1. Thou shall provide good content for the readers.
2. Thou shall take responsibility for one’s own words.
3. Thou shall not poke fun at other people, because it is not nice.
4. Thou shall not commit libel against a fellow blogger.
5. Thou shall not harass or stalk other people.
6. Thou shall place a warning label at the top of your blog if there are curse words or abusive comments on your blog.
7. Thou shall ignore rude comments about one’s self.
8. Thou shall call the police when you are threatened.
9. Thou shall speak politely to others and inform them if they are acting naughty.
10. Thou shall not vent your anger online.

No, these are not real commandments that need to be followed. These are a few of the ones from Tim O’Reilly’s blogger code of conduct (and a couple of my own). Let’s be serious. Do we really need an industry leader to tell us how to be mature adults? I don’t think so. I am completely empathetic to Kathy Sierra who has been targeted by some “cyber-bullies”, but I don’t think bloggers need an exhaustive list about how to act. We all know how to act, and some people have simply broken the rules as they do in the real world. Simply put, anyone who is threatening another blogger is a criminal.

We all know how to behave. Why then did Tim O’Reilly post an exhaustive list explaining this to us? Well, perhaps he is just making it clear that this behavior should not be tolerated. I agree with his suggestions. We also should understand though that the internet was not always the most friendliest place. There have been and will continue to be plenty of immature statements online that should be ignored. Once the immaturity crosses the line into criminal, it should be handled as such and reported to the police. It is as simple as that. I don’t think we need a list though explaining to us how to act. Controversy creates buzz in media (both new and old). If you don’t like what someone says, than say so and let it be.