A rant on rants Talking to a lot of people about community media lately, I notice one word that comes up often: fear. Part of it is fear of the unknown as in people don't really understand community media so they're afraid of it. But a more troubling issue is fear about the blogosphere as an arena for ambush and attack, a place where well-meaning people dare not tread for fear of their reputations.

I think this image is an embedded problem for the blogosphere that will hold back its potential as a socially acceptable medium for discussion and influence.

The First Amendment made my career possible and I wouldn't think of advocating against free speech. But free speech and responsible speech aren't the same thing. Bloggers don't have editors, professional societies or codes of ethics, nor do they want them. That makes it incumbent upon bloggers to create their own ethical standards. That's a tall order in a world that's growing as quickly as this one without any underlying governance principles.

What are we trying to achieve? If it is just to speak, we've got that. If we want to spout off, we can do that too. Will people listen? Well, there's no way to insure that but for most bloggers that isn't really the point. They're just digging on the freedom that the media provides.

But if we're going to take blogging to the next level, then it's up to the blogosphere to make itself a force that markets will want to listen to. We're off to a good start but there's still a long way to go.

It seems to me that blogging stands at a kind of turning point right now.

Down one path lies the road to places like Yahoo newsgroups and Usenet, which have degenerated into spam, chaos and character assassination. That's what happens when the crazies take over and the good people basically run screaming.

Down the other path is the innovation created by cable TV and community publishing. While there are certainly problems with both those media, there's no question they have created a richer information environment than the cartels they replaced. We are better off because of them.

A personal experience. A few years ago I had some brushes with a group called Team OS/2. It was a loose federation of users organized by some IBMers and sent out to evangelize OS/2 when it was still in a trench war with Windows. It was a good idea and I admired the group for its commitment. But over time Team OS/2 became less evangelical and more vigilante. Reporters and editors who criticized OS/2 were verbally ambushed and beaten by postings in newsgroups, forums and letters to the editor. If our crime was ignorance, then we were stupid. If we favored Windows, then we had been brainwashed. There was no middle ground with Team OS/2. And as the operating system slid further off the market share charts, Team OS/2's tactics became more desperate, pathetic and ugly.

My own Team OS/2 encounters prompted me to write an editorial that was probably the closest I ever came to flame mailing someone myself. It was a disturbing experience.

The blosophere is full of people who just want to rant, protest and puke all over the institutions and people they don't like. There's always going to be a certain amount of that behavior and that's fine. The challenge is to make those people the fringe. I believe that the real voice of this community lies in the leaders who are defining it: people like Dan Gillmor, Adam Curry and Dave Winer. They have a vision of the blogosphere as a kind of new manifestation of democratic speech, one in which thoughtful, rational and constructive voices rise above the noise and help the medium achieve its potential.

The only way we have to support their efforts is through our links. Linking is the currency of the blogosphere and it will choose the winners and losers. Ranters and flamers will always have their place (hopefully in a corner :-)) but I hope they aren't rewarded with clicks and links. Choose the people whose opinions you value and reward them with your time because they're the future of this new medium.  ¶ 1:51 PM