Malaysian blogs are very much in the news these days.

First, there is the 3-in-1 Minister in charge of blogging matters talking about bloggers, including his complaint that Raja Petra Kamarudin (RPK) never gives credit to the government.

This elicited a long and elaborate but gentlemanly reply from RPK himself in his latest entry entitled Open Letter to the Minister of Information, Communication, and Culture Rais Yatim in Malaysia Today .

mahathir and bum 2009 140509 Then, the third annual Bloggers’ Event of the Year – also known as BUM2009 – is being held today at the Lake View Club in Subang Jaya in Kuala Lumpur. Dr Mahathir Mohamad will be the key speaker .

Trawling through Google, I came across this April 3 report on the Star :

“MALAYSIA has about 500,000 active bloggers, ranking the country among the highest in the world after Indonesia and the European Union, Utusan Malaysia reported.

“According to Universiti Malaya media department lecturer Dr Abu Hassan Hasbullah, this showed the power of blogs in influencing the thinking of the people, especially about politics.

“He said blogs currently had a wide reach considering how many Internet users visited these sites everyday.

“Our research shows that 70% of the election results were influenced by information in the blogs,” he said.”

Microsoft has these interesting stats on Malaysian blogging in its survey, ‘Youth and Self-Expression Drive the Art of Blogging in Malaysia’. Its key findings are:

  • 74% of bloggers are 25 years old or younger

  • 64% of bloggers are women

  • 81% are most interested in blogs by friends or family

  • 48% of bloggers like to write their thoughts or comment on the world around them

  • 34% of bloggers like to have their own personal corner of cyberspace

  • 50% said boring blogs are biggest turn-off

In fact, blogging in Malaysia has become such a significant phenomenon that Jun-E Tan and Wan Zawawi Ibrahim have published a book to reveal their findings on the socio-political impact of blogging on Malaysian national life.

Admittedly the vast majority of blog readers go for a non-political diet. Interestingly, from the survey of 1,537 blog readers, 451 readers (30%) chose blogs with “socio-political content”.

The numbers are significant, and there are reasons why so many Malaysians pursue their reading habit on the blogsphere. The sky over the Malaysian mainstream media is so boringly predictable and so oppressive that many web-savvy citizens are turning to the New Media for alternative news and views.

Ethical questions of anonymity and censorship

Together with a bunch of friends, I too started a communal blog named ‘Hornbill Unleashed’ . Our readership has grown rapidly. Four times in less than three months since our blog was launched, our posting entered the Wordpress global top 100 listings in terms of hits alone.

There, my friends and I are also plagued by the twin ethical questions of anonymity and censorship.

Most of my co-writers are anonymous for obvious reasons, and I support them. As long as the repressive laws are in place against the freedom of expression, anonymity protects the personal freedom of the writers. At least my name is there, so if anything untoward should happen, I will still take the rap.

The readers there respect our sombre and reflective mood, and reply in kind in their comments, most of the time, and we seldom moderate (read “censor”) those comments.

Still, you get those readers who abuse the freedom of expression by posting juvenile toxic name-calling stuff, the type that tends to pollute cyberspace and turn many websites into sewers.

In his dialogue ‘The Republic’, Plato told the myth of the Ring of Gyges, through the mouth of his disciple, Glaucon. The Gyges Ring could make the wearer invisible.

One day, a shepherd found such a ring, discovered its magical quality and started to plot all kinds of evil plans. He seduced the king’s wife, and with her help, killed the king, and was enthroned instead. This allegory has been modified and made into movies by Hollywood several times.

Apparently, many Netizens are seduced by their invisibility on the Internet through their anonymity to abuse their freedom or plot evil deeds. There is no shortage of cyber stormtroopers and agents provocateur around blogsphere in Malaysia.

Recently, even RPK appealed to readers of his Malaysia Today to preserve the credibility of his website by observing the rules of common sense decency.

Every day, I read the New York Times and the Guardian online. They have a global audience, and some column articles attract over 500 comments. They too must have a larger-than-life problem with toxic postings from anonymous readers.

I was wondering how they cope with this virtual menace, when I found the 'Guidelines for Freedom and Responsibility on the Internet' on Guardian.co.uk. I reproduce their statement below.

Guardian’s participation guidelines

There are 10 simple guidelines which we expect all participants in the community areas of guardian.co.uk to abide by, all of which directly inform our approach to community moderation (detailed below). These apply across the site, while moderation decisions are also informed by the context in which comments are made.

1. We welcome debate and dissent, but personal attacks (on authors, other users or any individual), persistent trolling and mindless abuse will not be tolerated. The key to maintaining guardian.co.uk as an inviting space is to focus on intelligent discussion of topics.

2. We acknowledge criticism of the articles we publish, but will not allow persistent misrepresentation of the Guardian and our journalists to be published on our website. For the sake of robust debate, we will distinguish between constructive, focused argument and smear tactics.

3. We understand that people often feel strongly about issues debated on the site, but we will consider removing any content that others might find extremely offensive or threatening. Please respect other people's views and beliefs and consider your impact on others when making your contribution.

4. We reserve the right to redirect or curtail conversations which descend into flame-wars based on ingrained partisanship or generalisations. We don't want to stop people discussing topics they are enthusiastic about, but we do ask users to find ways of sharing their views that do not feel divisive, threatening or toxic to others.

5. We will not tolerate racism, sexism, homophobia or other forms of hate-speech, or contributions that could be interpreted as such. We recognise the difference between criticising a particular government, organisation, community or belief and attacking people on the basis of their race, religion, gender or sexual orientation.

6. We will remove any content that may put us in legal jeopardy, such as potentially libelous or defamatory postings, or material posted in potential breach of copyright.

7. We will remove any posts that are obviously commercial or otherwise spam-like. Our aim is that this site should provide a space for people to interact with our content and each other, and we actively discourage commercial entities passing themselves off as individuals, in order to post advertising material or links. This may also apply to people or organisations who frequently post propaganda or external links without adding substantively to the quality of the discussion on guardian.co.uk.

8. Keep it relevant. We know that some conversations can be wide-ranging, but if you post something which is unrelated to the original topic ("off-topic") then it may be removed, in order to keep the thread on track. This also applies to queries or comments about moderation, which should not be posted as comments.

9. Be aware that you may be misunderstood, so try to be clear about what you are saying, and expect that people may understand your contribution differently than you intended. Remember that text isn't always a great medium for conversation: tone of voice (sarcasm, humour and so on) doesn't always come across when using words on a screen. You can help to keep the guardian.co.uk community areas open to all viewpoints by maintaining a reasonable tone, even in unreasonable circumstances.

10. The platform is ours, but the conversation belongs to everybody. We want this to be a welcoming space for intelligent discussion, and we expect participants to help us achieve this by notifying us of potential problems and helping each other to keep conversations inviting and appropriate. If you spot something problematic in community interaction areas, please report it. When we all take responsibility for maintaining an appropriate and constructive environment, the debate itself is improved and everyone benefits.

In short:

  • If you act with maturity and consideration for other users, you should have no problems.

  • Don't be unpleasant. Demonstrate and share the intelligence, wisdom and humour we know you possess.

  • Take some responsibility for the quality of the conversations in which you're participating. Help make this an intelligent place for discussion and it will be.”

Rules we legislate for ourselves

The Guardian proposed guidelines above does point out a salient point often missed by Internet users.

The Internet as a whole, and every blog, every news portal like Malaysiakini , every website, and every conversation area is a virtual community. In a community, members must look after the welfare of other members and the collective well-being of the community.

The moral imperative of the community spirit does demand that we should respect one another, no matter how we may disagree on certain issue. On the Internet, when we enjoy so much freedom, the responsibility to earn that freedom is to remain civilised, by observing all the traditional values of journalistic and literary excellence.

Notice that the Guardian guidelines are just guidelines, not rules imposed by the government. When we internalise those guidelines, they become the rules we legislate for ourselves.

According to Kant, when we legislate ourselves morally, we can then be free while enjoying our sovereignty as moral subjects.

SIM KWANG YANG was MP for Bandar Kuching in Sarawak from 1982 to 1995. He can be reached at kenyalang578@hotmail.com.