I have just finished a four hour recording session for a client who wanted audio clips for their PowerPoint…they were the voice. They thought the session would take twenty minutes. I am punchy (in a funny way, not a fisticuffs way).

I think it was either Jean Paul Sartre or Steve McGarrett who said: “go with your gut”. So if you’re gut told you “edit” the blog then that was the thing to do…proving yet again it is hard (but not impossible) for one to lie to themselves.

Like Julien, I too am curious. Unlike Julien I don’t speak French (of any kind) and know relatively little about the internet. Tease those of us who didn’t read the original post if you must…likely I would tease you mercilessly about its content had I read it even though I think I’d have the insight to temper your paragraphs with the reality of you that I know…I know you know you’re not anything less than good people.

Did that make any sense? I’ve not really eaten well today and I’ve just had two PB&J’s for dinner with a Pepsi chaser. Am I supposed to be seeing spots?

Anyway the point here is that now without this original post I’ve got nothing o tease you about so you’ve taken the fun out of my day. I hope you’re happy.

xoxo, your pal,
the sugar buzzing buffalonian

Bry, I’m very competitive, however, this is a challenge I’ll pass on. At the end of the day, I’d rather be at peace with myself. Ever since I posted that post early Saturday morning, I didn’t feel good about it. It was on my mind virtually the whole day.

I tried to tell myself that I didn’t care. “I’m a disrupter”, I told myself. But by Sunday morning, I still felt uneasy to the point that I didn’t want to check my email or even go online. I was now afraid to read the very words I typed up. Not good.

If that’s how I felt, there’s no way I would want to strikethrough my post or re-post it so everyone can see. Like Ted said, this is my building and like Eric said, if I told everyone what I did, then yes, I was transparent and honest. And I had wished I were as quick as Justin so I could’ve just deleted it as soon as I published it.

Which begs the question – If a published post was deleted and no one read it, was it really a post?

If you’ve alerted people about what you’ve done, I’d say you’ve fulfilled any obligation you might have to be transparent to your readers. People insisting that you can only achieve transparency and honesty in one pre-defined way is too doctrinaire for my taste.

The strike-through thing is a convention, not a requirement.

Delete, change, etc. as long as there is no dishonesty is no problem.
Now if you wrote posts and dated them to appear in the past, changing history as you went, that would be a different matter.

“Thou shalt not change blog posts” is not a commandment, religious or otherwise. Now I choose not to change mine (or at least haven’t yet), but if change/delete a post or entire blog it’s my business. And my blog simply isn’t important enough for it to really matter anyways.

The blogosphere may be public, but this is entirely dissimilar from spray painting a building. And besides, in this case it’s you’re building!

“But if you don’t let readers see the original post in transparent fashion, *aren’t you* just finding another way to hide behind your pride?”

I did the same thing just recently, and felt a bit odd about it. I’d posted something regarding mediocrity and what it takes to rise above it. When my girlfriend read it, she was upset that I’d placed myself in such a highly egotistical context — one I didn’t recognize at the time and am still not 100% sure was there in the first place.

But, just the same, I took it down. I have a large enough ego as it is, and when people close to me start telling me I’m coming off in a way that may be off-putting to others, that’s worth considering.

In hindsight, I should have left the post up and gauged response and / or done the strikethrough thing, but I decided to be quick and easy about the fix.

Interesting to know about the astrological energies, though… It does seem to be going around the podosphere more than usual too…

I have to agree with Lou here in not agreeing with your decision to edit the post the way you did and to remove critical comments.

I think your post here shows you don’t feel good about what you wrote over the weekend. But to remove the parts you consider ugly? To strike the critical comments?

Leesa, you must know that the original post lives in Google’s cache. And of the two posts I’m seeing on that cache page, one of them is actually very positive!

I challenge you to put the original post — and the deleted comments — back on your blog. You’ve made your apology, and I think it’s a good one. All of us have written things we shouldn’t have because our blood was boiling. We understand. But if you don’t let readers see the original post in transparent fashion, you’re just finding another way to hide behind your pride. I don’t think you need to do that.

Great discussion point here!

As a sidenote: We have had some strong astrological energies in the last 30 days that are ripping the cloaks off people’s ego’s-big one’s and little ones. Imus, Baldwin and even sadly Cho. Hold your words, actions and deeds harmless and play fair.

An example – a colleague of mine recently had her email “broken into.” Someone started posting ugly comments on listservs and made it look like they came from her. While those who had little interaction with her thought badly of her, those who knew her and had a relationship with her called/emailed her to find out what’s up. She was thankful that she had people who were able to discern between the pretender and the real deal.

If I lose a few readers because I didn’t put strikethroughs in a post, oh well, I lose them. I’d rather be honest to me than to have others fan the flames due to my comments. As my mother would say, “Don’t cry over spilled milk because it’s already spilled.” And so, I admit my mistake, post an apology to my readers and onward I go.