Comments on: Itchy Fingers in the Blogosphere

By: Kent

Kent — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 02:20:00 +0000

Good post Amy. I agree with you about stating that you have edited something substantive that has been published and sent into the feed/link cosmos.I constantly find typos and broken links in my posts, despite my efforts to eradicate them. If I could get rid of those, I could deal with the need to disclose retractions of spit takes, etc.

By: Amy

Amy — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 19:48:00 +0000

Hi, KentHere's a followup post.I get what you're saying about conversational media and the need to be able to refine or retract statements. I'm just saying it pays to be transparent abou thtat when you do it.Best,- Amy Gahran

By: Amy

Amy — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 15:01:00 +0000

Good points, KenI agree that people should be free to change their minds, evolve their statements, etc. However, I’ve seen many people who seem to think that if you delete a posting soon after it’s up, you can pretend it never happened. Now, I know Dave Winer is savvy enough to know better than that, so I tend to think you’re right in your explanation of why he removed the posting. Still, especially when you’re a high-profile blogger, if you remove or significantly revise any posting without explanation, that’s likely to create more of a hassle than simply doing a followup to publicly restate your case.Actually, I’ve seen more of this revising and mysterious vanishing of content or pages perpetrated more by government agencies than bloggers — proposed regulations going down the memory hole at EPA, for example. That probably has more to do with internal agency politics than anything else, but it is one reason why I routinely use Furl in all my work. If I see something that may be relevant to my work or interests, I always save my own copy on Furl, because ya never know what could happen to it.- Amy Gahran

By: Mike

Mike — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 14:44:00 +0000

This isn’t really a blogging only problem. The same thing happens with emails. I sent out something a couple of days ago and copied the wrong person on it. Oops.If I was going to change my stance on something, I would put an Update section in the post. Typos I fix without doing that.I set up my Bloglines account to ignore updates, so I would have never seen Dave’s updates. Maybe that is something you should mention , too. Just like when you send out the infamous email to everybody in the company about how much you hate the boss, depending on how people have their aggregators configured, once you hit the submit button, it’s too late.But, big deal. Don’t say things you don’t believe. Feel free to change your mind and make mistakes. After all, this is all just talking.