Timothy O'Really and Jimmy Wales (the founder of the Wikipedia) have proposed a "Code of conduct" for the bloggers. The code is used to protect the moral standard and maintain professionalism of the Blogger.
Please check the following link for more details:
http://blogging.wikia.com/wiki/Blogger%27s_Code_of_Conduct
And you are welcome the join editing of the code in the "Wikipedia" way.
Here is the highlights of the Code of Conduct:
1. We take responsibility for our own words and reserve the right to restrict comments on our blog that do not conform to basic civility standards.
We are committed to the "Civility Enforced" standard: we strive to post high quality, acceptable content, and we will delete unacceptable comments.
We define unacceptable comments as anything included or linked to that:
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2. We won't say anything online that we wouldn't say in person.
Unless we are trying to protect a confidential source, in which case, we may omit certain private details or otherwise obfuscate the source of the information.
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3. If tensions escalate, we will connect privately before we respond publicly.
When we encounter conflicts and misrepresentation in the blogosphere, we make every effort to talk privately and directly to the person(s) involved--or find an intermediary who can do so--before we publish any posts or comments about the issue. Bloggers are encouraged to engage in online mediation of unresolved disputes. Mediate.com will provide mediators.
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4. When we believe someone is unfairly attacking another, we will take considered action.
When someone who is publishing comments or blog postings that are offensive, we'll tell them so (privately, if possible) and ask them to publicly make amends, unless it is considered that doing so will only inflame or worsen the situation. If those published comments could be construed as a threat or of an illegal nature, and the perpetrator doesn't withdraw them and apologize, we will cooperate with local law enforcement regarding those comments and/or postings.
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5. We do not allow pseudonymous comments, but will allow anonymous ones.
We require commenters to supply a valid email address or OPENID before they can post, though we allow commenters to identify themselves as anonymous, rather than use their real name, which is the difference between pseudonymous and anonymous. We can always trace someone pseudonym
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6. We ignore the trolls.
7. We encourage blog hosts to enforce more vigorously their terms of service.
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For the columnlists in inmedia, do we need to set more concrete rules so as to maintain the quality of coverage ? We can see that, we have set some ground rules on the copyright when we quote or copy some parts of the article from another editor.
Please reference the following article: