Bloggers, Mind Your Manners

Over at Tech Talk, Daniel Sieberg is asking us all to mind our manners:

If you're a regular consumer of the blogosphere, you've no doubt come across far more hateful and hurtful comments than those uttered by now-unemployed shock jock Don Imus. Moderators on various sites do filter some of the worst vitriol (Slashdot is a great example), but there are sites where everything goes.

Need an example? Take what one person wrote about presidential candidate Barack Obama on his official YouTube page: "I believe he's runnin' for president so we can invite all of africa (sic) to come and become hardcore rappers and dirty hoes (sic) on welfare." (Incidentally, here's what a YouTube spokesman said in response: "Users can flag content that they feel is inappropriate and once it is flagged it is reviewed by our staff and removed from the system within minutes if it violates our Terms of Use.") It's all enough for two Web luminaries to call for a time out...