Friday, April 11, 2003

blogging as publishing
Matthew G. Kirschenbaum asks if people should edit weblog entries, and Elizabeth Lane Lawley replies with "the party-line" from Rebecca Blood, that no, one should not do so.

I think it is circumstantial. First, there should be a distinction between which kind of blogs we are talking about. If they are subjctive, personal, and written mainly for the writing pleasure of the writer, he or she has no obligation towards the rest of the world. If they are or wish to be professional and part in a larger debate, if they profess to communicate facts or try to convince the reader of this or that view, then the editorial reliability becomes increasingly important.

In this blog, I change sentences or fix typos, because I always "blog hot" as MGK calls it. But I try to keep the gist of the post, and if I find out later that I was wrong, or if I need to correct or add something, I point out that I have updated or changed something. Occasionally I do delete or totally change posts. I think I have done that four times over two years of blogging. One was a post that I feared would be offensive to a person, the three others were posts where I found that I couldn't finish the argument I had planned for, and I deleted/altered them very shortly after posting.

Still, I don't consider this or other blogs to be as authoratitive sources of information as for instance peer-reviewed journals. I am after all just my biased self, as designer, writer and editor.

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