Kathy Sierra of Creating Passionate Users has been receiving death threats (warning: it’s disturbing material). These threats have caused her to cancel speaking engagements and to consider giving up blogging altogether. As discussed in the article, these threats aren’t merely the anonymous trolling comments that most bloggers see from time to time, but comments made about her on other prominent blogs. With cleverly photoshopped pictures to help illustrate the threats.

Some of the accused parties are busy doing damage control this morning, and I think it’s probably true that none of the people she names were directly responsible for the threats. The problem is that those people helped to create an atmosphere where their readers felt free to post these kinds of misogynistic comments. It’s not news that the Internet provides a degree of anonymity that emboldens people to say things in e-mail messages, or in posts in online forums, that they would never say in real life — indeed, that practically unregulated level of free speech is one of the great things about the ‘net. I guess I’ve just been lucky enough, for the most part, to participate in online communities that are self-policing and don’t put up with or otherwise encourage this kind of crap.

As Uncle Ben said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” No, not the wild rice guy — Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben. I don’t know how to finish this post off other than to say, think about what you write and the power that your words have, even when — or especially when — they’re anonymous. And on the off chance that you’re a reader of one of the blogs that “hosted” these attacks on Kathy, maybe it’s time to unsubscribe from those feeds.