Code of conduct proposed for blogosphere

NEW YORK, April 9 (UPI) -- The creator of Wikipedia is joining forces with a California book publisher in hopes of bringing civility to the Internet free-for-all known as the blogosphere.

Jimmy Wales, whose Wikimedia Foundation has its headquarters in Florida, decided to team with Tim O'Reilly to create a set of guidelines to shape online discussions and debate, The New York Times reported.

O'Reilly pointed to a recent outbreak of antagonism among several prominent bloggers as demonstrating the need for a code of conduct.

Chief among the preliminary recommendations is that bloggers consider banning anonymous comments left by visitors to their pages and be able to delete threatening or libelous comments without facing cries of censorship.

"That is one of the mistakes a lot of people make," O'Reilly told the Times, "believing that uncensored speech is the most free when in fact, managed civil dialogue is actually the freer speech."

Creating a code of conduct already has some early supporters including David Weinberger, a well-known blogger and fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, the Times said.