POLL: When is it ok to edit a blog post?

[sqbr]

Reading this post about the controversial decision to delete posts on Boing Boing and the fact I just made a post I've had to edit several times based on people's comments got me thinking about (EDIT :)) editing blogs.

Here I'm talking just about personal blogs like this lj, not proffesional or semi-profesional/famous ones like Boing Boing.

EDIT (heh): My brain turned to mush just as I was finishing this, so I'm still not going to express this well, but: I've conflated "What you do personally" with "What you tend to think other people should do" and "what you think is an objective minimum standard for blogging", and of course these are not always the same thing (such an objective standard may not even exist). Also I should make it clear that while I do think there are certain basic standards of behaviour I would expect from most bloggers (e.g. not changing your posts and then lying about it) on the whole I think people have a right to run their blogs how they like (though I think it's good to make your policy clear if there's confusion)


[Poll #1215499]

I was going to have a question about deleting posts but couldn't get it to come out right, especially since I'd have to take into account friendslock/private posts etc. With regards to the Boing Boing thing I can kind of see why they deleted the posts without saying (though it's hard to say for certain if it's justified given they won't say the reason) but deleting all comments asking about it until they got around to making a statement is just rude.

For myself I pretty much never delete comments, but am pretty fast and loose with unmarked edits as longas they don't change the basic meaning of the post (lots of bad phrasing etc)

Comments

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I got halfway through your poll and STUCK. Becuase I kept thinking, but this is all so subjective (the reasons you gave for ok to edit, with or without notice, and probably the different sense we all have of those terms is at least partly the cause of wankstorms).

On the one hand, I find this fetishization of "original" posts incredibly hilarious in a medium as fluid and open to both change and easy archiving/capping of material. I am addicted to revision. I don't spend a lot of time revising my posts because one, too freaking busy, and two, I see LJ as a fairly informal space. I do add the edit notes....because, well people seem to like it (just as I cut for spoilers though I don't mind spoilers in about 99% of the cases). I do it beause I like to think I'm polite not because I have any huge ethical thing going for omg untouched virginal stuff (because I don't believe such a thing exists).

I only read about boingboing on fandom_wank and a quick skim of Making Light, and I think shrieks of censorship are pretty silly.

So.....I just don't know. I doubt there is any single standard in fandom/the blogosphere.

It is....intriguing to see the conflict between expectations of public and private, with people coming and telling others what to do on their own blog, and people feeling that their blog is "their" private space in very real ways -- clearly the distinction between the two concepts does not hold in cyberspace.

So, um, sorry, just note me as confused.....

[alias_sqbr]

Yeah, sorry, "ethical" was totally the wrong word, "polite" is much more what I meant. Changing blog posts or deleting comments isn't censorship or major oppression, but it is sometimes pretty rude and can also be dishonest.

I realise now that this post makes me sound like one of those people on metafandom who thinks politeness=morality and rants about how mislabelling gen as slash (or vice versa) is PURE EVIL etc :)

I agree that there is no one consistent standard, nor should there be. But that doesn't stop people having expectations, and it's useful (and interesting) to know what they are. I'm not going to stop making unmarked edits to things people have misunderstood, but it's useful to know a lot of my readers aren't 100% comfortable with the practice.

The public/private space thing is interesting.

I guess people have a right to edit their blog posts how they like as long as it's not done in a dishonest way (I'm a stickler for honesty :)) but in a sense people's comments are part of their self expression. To use the "house" analogy: it's my right to deny people entry to my house unless they promise not to talk about, say, football, and kick them out if they do. But once I invite someone into my house I may have the right to tell them to shut up/kick them out for no apparent reason but they would still be within their rights to be angry about it.

[lauredhel.livejournal.com]

Even just the "house" analogy might be understating or misstating things, depending on the situation, because blog posts/threads often have a specific topic or purpose. So it might be, in some cases, more like gatecrashing an activist meeting that happens to be in a public place and yelling slogans opposing the purpose; or attending a jam session in a pub and deliberately playing off-key; - that sort of thing.

People always have a right to feel angry (no one can regulate feelings), but they don't have a right to come back and egg the place.

[lauredhel.livejournal.com]

Actually "public place" just doesn't work in this context either. "Private property with the door open" is better.

[alias_sqbr]

Hmm...I don't know, it's a lot creepier to stand around listening at the door of a stranger than it is to read their blog. Or to encourage other people to stand around as well.

But I agree it depends very much on the nature of the blog and individual post: this post, for example, is on a pretty broad topic and a random stranger wouldn't be out of place piping up with their opinion. But it would easily be creepy for a random stranger to comment on my "what do you think of my new haircut?" post.

[alias_sqbr]

Most of my reply is below, but:

The problem with this sort of discussion is that people always have the "right" to do what they like with their blog, and their commenters always have the "right" to be angry. But there are certain situations where the behavior of one or more parties, while well within their rights, isn't very justified. For example, I have a right to ban anyone who comments using an icon from a show I don't like...but it would be pretty petty of me, and those banned would be justifiably annoyed. On the other hand, I would be justified in deleting any comments containing offensive porn advertising, and the commenter might have the right to be angry but it wouldn't be justified.

The question then is the highly subjective grey area in between those two extremes. I can't stop my commenters being angry, but where possible I'd like to avoid making them justifiably so (according to their own personal measure of such things as well as mine)

That said, I agree that even when you're justifiably angry, it's still pretty much always wrong to "come back and egg the place".

[lauredhel.livejournal.com]

And when I said elsewhere that on my LJ people are expected to fit themselves into the conversation rather than make it all about them, I'm (obviously, I hope) not talking about people who use icons from TV shows I don't like! I can think of situations where I might delete a comment for an icon, but I think we're on basic agreement on that (as we are on the gist of the other stuff) - deliberate extreme spoilers, porn, race vilification, that sort of thing.

It's also _possible_ (I'm not sure) that we're choosing to emphasise different aspects of this because we're visualising different initial scenarios. When you said "Icon from a show I don't like", I was "Ohhhh. That's not _at all_ the sort of thing I was thinking about". We get some pretty nasty trolls from time to time. I guess I'm thinking that you're mostly talking about fandom wank type scenarios, and I'm thinking more about race hatred and rape apologism and stuff? (Correct me if I'm wrong, please.)

[alias_sqbr]

I guess..I'm trying to find a framework which covers both, and testing any suggested framework with both extremes. I'm emphasising the counterexamples to the arguments people are making. Also since the example that inspired me was (in my opinion) someone deleting things for bad reasons, I ended up with a bias against that.

So if someone says "Bloggers have the right to set their own rules and delete what they like", I think about bloggers who are petty and delete things for selfish or shallow reasons.

But if someone said "Bloggers should never delete anything, that violates freedom of speech" I would think about hate speech, spam etc..but noone argued that way, so I didn't bring it up. A lot of people do argue that way, in other places, so I probably should have mentioned it for completeness.

Also I should have explicitely added "hatespeech/racism etc" to the poll, it's not quite the same thing as "rude" and "troublemaking", though I did have it in mind when I added those categories.

[callistra.livejournal.com]

It's your blog, delete and revise at will.

However, if you start to try and act as an authority, you should be more specific about revision and letting people know of revisions, and deletions are a dirty word.

I like the fact your difficult question posts are fluid and revised as new info comes to hand. Makes it worth checking back to see what's going on. Although... despite my previous paragraph, I could see the revision system working well for critical analysis in a more formal semiotic system.

Um.

IE. if you *did* set yourself up as an authority, as long as you were open about the revisions system you use, I am sure you could get away with it and not have people crying for blood.

[alias_sqbr]

Yes, I think open-ness and consistency is key here, especially if you're going against people's expectations.

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

I'll happily make revisions to my own posts for the first several minutes after publication - I can't finish editing the text until I see what it looks like on a flist. But after that, I drop down to spelling and punctuation, and limit anything significant to clearly marked additions (ETA - some more stuff). Possibly a clarifying rephrasing, but again, clearly marked.

Though I will sometimes filter a post more tightly after the fact - which isn't that different to boingboing's "unpublishing". (not that I'd heard anything about the boingboing fracas before your post).

As for nuking peoples comments - I've mostly only had issues with spam. I've only once had someone leave a comment I wasn't that comfortable leaving there, and that was for going off topic in a fairly insensitive manner.

[capnoblivious.livejournal.com]

As for nuking peoples comments...

I've only done it for similar reasons, mostly spam, occasional vitriol. I've given people "Hey, watch it!" pokes, though.

But, you know, in the context of the poll, I'm perfectly prepared to delete something if it goes too far out of my comfort zone. My blog, after all.

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

*nod*

Absolutely. To be honest, the comment I've been most tempted to delete was one I left on someone else's post - but figured that you can't really unsay what's been said, and it felt a little too much like attempted revisionism. Besides, that was on their blog..

[nephron.livejournal.com]

I got a "why don't you just slash your wrists, remember it's down the road not across the street".

I wouldn't have felt bad deleting that, but I left it up to point to as an example of their behaviour.

[greteldragon.livejournal.com]

I got that too once from someone. Now I'm wondering if it was the same guy...

[greteldragon.livejournal.com]

I deleted it though.

Hm... Also with editing journals, I'm a huge fan of the 'my journal, my rules' policy. :P

I do think its polite to add on edits though if its any major change. :P

[alias_sqbr]

I can't finish editing the text until I see what it looks like on a flist

Same. Specifically, that's the point when I realise I need a lj-cut :)

[lauredhel.livejournal.com]

I prefer to mark edits that significantly add something or significantly change meaning, if it's done long enough after the post that someone is likely to have read it.

For other people - their blog, their rules, ultimately. I tend to think they "should" mark edits if it's substantive and especially if it relates to comments that have already been made; but not that they should be forced to. If they want to withdraw something they've said from publication, that's their right.

And I'll delete whatever comments I want to, whever I want to. I'm not big on _editing_ comments (unless, perhaps, they're obviously abusive trolls, and then I'll note the edit), but deleting? My blog, my rules - I'm not /obliged/ to provide a platform for anyone to argue or be rude or troublemake or flame. My LJ is my my living room, and I have a very low tolerance for hate speech of any kind.

Having said that, I rarely actually do delete comments from my LJ. But that's because most opf my commenters are lovely! If they're some random person who has come into my house purely to pick a fight with me or insult people, however, I show them the door.

[out-fox.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting analogy, about the house.

I do see lj as more like a private place, even when it's public bloggers, because it can be so inherently social, people indulge their personal interests etc.

Whereas in Wordpress I figure, I put something out into the internets ether there then I know it's open to debate. It's like starting a conversation at my own party vs. yelling my opinion from one little soapbox in a rather massive speakers corner.

[lauredhel.livejournal.com]

That's interesting that you perceive a difference in privacy level or how comment policies should be depending on the blogging platform. With the indulgence of our host (or elsewhere, if preferred), I'd love to explore that more.

Do you think there is (or should be) a difference in comment policies depending on whether the blog is hosted for free on a company's servers or hosted by yourself on a server that you pay for?

Yay! An excuse to use this icon!

[alias_sqbr]

Host piping up here to say I'm too tired to engage with this conversation right now, but feel free to go off on any tangent you like(*). I promise not to delete your comments :)

(*)Well, ok, there are tangents I would disapprove of but not any I can see the two of you doing.

[out-fox.livejournal.com]

I was initally thinking less of the free/paid element, than the different degrees of inbuilt social networking vs. visibility in search engines between the platforms.

Although expense comes into that agreed.

Imo lj is favored by certain demographics and for certain uses more than paid/own blogs because of both it's implictliy more "communities" nature and the lower/nil entry costs in blog hosting and time required to familiarize self with physical blog management [learn CSS, make layout, organize feeds & personal content policy etc.]

The greater investment to create a high profile "real" public blog seems to imply more often [in Oz anyway] that the person has a topic they want to actually publicly expound upon.

/edited to edit out my "awaiting hosts indulgence" comment.

[alias_sqbr]

I think you may be right about the way things work *now*, but a lot of people I know (myself included) had personal blogs that they then shifted to lj with no change in tone etc, so I think it's less inherent to the nature of blogs and more that the "amateur looking but really good for community building and conversation" nature of lj (plus myspace, facebook etc) attracted all the unproffesional personal bloggers leaving Wordpress etc for the would-be Serious Bloggers.

It never occured to me that it might be an australian thing, though, hmm. (Lauredhel is also an aussie, btw)

[shrydar.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that it's so much a paid/unpaid divide as a cultural issue. Different 'spaces' have different expectations and different unwritten rules - not to say that lj (for example) is particularly homogenous on that count, but you can certainly observe general tendencies in behaviour on the basis of platform.

Besides - some people pay for their LJ, and some people elsewhere have managed to obtain very cheap hosting :)

[alias_sqbr]

For other people - their blog, their rules, ultimately. I tend to think they "should" mark edits if it's substantive and especially if it relates to comments that have already been made; but not that they should be forced to. If they want to withdraw something they've said from publication, that's their right.

Yes, same. The "should" in my poll was just on the level of general expectation/politeness, I'm not saying we should kick trangressors out of the blogosphere or anything :)

Having said that, I rarely actually do delete comments from my LJ. But that's because most opf my commenters are lovely! If they're some random person who has come into my house purely to pick a fight with me or insult people, however, I show them the door.

Mm, I've yet to delete anything other than spam, but that has more to do with the quality of comments I get than my standards.

[out-fox.livejournal.com]

I think, your blog, your rules.

That said, the more public the blog, the more I prefer that:

-people do put any rules they hold dearly out there to save everyone trouble

-if people edit the OP content in a debate in ways that significantly distort how existing comments will be read, they make some edit note about that. Otherwise, it can be akin to putting words in the existing commenters mouths, by SO taking the context out from under their words. Mainly that only matters if it was a pretty intense debate anyway.

-if something started f-locked then gets made public. I wonder about that even linking public entries from small journals to big comms. I'l love to discuss things from DBW on my public blog sometimes [it takes me that long to formulate a response!] but people often put personal stuff there so I'm iffy about the linky-privacy issue.

[alias_sqbr]

I wonder about that even linking public entries from small journals to big comms

Yes, I've worried about that too, especially since I think a lot of the people on my flist are used to using lj to just talk to people they know in real life and so would expect the only people to read their comments to be friends and friends of friends.

[penchaft.livejournal.com]

Keep in mind that my background in being annoyed at edited posts/deleted comments is because of SAVE THE WANK!!! instincts. ;)

[alias_sqbr]

Heh. Of course, I'm not sure many bloggers are convinced by "But if you change your entry we won't be able to mock it!" :)

[gemfyre.livejournal.com]

Eh, people can manage their own blogs however the hell they like. I don't necessarily like all the methods, but I don't think I should tell others how to write in their own blogs.

[alias_sqbr]

Oh, I'm not arguing that we should go around kicking people out of cyberspace for doing their blogs wrong :)

[moxiwize.livejournal.com]

My personal feeling is that I hate it when I feel like I don't have the whole story, that I've missed something. I hate it when comments don't make sense because they are referring to something that no longer exists. Even an apology (that at least acknowledges the existence of a deleted post) doesn't make sense if I can't refer to what it's apologising for. I think that the best choice is to leave the original and make a new post. Alternatively add a clear edit of the existing one. I don't care so much about correcting typos and spelling errors, especially if it's immediately after posting, but if someone comments on it, make it clear that you've fixed it or again it's confusing.

I frequently bookmark sites (blogs and others) and am quite upset if the link disappears, especially if it's not because the site no longer exists but instead because the page has been moved. I think integrity and credibility are important. I think it's more important to see the whole conversation so people can make up their own minds instead of making assumptions on things they can't see.

On the other hand I do agree that a person's website/blog is their own and they get to make the rules, but I think the rules should be clearly posted and stay roughly the same over time and not change according to the incident (else they might as well not exist).

I think when it comes to comments you're better off saying what you find objectionable rather than silently deleting it. I think that educates people to what is acceptable too. I think the only exception is things like a huge volume of spam, in which case I much prefer that it is gone because it isn't part of the conversation. If something is getting in the way of people talking then fine, delete it (but even then maybe make a comment of it).

People (generally) think about what they type and feel somewhat invested in it, deleting it because you disagree seems less constructive than engaging them in debate. I know I'd be upset if my comment was deleted but if someone commented back with a rebuttal - they might even change my mind!

[alias_sqbr]

My personal feeling is that I hate it when I feel like I don't have the whole story, that I've missed something. I hate it when comments don't make sense because they are referring to something that no longer exists. Even an apology (that at least acknowledges the existence of a deleted post) doesn't make sense if I can't refer to what it's apologising for. I think that the best choice is to leave the original and make a new post. Alternatively add a clear edit of the existing one. I don't care so much about correcting typos and spelling errors, especially if it's immediately after posting, but if someone comments on it, make it clear that you've fixed it or again it's confusing.

Yes, I find that annoying too. Then again, I do have some sympathy for people who just can't stand their past idiocy being up for display, especially when, apology notwithstanding, they still get angry replies etc. I think the one thing I find pretty much unjustifiable is changing things and then lying about it.

In my opinion the one reason to delete objectionable stuff is when it's a very effective troll which other commenters are upset by and drawn into, or is just SO offensive that it's making people really upset. I mean I don't delete that sort of stuff myself (not that I get much of it), but I can see why you would.

[lauredhel.livejournal.com]

It all depends on the type of space, too. For me, Hoyden About Town is at least partly a debate space, though I still don't tolerate outright hate speech - stuff that I'm not comfortable hosting, or stuff that makes our regular commenters feel unwelcome. Some types of thread derails, too, though they're generally asked to take it to the appropriate space (the open thread, a relevant thread, or elsewhere) and then moderated if they look likely to get toey.

My LJ I do see a bit differently; not as a debate space, but as as place where more personal things are discussed. We're a bunch of friends there, and while newcomers are welcome, they are expected to fit into the crowd rather than expecting the crowd to fit around them, IYKWIM? But I get very few trolls and abusers there, far fewer than we get on HaT, which is not surprising.

continued in my reply elsewhere in thread...

[vegetus.livejournal.com]

Whilst I may in principle think that it is ok to delete certain things left in comments etc I often don't. The screening of comments depends often on my mood- sometimes I want to rant and don't want to have discussion about it or to have to defend my views. I learnt this early on- people wanting to challenge stuff I wasn't interested in discussing as it was a rant. If I want debate I'll go to one of the many veg related communities on lj which are a source of drama on their own (seriously they make UniSFA flamewars look pathetic).

But I have designed this lj in particular as being first and foremost a space for my vegan related ranting (despite posting occassional off topic stuff), so what I do here and what I do on my travel blog or my other lj are different.

[alias_sqbr]

Mm. I have this reflexive thing against screening/deleting/blocking etc comments, which means if I don't feel like debating something I just don't talk about it (or I do and I regret it)

This may not be an optimal solution :)

[vegetus.livejournal.com]

I guess it depends on what you are posting and why. Usually I would prefer to have dialogue with friends, but there are times when I just can't be bothered then and there. Is it better to make no comments then, but do them later when I'm feeling more up to it perhaps?

[alias_sqbr]

That's certainly what I do, I say a few days after you post this :) (I did have a cold, mind you)

I should say

[(Anonymous)]

Very nice!!

Re: I should say

[alias_sqbr]

Good thing I clicked "no" to deleting anonymous replies, huh? :)

thanks much

[(Anonymous)]

thats it, dude

Re: thanks much

[alias_sqbr]

:P