Blogging and honesty and mistakes
What happens when you make a mistake or change your mind on the blogosphere? Can you correct it? How should you correct it? Are you trapped, like politicians seem to be, in either holding a hardline approach to every opinion you’ve ever made public, no matter how stupid, or risk being called a flip-flopper or a revisionist?
Thanks for once again pulling me into something incredibly depressing and enraging.
Comment by Adouble — December 3, 2007 @ 12:38 am
AG: what do you think people ought to do? The strikethrough method? The big, bold update? Do either of those call more attention to the original incorrect reporting or altered opinion?
Google pulls some weird stuff into the argument, too, because searches will still pull up any text that’s in the strikethrough, etc…
Comment by Dave Burdick — December 3, 2007 @ 10:20 am
And from a technical standpoint, it’s not just google. Things like the internet wayback machine also make the deletion of text difficult (if you happen to delete after an image). I think the “Update” method. I think it’s the most transparent way to go, particularly since the strike through seems mainly used on blogs now as a joke, e.g. “and so I
stalkedmet Common”. The “Update” approach allows for a more robust retraction. But still, that story was depressing.Comment by Aaron — December 3, 2007 @ 5:25 pm