In 2006, I have no plans to steal candy from children, or to take money from the collection plate at church. I do not plan to spit on people I pass on the sidewalk, nor do I plan to set fire to a school. I have no intention of committing insurance fraud, insider trading, bank robbery, sexual assault, murder, or genocide. I do not plan on doing any of these things, because I think they are ethically wrong. I also do not plan to sign a pledge indicating that I am not going to do any of these things.
I have no plans to out the identity of anonymous bloggers. I have no intention of posting the private, personal information of anyone online. I am definitely not going to report people who post on my site to their employers. If I post information about someone and they feel it is inaccurate, I will post a correction, and respect the wishes of the person in question. To my knowledge, I have never acted in contrast to these principles. If I have, point me to the instance, and I will gladly correct it. I have even banned several people form MyDD because they did not follow these principles. The reason I act this way is because I believe it is the right way to act. However, I am also not going to sign a pledge declaring that I will continue acting in a manner that is obviously the ethically right way to act,
just because a bunch of bloggers are shoving that pledge in my face.
I have always hated meetings. Partly, it is because I am a very shy person. Mostly, it is because I despise the way in which meetings are filled with resolutions, and rules of order, and nominations, and seconds, and agendas, and all sorts of other crap that seem to basically exist so that the egocentric people running the meetings can continue to rule them with a totalitarian fist. These are the rules that the Democratic Party in Philadelphia used to keep us from recalling our ward leader for six months (he was eventually recalled unanimously). These are the same rules that are ruining Philadelphia Neighborhood Networks, which is basically turning into another Democratic Party of Philadelphia because it has so many rules of order and official agendas and procedures to follow. These rules and these pledges exist primarily as barriers to prevent "undesirable" people from entering a given organization or being granted official legitimacy.
Why should anyone have to sign a pledge saying that will they act in a manner that is obviously the right way to act? Why have so many people signed this pledge even though they still link to
people who have obviously broken that pledge, and even though part of the pledge indicates that "violations of these principles should be met with a lack of positive publicity and traffic." What purpose does this pledge really serve?
Little Green Footballs already used the pledge as a means to indicate that those who did not sign the pledge are somehow lacking in moral integrity. And then they promptly removed themselves from the list of co-signers anyway.
I will not be participating in "Online Integrity." I write this as someone who blogs under his own name. I write this as someone who is not exactly known for his rants or hot-headed comments. I write this as someone who has never violated the principles of the pledge, and who has banned people form my site for taking actions in contradiction to the pledge. I did all of that long before the pledge was ever thought up by Josh Trevino, Charles Johnson, Michelle Malkin, or whoever. I had my integrity before this pledge ever came up, and I will have it for long afterward. I will not blog in fear of what not signing it may do to me.
I have a very strong sense that pledges of this nature are used to tear people down who refuse to sign them, rather than to uphold the principles of whatever the pledge may claim to be upholding. I do not need the online ethics police to tell me how to act ethically online, and I certainly do not need the online ethics police to imply that I am unethical for not signing their "pledge." Isn't that the real implication here--that I, or whoever else refuses to sign their pledge, isn't into "online integrity?" For that reason, isn't this pledge a means to try and de-legitimize anyone who does not sign the pledge? I think it is, and that is why my name will never appear on the list of co-signers. Ever.
