A guy leaves his cellphone on a table. A girl picks it up, and goes through his contact list. Simple story isn't it? The girl is rude, the guy needs to get his act together, end of story.

Well, not if you are a blogger. When Kevin Burton left his phone on the table, Megan McCarthy picked it up and went through his contact list. Now, that was stupid. But why did it have to go through blogs in the community? What's so interesting in an event that happens all the time to regular people out there? It even got to Tech.Meme! Megan works for Valleywag. So? It shows that Megan should have thought about what she is doing, and should be sent to bed without dinner. Big deal.

Whenever I talk with non-2.0 people why don't they read blogs, they say, among other reasons- that blogs are full with personal and irrelevant information. I'm not talking about personal I-like-my-puppy blogs. I'm talking about professional blogs, on serious topics. I personally believe that some information should be filtered out. Like these incidents, that don't add anything to the readers. Having said that - take a look at Violet Blue's comment here- can't agree more.

Blog is a conversation. It doesn't mean you have to tell everything to everyone.

Tim O'Reilly presented a nice concept - blogging code of conduct . This voluntary code suppose to make blogs more civilized environment, help us all to keep our dignity while blogging, and end world hunger problems. It was also picked up by NY Times.

I feel strongly about making blogs a more accessible medium for people outside the social media walls. I promote it both online and offline. But what O'reilley wrote really doesn't help. It misses the point in my opinion.

You see, Tim is trying to make us all very nice and coasy with each other, open to others, and generally nice people. I don't have a problem with that. But I opened a blog to write whatever I want. That's the whole point of having a blog - publish my thoughts and ideas, without any censorship. If I have something smart to say -readers will come. if not - they won't. Simple. Easy.

Kathy Sierra's story is sad, and makes me angry every time I read it. But it is not different from other cases, where media celebrities were threatened and even murdered due to racist, sexual or pure hate reasons. Hey, Howard Stern made his career from saying unconventional things on air!

The same goes for publishing what Tim define as inappropriate content:

"...We define unacceptable content as anything included or linked to that:

- is being used to abuse, harass, stalk, or threaten others

- is libelous, knowingly false, ad-hominem, or misrepresents another person,

- infringes upon a copyright or trademark

- violates an obligation of confidentiality

- violates the privacy of others ..."

All these points are important but are handled by the legal system of each country. If you are offended by a post, you can always react, either online or offline. Why is there a need for such a code?

Let's try to solve the real problems bloggers have - gaining respectability from the regular newspapers readers, explaining the medium to people not involved in it, and gt more readers involved in this new type of media. We can be nicer to each other later....

Update (11th of April): Jeff Jarvis wrote a great post about the subject here. You can also find Andy's opinion (from VoIP Watch) on the topic. Didn't see too many positive reactions till now...