's one of those "does without saying" statements. However, Tim felt compelled to say it because the world is not 100% reasonable.
We've drafted a code of conduct that will eventually be posted on bloggingcode.org, and created a badge that sites can display if they want to link to that code of conduct.
