💾 Archived View for zaibatsu.circumlunar.space › ~visiblink › phlog › 20190128 captured on 2022-01-08 at 13:46:25.
⬅️ Previous capture (2021-12-03)
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Several phloggers have responded to my appeal for their insights on editing phlogs after publication. Here's my summation (but read their phlogs -- they're good). Perhaps their views can serve as guides for all of us in terms of reasonable practice. On the RPoD phlog[1], Jynx wrote that he usually allows himself to make minor revisions for the first hour or so after publication (I like this and it fits with the practices permitted on many forums). In a worst-case- scenario of regret, he would delete the entry entirely. I would too. zlg (ze libertine gamer) contends that (on the principle of the rights of authorship) he reserves the to alter his posts, especially in cases where his views have changed over time. That being said, he uses git for version control, so successive versions are saved for posterity[2]. He also brings up stalking and doxxing, which never occurred to me, but those are serious issues and good points. Finally, he suggests noting that posts have been edited, which seems like good form to me as well. Yargo wrote that he indicates that posts have been edited in the title (a good practice, and probably the best place to provide the indication) and never removes content as a point of fairness to readers[3]. I completely understand this position and the reasons for it, but I also understand Jynx's suggestion that content might be removed. I probably would remove a post if it had not become the subject of debate, but would leave it if others had responded to it. In the context of all of the suggestions above, I think that if a writer was to delete a phlog entry, it would be best to leave a notice that they had chosen to do so. That seems like a reasonable middle-ground. As for my decision to delete the LXer mirror, Jynx expressed some reservations and worried that we're turning a philosophical position into a religion. Point taken. That was not my intention, but I think he was correct to point out that it could be the result. So here's my tongue-in-cheek response: I'm no one's Richard Stallman. ;) I would never counsel anyone to follow my example. The best thing about the _small_internet_ is freedom. Do what you want to do. I'll criticize my own practices, but I won't criticize yours (though I will engage with your ideas). Finally, cdmnky's recent phlog discussed decentralizing gopher[4]. I have also considered linking to files on another gopher server in non-transparent ways via gophermaps. Other than the possibility of individual server failure, I don't see any problem with it. In fact, it could be a very beneficial practice: you could use this strategy to reduce the load on shared servers. For example, if I wanted to host files and share them, I'd probably put them on my server rather than on circumlunar.space, because circumlunar.space is a shared and limited resource and I feel like there are reasonable expectations that I won't tax that shared resource disproportionately. [1] gopher://1436.ninja/0/Phlog/20190125.post [2] gopher://zlg.space/0/phlog/2019-01-25_1644.txt [3] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/0/~yargo/clog/yq-phlog-revisions.txt [4] gopher://sdf.org/1/users/cdmnky/phlog/2019/01-25/