National Blog Posting Month
Write, Post and then ... Regret?!
Do you ever write something on your blog, journal etc and then the next day or a couple of days after look back and think ‘I wish I hadn’t posted that’ or ‘I wish I’d written it differently’ and if so what do you do? Do you delete it? Rewrite it? Maybe go back and change it? Or are you one of these people who as soon as you’ve hit that submit button do you just leave it and move on?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by QuirkyJessi on -
Mine's not really a personal journal, but there 'have' been things I no longer agreed with being there or I wanted to say more. I have no problem editing, but I always say something like "~Edit~" and possibly even the date to show that I'm making a change.
There was once that I'd written about a site that I fully supported, but later didn't agree with its practices at all. I chose to strike through the text, remove the links, and add on my current opinion. The original was still readable if you want to look around the line, but it showed the change and that was probably more powerful than me deleting it entirely.
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Permalink Reply by Elizabeth Coplan on -
As a serial editor, I often edit a piece I have posted. However, once I post a new piece, I let the old ones live on without further edits.
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Permalink Reply by Peter M. on -
In recent years I tend to do a lot of my editing prior to hitting the submit button, so my second guessing tends to occur before a blog ever hits my page. However, I definitely have older posts where I go back to read them and wonder what I was thinking.
Once I publish I'll go back to fix typos, or occasionally to clarify phrasing that was very muddy, but that's the only rewriting I do. If I have to make an editorial comment, such as what QuirkyJessi mentions above, I'll call it out as such without altering my original text.
In over eight years of blogging I've only redacted two posts - one from the breakup of my first relationship that I realized was a little overly personal, and a particularly nasty one that I wrote the first time I got very drunk on wine. I think both of those extenuating circumstances warranted some editorial hindsight (although, I still enjoy reading them as drafts, mostly for their cautionary value :).
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Permalink Reply by QuirkyJessi on
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Lol, I think those are great reasons for removing specific posts, but I'm glad to see you kept the drafts as reminders. They just weren't appropriate for public eyes any more. :)
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Permalink Reply by Secret Dreamer on -
I draft my post in Word before pasting it into my journal and can take ages reading through it and changing bits and pieces here and there before finally submitting it, however nine times out of of ten I always seem to have to go back and edit it again at some point. Usually it is just by adding in an extra word or changing the format of the sentence about so that it flows better and I've not (as yet) made any major changes and hopefully wont but I just thought I'd get some expert opinions about the general do's and don'ts of blogging.
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Permalink Reply by ammogirl on -
I just move on. However, I have sat down and written very emotional, explosive, or argumentative posts purely for the purpose of saving it to draft. Like a private post, but without the hassle.
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Permalink Reply by s.e. smith on -
There are a number of things on my site which I don't really think belong, because they no longer accurately reflect me/my beliefs, but I leave them up as matters of archival interest. (I even leave up entries about site status and so forth, just because it creeps me out when stuff randomly vanishes, and I figure my readers feel the same way.) I will edit posts to correct grammar/spelling errors, and if readers submit corrections, I will edit to reflect those, usually with a note like "Edited 00/00/0000 to add correction from reader x."
That said, I do keep a lot of things in draft status, and mull over them carefully before posting, to avoid blogger's regret. I have redacted one post, at pressure from my employer, and I honestly regret that more than every painfully personal/stupid/just plain bad post on my site.
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Permalink Reply by Peter M. on
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It's encouraging to hear that you leave up posts even when they no longer reflect your beliefs.
I think the danger of constantly revising, redacting, and restarting is that blogs have become superficial, transient representations of the people that write them. I feel that degrades the value of blogs. The model that you and I utilize treats ours blogs as an aggregate total of our beliefs and opinions, rather than just a snapshot. It is interesting how this is at once similar and different from Social Networks - they too contain the historical component, but predominantly offer a snapshot of the current views/statuses of each user.
I'm interested how our position will be viewed in another 5-10 years, as more of the generation that grew up with Social Networks become adults. My hope is that that our policy of transparency is going to become the norm, not the outlier - and that people will be increasingly suspicious of a blog or profile that omits that historical perspective in favor of editing in hindsight.
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Permalink Reply by Noelle on -
I don't usually write posts that I will regret later, (I did accidentally write private details once,) and got lectured by my parents when I was still living there. After that, I've kept things pretty private. I usually only edit for spelling errors, or if I don't like the way I worded something. but, I tend to edit right after I hit publish.
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Permalink Reply by s.e. smith on
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I think there's another good reason to leave old material up: it shows how your thoughts have evolved. Readers can follow along with me as I struggle to reach a conclusion on an important issue, and new readers who want background on something can go into the archives and find it. I love to see how people have arrived at various conclusions, especially conclusions on controversial issues.
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Permalink Reply by Alex Vanguard on
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I tend to forget about them once I've published them. I'm one of those people who writes entries off the cuff, so it all gets written in one go and sent out into the intarwebs as is. I don't see the point in changing or editing past entries. They are what they are, which is mostly rants and rambly thoughts. Sometimes, going back to read those entries can give a nice perspective of where my mind is/was at that point in time. Can give interesting insights sometimes.
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Permalink Reply by Just Jinny on -
I don't think I regret, really. I might be a bit apprehensive of how others might react, or think of something I wish I could have added or wored differently days later. But I don't regret. I don't think I have ever gone back and edited a post once its out there.
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