Revising History
Editing after publication
I keep going back and tinkering with these
postings. Just now I revisited Gay Marriage to make a slight correction: I
boycott straight weddings, not straight
marriages!
There is a debate in the blog world about revising one's remarks after they have been posted. Blogs are relished for their spontaneity. They are diaries and works in progress where errors of fact and changes of opinion are corrected and acknowledged openly. Some believe that you should leave old posts alone and use new posts to amend the record. Others go back to fix the original.
Dave Winer is the elder statesman of blogging, having creating some of the software that makes it possible. His Scripting News is probably the longest running blog in existence and was heralded by many journalists for containing one of the best real time accounts of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
He posts all day long, usually short pithy comments that point to some interesting story on the web. He will change his postings throughout the day and says that the final version is what's left by the end of the evening. A few weeks ago another programmer and blogger, Mark Pilgrim, began logging Winer's corrections on a minute by minute basis. The two have some major disagreements. There was an uproar and eventually Pilgrim backed down. I enjoy reading Pilgrim too but his tactics in this case made me hesitate about starting my own blog.
Right now I'm just experimenting with how all this works and I'm going to keep making post hoc changes to what I've written when it bothers me. If I'm really embarrassed I'm going to mention it in a new entry.
There is a debate in the blog world about revising one's remarks after they have been posted. Blogs are relished for their spontaneity. They are diaries and works in progress where errors of fact and changes of opinion are corrected and acknowledged openly. Some believe that you should leave old posts alone and use new posts to amend the record. Others go back to fix the original.
Dave Winer is the elder statesman of blogging, having creating some of the software that makes it possible. His Scripting News is probably the longest running blog in existence and was heralded by many journalists for containing one of the best real time accounts of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
He posts all day long, usually short pithy comments that point to some interesting story on the web. He will change his postings throughout the day and says that the final version is what's left by the end of the evening. A few weeks ago another programmer and blogger, Mark Pilgrim, began logging Winer's corrections on a minute by minute basis. The two have some major disagreements. There was an uproar and eventually Pilgrim backed down. I enjoy reading Pilgrim too but his tactics in this case made me hesitate about starting my own blog.
Right now I'm just experimenting with how all this works and I'm going to keep making post hoc changes to what I've written when it bothers me. If I'm really embarrassed I'm going to mention it in a new entry.
Posted: Sun - August 24, 2003 at 02:40 PM
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Published On: Sep 12, 2007 03:13 PM
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Published On: Sep 12, 2007 03:13 PM