I Delete Blog Posts: The Web is Not Print
I delete blog posts. I tend to weed posts about every three months. Just the other day I deleted a blog post a couple days after I wrote it. I had just deleted my Facebook account … yes, I deleted that too … and had dashed off an explanation post. I later thought the post merited more thought and deleted it. This post represents its replacement.
“Disappearing” a post can be unnerving. It feels like censorship. It gives the feeling of a cover-up. Some consider a published post to be official, carefully striking out changes instead of deleting them, and marking up any updates so there is no confusion. In the Web 2.0 era of social networking, deleting a Facebook account might seem anti-social; some call it cyber-suicide. I received private emails about it, some wanting to know why I did it, others applauding my decision; the weight of one’s data can feel like a milestone around the neck.
Deleting a post might be censorship if the web was print, but the web is not print. Change is the essence of the web. The ability to rapidly modify data is one of the key reasons the web exists. We like the web because we can publish easily. Consequently, I have posted as much junk as good stuff. Why shouldn’t we also use the changeability of the web to improve our publications. I think of my blog as a wiki, continually edited toward a better overall product. More of what works, and less of what doesn’t. I keep a back up of all posts if I need to resurrect one. We never had this flexibility before the digital age, and that clarifies one of the persistent virtues of print. It is dangerous to assume that web publications have the fixity of print. We need both digital and print technologies in a modern information ecology.
The right to delete data should be respected. Many people do not ever delete anything because they are unsure when it may be of value. For the same reason, people should be concerned about the widespread sharing of personal data with Web 2.0. Whereas the web enables data deletion, Web 2.0 actively discourages it. My Technorati authority rating drops when I do my quarterly weeding (even though the act increases my signal:noise ratio). Many 2.0′s only allow people to deactivate accounts, usually by a circuitous route of email and manual deactivation by a staff person. People should have the right to permanently delete accounts as easily as they are created.
The practice of deleting data should be encouraged. Web 2.0 makes it easy to contribute to the web; this is a good thing. It also makes for an ocean of data, much of it with fleeting relevance, making it harder with time to find relevant information. Google is not as effective today as it was five years ago, and the primary reason is the explosion of content. Don’t get me wrong — everyone should feel entitled to contribute whatever they want to the web. They should also be encouraged to delete what is no longer relevant. In the past, intellectual freedom was about access to information. The new front of intellectual freedom is relevance, and deleting stale data is an important step in that direction. Seasoned librarians love weeding books because they know the order it brings.
I anticipate this post will stay around this blog for a good long time.
“Seasoned librarians love weeding books because they know the order it brings.”
Interesting.
I agree that editing is also a form of creation, of writing and publishing. It’s another way this electronic medium enhances our ability to build and share information and ideas.
You’re right about Google being an uncertain ally in all this. I know some people are troubled by the web’s cacheing process. My own peeve is that I seem incapable of expressing myself clearly until the second or third draft which I write after publishing on Blogger – by which point the first draft is picked up by Google Reader, etc. I’m visual: I need to see my post in it’s blog setting (something Blogger’s “preview” function does not permit). I’m also too lazy or disorganized to publish privately, review, and then publish publicly. Ah, well.
I agree with you idea – if I understand you – that it can be helpful to use some websites like drawing boards or worlds where refinement and revisioning is possible, rather than a system for collecting and retaining data, opinion and ideas as these come along.
But your last image gave me pause.
In the past two years, library weeding has cost me 5 important-to-me books, only 2 of which I’ve been able to replace through private second-hand purchases. I checked-out these books three of four times a year. Sometimes they weren’t in the stacks, which probably meant someone else had them. But the weeding was guided by librarians’ opinions based on publication date and each book’s appearance and not on usage states (despite the library catalogue and check-out system being computerized). I know this because of 2 of the books I was told, “Nobody ever borrowed them.” Nobody? Another librarian told me privacy concerns prevented them from tracing how often a given book was borrowed. That also seems unlikely.
I’ve come to believe that the public library is no place to try to preserve books. Same is true of the Web, I suppose. Which is why I’ll copy and paste this comment into a notepad file to store on my hard drive. Later, I can delete it or not. But then – as with my webposts – the arbiter of relevancy will be me.
I often cite the ease of editing or deleting as a major reason to publish online. But I’m nowhere near as radical in my approach as this guy. When he found out about the Wayback Machine, he got very alarmed until I told him how to get stuff removed from it (and how to instruct their robots not to index). He currently twitters under a pseudonymn and seems to be erasing all his tweets more than a month old.
Wendell,
Your point, “I’ve come to believe that the public library is no place to try to preserve books”, is a good one. Likely, libraries are too driven by popularity these days, trying to compete with bookstores, and a very bad strategy even from a competitive perspective.
Makes the idea of personal book collections all the more relevant again. I certainly have some I can’t find in my local public (or academic) libraries.
I wonder if you would have the same opinion if instead of talking about your own blog, with its personal opinions and introspections, you were talking about another website you visited and relied on for stable, reliable content.
Is this idea of web weeding across the board applicable, or just to your own?
Dave, personally I’m grateful for the Wayback Machine, though I can see why others might not be, and I’m glad there is a way to delete stuff from it.
I’m fine with people seeing old versions of my blog, as long as there is the understanding that it is not the current official version to which I am putting my name. I keep old posts. If a user uses my blog search and can’t find something, they get a message saying I will email it to them. (Today, I modified that message to have a link to this post). WordPress does not provide an easy way for users to see old versions, the way you would see in a wiki. I might have to do something about that.
Andrew, Wikipedia has editors who actively mark content for deletion. My “slow reading” post went through that process, and I had to drastically improve it for the editor to keep it. This practice increases the authority of Wikipedia.
Reputable website authors will earn trust by not deleting content that is already stable. However, I think it is risky to say that web stability is the same thing as print stability. Web content can change without a trace. Print is not absolutely fixed, but it is better.
Anyone know the legal issues around Google or the Internet Archive caching full web pages? Doesn’t copyright apply?
Interesting post. I guess I’d say the web *need not* be printlike–but in some cases it really should be.
You think of this blog as wikilike, subject to continued refinement (and deletion) of pieces as no longer relevant. Hmm. Maybe I should look at mine and see how many of the posts no longer have even historical value–probably better than half. On the other hand…the stuff of history is increasingly the “unimportant” material.
I explicitly treat my ejournal as printlike, not making corrections in the published form once it hits the web. So far, I normally use the overstrike-and-replace method for explicit blog corrections. Maybe that’s too formal. Or maybe it’s an individual decision.
I would agree that web stability is not and probably should not be the same as print stability. To some extent, I suppose sources should note their own practice, as you’ve done here. (And now I know why a post I was planning to reference just isn’t there…)
Walt, I have a copy of your Liblogs book. My post deletions likely threw off your stats for my blog. I do not think this would be a significant factor for other blogs because post deletion is not a widespread practice.
The more I think about it, the more I think the ideal solution would be to have a public version history for blogs. I should be able to mark posts as “deprecated” and unavailable to search engines, but available for a local search if someone was interested. An archive of sorts.
Of course, what I am talking about is content management. I have been wondering if I should switch from WordPress to Drupal or some other CMS to provide this functionality. Likely I will post on this in the future.
BTW, if you want a specific post, just let me know. I can send it to you. I might repost it.
I really like Andrew’s distinction between “own blog, with its personal opinions and introspections” and “stable, reliable content.” I think each has a different purpose – something like website as process vs. website as product.
I started (and then stopped, but will resume) weeding out my adult-lit blog exactly because it’s purpose changed.
At first, it was a vehicle through which I played with and learning about blogging. There were lots of posts about side-bar widgets and SEO stuff, for example. It was all about process.
Now, it’s become a repository of writings and draft-writings and half-baked draft-writings about my field – all the material that might one day fuel a paper or presentation. My delight at finding a new sidebar widget doesn’t show up so much in my new posts anymore.
I’ve watched other blogs / authors go through this transition. Sometimes it’s announced with a “Why I Blog” type post. Sometimes the blogs get shut down (or go on vacation). Sometimes they get a new template and a new focus.
I agree. You own these posts. Do with them what you will. As an independent blogger, I don’t think you have any obligation to write for posterity.
Hi Mark, I wonder if ownership is the right word? Do I own these posts because I can delete them? If I submitted a post to a print magazine, it’s theirs, I can’t delete it. If I submit to someone else’s ezine, the same. What if I submit to a group blog, is it ours rather than mine? Does it depend on whether I have been given delete rights? I wonder if the ability to delete defines ownership on the web, just like the ability to copy MP3s seems to defy copyright.
Just thinking out loud.
(How’s the job in the US? Interesting time to be there, though politics is getting lively again here too. Best wishes.)
Hi there, thanks for writing about this. I strongly agree with the statement “People should have the right to permanently delete accounts as easily as they are created,” and I find it distressing when I can’t change my username or delete my account.
In my personal, private working space, I am used to deleting and recreating stuff all the time, it’s a work in progress that never ends, and setting a time for publishing or delivering always feels artificial…
Yet, I like the idea of preserving original posts and use striking-through as well as short date-stamped updates. Because, think about it, what we created is a virtual version of traditional paper printing: we have virtual fonts, made of pixels rather than lead, virtual white pages, virtual ink… and we brought along all the know-how about layout, page balance, etc. We call it web publishing, and publishing is about finalizing a piece of work and make it available to others, in a form that most readers expect to be reliable (right?). I totally understand and respect your approach of editing your posts and even weed them out, but if I will ever have a blog like that (I may, because I like your idea) then I will feel I have to make it clear from the outset that it’s not where I publish my finalized material, only where I temporarily share my work in progress, a virtual drafting notepad and not a virtual journal, magazine, newspaper, or book—-a somewhat private, or not completely public, space…
dovefight, “in a form that most readers expect to be reliable (right?)”, that’s the key issue there. The web is less reliable because it is not fixed like print. We can compensate with practices like strike-through, etc. Or use the web like you intend as a drafting tool, then publish final products old-style, in print. I think it is one of the enduring values of print in the information age.
Hmm… Still an interesting discussion – even a year later.
And still one readers can contribute to because the post remains up and accessible. The Web is so… interesting!
W.
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