For several years, I’ve been a fan of Kathy Sierra’s writing and presentations. We’ve met a few times in person, and I consider her a friend. So I was stunned to see in Twitter that she’s receiving death threats. My surprised turned into disgust when I read her account of what is going on.

There is a lot of unkind and hateful speech out there on blogs, and in comment streams. It’s the dark underside of the blogosphere, and nobody wants to address it because bloggers are very protective of their right to say whatever they want. I hope that everyone who leaves a nasty comment on a blog or whose blog “theme” is verbally abusing other people will stop and do a gut check after reading Kathy’s post. You might think that you are just venting. But you might also be throwing fuel on the fire for the kind of people that are now abusing Kathy and her family.