Ten Reasons Why

I'm familiar with neither Mark Pilgrim of Dave Winer, but I think what you have to say about "de-publishing" hits the nail right on the head.

It will be interesting to watch the ethics of "de-publishing" as more and more authors "self-publish" electronically.

De-publishing is a mechanism only available to online writers who control their own publication medium (e.g. bloggers). In print, radio, or TV, once you've made your content public, you can't pull it back. Yesterday's print edition of the Washington Post is out there; no way to de-publish it.

Print, radio, and TV each have distinguishing qualities. For radio, most of what goes out over the air is not recorded by anybody; there may be no permenant record, and one can then re-state an idea or opinion in a modified (cleansed?) form with no other tangable version for comparison.

I'm leery of comparisons between Internet activities and other means of publication or presentation, because the analogies often do not hold. The point of divergence is rarely clear, nor the undue influence these analogies have on our seeing the Internet for what it is.

Is "publishing" the best term for what happens with blogs? Is the print analogy correct, or sufficient? Would an analogy with, say, a spoken conversation, or a public speech, be more accurate, or at least present another equally valid aspect? If I speak in front of a crowd, would anyone refer to it as "publishing"?

How does this change as we move towards an era of ubiquitous recording and storage?

Greg: I agree with you about de-publishing. One of the primary issues that I've struggled with over the years as a manager of communities is the destruction that can be wrought by the humble "edit" button.

This is an especially big deal for me, because JournURL isn't just a blog-hosting service... every blog is part of a larger, threaded discussion environment. People who invest their time in interaction deserve to have some certainty that the foundations of a conversation --a heated conversation, in particular-- isn't going to change halfway through because someone has decided to cover his or her ass with judicious edits. The historical record matters.

For myself, the technical solution was a primitive revision control system... after X number of minutes have passed (I think it's set to 60 right now), any major edits will result in a post's original content being backed up, with a link to the backup forcibly added to the new version. It leaves authors with the freedom to refine the ultimate form of their content while protecting the audience from capricious or self-serving manipulation of the conversation.

It ain't much, but it's my little contribution to fair interaction in cyberspace.

I think this is essentially nonsense. All of this is subsumed under "reputation." It may be the case that if you assume every blog is a fully vested part of a community that these issues come into play but that seems to me to be quite an assumption.

There are as many different reasons for writing as there are writers. It is a mistake to ever believe the narrator is being honest.

I wrote a bit more about this here.

It'd be one thing if the re-editing was a matter of refining the content for the purpose of further explaining something. But what Dave does is pull a 'testing the waters' attack on someone else. He then usually deletes the horribly abusive comment initially used. Now, if you're the target of his abuses what's your take? How do you counter his attacks when he erases them? How do you unravel the negativity he's published? What WW does is simply hold Dave accountable to his abusive behavior. If he's not willing to control himself enough to 'think first, blog later' then he'll have to accept that others will do it for him. He's free to filter himself in ways that don't involve abusing others. If he did so there'd be nothing for WW to track.

I'm not a journalist. I'm a writer self-publishing on the web. And I intend to take full advantage of any benefit offered by self-publishing on the web, including that of easy revision. I used to drive my print publishers up the wall with my down-to-the-wire-and-then-some revising -- now I can indulge draftiness to my heart's content with no harm done. As I've warned readers before, "links will be added, stiltedness will be pared back, spelling mistakes will be corrected, and vocals will be brought up in the mix."

That said, I do avoid *deleting* anything I've published, and I don't believe I have control over anyone's memory, machine-aided or otherwise. If someone cares enough about my work to preserve or respond to earlier drafts, that's flattering enough to make up for any embarrassment. To publish is to take that risk.

Ray, the key phrase is "with no harm done."

We're not talking about harmless revisions. We're talking about a writer who is considered a leader in his field that posts inflammatory public comments about people's professional behavior or status to one of the most widely read weblogs on the Internet . . . then deletes those statements and excuses his own behavior by saying "it doesn't count until 10pm."

Problem is, once words are made public, no author gets to decide "what counts" -- the reader makes that decision when they consume the text. The impact the words had on readers isn't erased when the words themselves are erased.

I don't object to adding links, correcting spelling, grammar, etc. I do object to authors trying to use the fluidity of web publishing to hide their irresponsible behavior.