And, since it’s blogging, I’ll be wise enough not to spend an hour regurgitating it, and simply post the link.
Well, except to add that, yes, you could find similar sentiments uttered here in various places (usually filed under the category “Blogging”).
Well, and to add to that:
… is that it creates a culture of spin-control, revisionism, and censorship.
Blogs tend to get quietly, retroactively edited for content by people who’ve said things they later find inconvenient, and visitor comments that don’t suit the blogger’s agenda get quietly deleted. God knows I’ve done it, as much as I don’t like to. History is written by the victor, and if a blog page is exclusively “yours,” well, you’re always the winner, aren’t you? The ability to authoritatively ‘publish’ your version of history is a terribly tempting thing.
Aside from the initial editing process, I think I can count on the thumbs of one hand (or maybe two) the number of posts I’ve gone back and changed because I realized I wrote something really stupid or that made me look bad. Part of it is simply just a reaction against that temptation, and part of it is because I’m usually so damned diplomatic to begin with (I only get in trouble when I say, “To hell with being diplomatic”).
I also think I’ve only ever deleted a handful — a half-dozen or fewer — of comments from here (not counting spam). Maybe I just attract a high-class audience. Maybe I just abhor censorship. The one case I can think of was someone saying particularly (and gratuitously) offensive toward Margie — about which I’ll pull out all the stops, just so folks know.
I don’t say this out of any particular sense of virtue. Different writers, different goals, different journalistic (and, for me, historiographic) motivations. But it’s about the only bit on Doyce’s post about which I didn’t nod my head like a bobble doll on a back road, so I wanted to take note.
Well, that and the whole “co-worker” thing, just because I’ve been careful (and am careful about such a thing ever coming to light). I have had folks in other parts of my life discover my blog, though, and that has cause a degree of self-censorship at time (cue bobble-head mode again).