Update Aug 29: Apparently CNET makes corrections without indicating them too. Yesterday, Aug 28, at 2:30pm I read an article on ebooks that quotes my friend and former Dialog colleague Jean Bedord. Problem was it said Bedford. Three times. I sent Jean a quick email just to say I'd seen it. She wrote back today, Aug 29, to tell me it's been corrected. A little unsettling, in that the publication date still says Aug 27, but the text has changed. Somewhat like (tho not .pdf) Walt's C&I, it looks like a static article - published as a final product.
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If you're reading this blog, chances are good you either have a blog yourself or you will sometime soon. It's ridiculously easy to write a blog.
Part of the joy of blog writing is its informality - spelling and grammar don't have to be perfect. Thoughts can be half formed. It's a place to throw out ideas and rants and see what comes back. But let's face it - a real attractive feature is the control. Writing in a blog sidesteps the queasiness that Nevelow Mart refers to after she sees her work in print. With a blog, you can change, delete and add to old entries at will. Not to mention control the date stamp and the comments.
At what point, if ever, does this con the reader? Going back to correct misspellings or edit sentences? Deleting thoughts? Adding them? Changing them? Is there an obligation to add "revised 8/16/04" and if so, when is it triggered?
Yesterday my father and I added a couple of sentences to the Aug. 11 post on Inducing Unintended Consequences for Libraries. We marked the new sentences.
My confession is that I don't usually mark my changes. Usually it's just a few words or a deleted sentence here or there, and I make the changes the same day or soon thereafter. It would look messy and hard to read if I marked it every time I changed something. Yet it raises the question about the mercurial nature of blogs, decidedly at odds with our desire to cite one another. Blogs are starting to be cited even in Senate testimony and in at least one court opinion. What degree of constancy is reasonable to expect in a blog entry?
Comments? If I don't like your comments, of course, I can delete them.
p.s. I've had a web page since 1997 - but the issue never came up. The web page was constantly updated, but didn't have the appearance of an online journal with dated entries.