Damnit, damnit, damnit. I just went looking for a 10-12 months old post only to realize the blogger had deleted it from his archives. I know why he did it: He's trying to get published, and he figured out that politics, especially his rather hard-right politics, don't help you sell books.
That's great, and I can see giving up writing about politics altogether in the interests of getting published, but scrubbing the archives seems a little obsessive. He's canned the Monthly Archives links, so it's already cumbersome to sift through the old material to begin with. Besides, very few people comb archives. Especially once you fix it so they don't come up on a Google search.
I know I'm whining about something I shouldn't whine about, as I firmly believe writers should be able to do whatever they like with their writing, including destroying it, but I nonetheless really hate bloggers who do this. "Oh, that old site has nothing to do with who I am nowadays. I'm going to delete it all." What do I have to do, start saving the .html files of every post I think I might want to refer to down the road? I sometimes don't get around to drafting anything based on another person's post until MONTHS later, when something new occurs to remind me of it.
Don't be a pain in the asses of your readers like that. Leave the shit up.
About the only excuse I see for deleting it is, "It's going to get made into a book and the publisher made me take it down." But because you're publishing some other book? Not based on your blog output? Not a good reason to kill old posts. You figure maybe only 1 in 300,000 potential book buyers will care that the author of that cookbook he or she was thinking of buying once wrote a love letter to Ann Coulter last year. Food makes people forgive what they would not ordinarily forgive.
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7 comments:
Well, I know who you're talking about. In fact, he went and deleted a recent post I specifically asked him not to. The nerve of that guy! ;-)
More seriously, this is why I have certain things in my Furl archives. Furl actually saves a copy of the page for you to refer back to in case the original disappears.
But, yeah, I hate it when people delete things, too. I'm too much of a packrat to do that. Plus, my host gives me more space than I could ever use.
Steve H. at Hog on Ice, Lauren. He had a post advocating virginity-til-marriage for both sexes, and I was specifically interested in poking fun at the way one of his male commenters pitched a fit at him over it, being all "No, no, it's only WOMEN who need chastity. Guys should be allowed to poke and own at will."
It would have been a perfect, classic example of the ol' double standard, and how too many men who advocate a return to Family Values really mean "Women need their legs sewn together." I think I was going to tie it all together with the knob Tucker Max or something, but now--pfft.
Susan, THANK YOU for the Furl link! Ah, had I only known sooner! It's been bookmarked for future use now though, at least.
I actually find deleting posts (for history-scrubbing purposes) to be dishonest and right there next to immoral. Then again, I'm a cowardly pseudonymous blogger, so what do I know?
Clearly the man has foresight to spare.
so, can someone tell me how this is supposed to work, finally?
-we're against adultery;
-we're against "nice" girls having sex before marriage;
-we're against prostitution
-and it goes without saying that we're against the pokin' 'n' ownin' happening with other men.
so, um, whom exactly are the boyz supposed to be getting it off with?
furl is cool, but the interface is a little clunky. i usually end up using Google Notebook if i don't care about archiving my own copy of something.
Imagine that.
Heh.
Yeah, I noticed your boss hit this, Pablo. That's because he's not very bright, and an ooh-look-HYPOCRISY!-style gotcha is the best he can do.
That I never said I agreed with Amanda's decision to overwrite her original post?--Totally irrelevant to the dumb. I support her, see, and therefore, there just must be some hypocrisy somewhere. I mean, we're talking about SATAN! I mean Amanda. Same dif.
You're like the guys who think that a pile of horseshit indicates a pony around somewhere. Keep looking! Keep looking!
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