A code of conduct for the blogosphere?

Tim O'Reilly has posted a proposed code of conduct for blogs in the wake of a couple of high profile incidents where things got a little ugly. His proposal has apparently struck a nerve with the "I can say anything I want, anywhere I want, and everyone just has to lump it" crowd. The story has been picked up by both the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. I am not wild about a uniform CofC for the simple reason that different blogs do different things, focus on different things and have different types of people who read and comment on them. For some blogs with high volume readership and commentary on really controversial subjects some of this makes sense. But for others it probably does not. For relatively small blogs with limited readership (mine among them) rules are often more a matter of common sense. I have only had a couple of posts that were over the line. And comment moderation has pretty much solved that.

It seems to me that it's a lot easier if we all just play nice.