[WikiEN-l] Blogger code of conduct? Learn from Wikipedia

[Daniel P. B. Smith]

One side effect of Wikipedia, which may turn out to be bigger than  
the intended main effect is that tens of thousands of people have now  
been trained in a certain style of online interaction. You can't work  
on Wikipedia for very long without starting to internalize the  
processes, rules, and values you've learned from the community.  
Someday someone will perhaps address outgoing Wikipedians in a manner  
similar to those of a well-known Front Range university:

"You are now certified to the world at large as Alumni of Wikipedia.  
She is your kindly mother and you her cherished sons and daughters.  
This exercise denotes, not your severance from her, but your union  
with her. Emergence does not mean, as many wrongly think, the  
breaking of ties and the beginning of life apart. Rather it marks  
your initiation in the fullest sense into the fellowship of the  
Wikipedians, as bearers of her torch, as centers of her influence, as  
promoters of her spirit. Wikipedia is not the servers, not the  
software, not the policy pages, not the editors of any one time--not  
one of these or all of them. Wikipedia consists of all who come into  
and go forth from her pages, who are touched by her influence and who  
carry her spirit. Wherever you go, Wikipedia goes with you. Wherever  
you are at work there is Wikipedia at work. What Wikipedia purposes  
to be, what it must always strive to be, is represented by its logo,  
which is a shining spherical jigsaw puzzle assembled from a score of  
pieces. If you keep it not whole, how disintegrated it becomes! But  
if you hold it together, who can measure its power? With hope and  
faith, I welcome you into the fellowship. I bid you farewell only in  
the sense that I pray you may fare well. You go forth, but not from  
us. We remain but not severed from you. God go with you and be with  
you and us."