Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Welcome to my Tiny Little Piece of the World

I'm still new to this. Sort of figuring it out as I go. So I was wondering today - what is appropriate blog etiquette? I haven't really invited many people here and for the most part the people that I have invited are people who I only interact with on the internet. But obviously, since it is out there on the internet, people I know in real life may at some point find it and read it. Do other bloggers invite people that they interact with regularly? If so, how do they deal with the situation of having something that they wish to post that happens to be about those other people?

In my little world, this blog was set up to serve two purposes for me: (1) practice my writing skills (creative and otherwise, but no need for added contract drafting practice - I get plenty of that during the workday) and (2) act as a diary for keeping track of thoughts and events in my life. So what happens when purpose number (2) intersects with people who read this? Am I supposed to clear it with them before I write stuff out? Am I supposed to edit myself?

Anyone who has a blog and has put any thought into this subject is welcome to respond...

5 comments:

t.s. said...

Perhaps I'm overly cautious, but I've always figured that if you put something out on the interwebs, people are going to see it, and I've seen on-line journalists and bloggers write about having friends, co-workers and family discover their sites and themselves on it. That never sounds fun to me.

One way around that problem is to disguise things. I imagine that this gets to be a drag because it tends to limit what you can say about anything.

Another option is just to assume that everyone is reading everything as soon as you post it. That may crimp your style, too.

Sorry if this comment makes no sense. I lost my first stab at it, and I think I've lost the thread the second time around.

BoldnBrazen said...

Tough questions. No easy answers.

Lots of people I know in real life read my blog. Certain people from certain internet sites read my blog. Some of them have been invited and some of them have stumbled upon it by accident (or fortuitous googling).

If I'd wanted to keep it more anonymous, I shouldn't have used the name I use on that internet site where we met.

Everyone else I talk about gets a made up name. But I don't get their permission to talk about them (alhtough I do know, for example, that Inspector LOVES when I talk about him... and I probably wouldn't if I knew he hated it.)

I'm not sure I answered your question either, but I do know where you are coming from. In fact, I'm feeling you!!

Anonymous said...

My blog originally was intended to be a vehicle of communication with my online friends. It's morphed into a much more public blog with a much wider readership, and I have absolutely no idea who reads it now. If you go back and read the beginning, it's a lot more personal and talks a lot more about other people than it does now. I ended up on a lot of blogrolls a few years ago due to my being rather opinionated on political matters, and so people stumble on my site all the time. I have a counter on my blog, so I can keep track of traffic, and I have no idea who half the people are.

I tend to avoid writing anything that I don't want to get back to the original person, unless I a) don't care, or b) I know they don't care.

One of my sisters checks it out from time to time to catch up on what I'm upto. A cousin discovered it when he was doing a vanity post and saw a post about his grandfather, who he was named after. Everyone else in my family knows about it, but they just don't bother to look. My former boyfriend's wife found it shortly after we started dating. That was fun.

Livejournal has a feature that you can lock posts to a certain group of other livejournal readers. That's convenient, but only if most of your readership also have livejournal accounts. In the last two years, I'd say I've used that feature maybe twice a month, usually for planning wedding or baby showers for other livejournalers in my group of friends, but also for telling that group of friends about the state of me. I never, ever post about work.

Livejournal also has a feature that you can try to avoid ending up on any of the search engines, so it's harder to find you.

I have a wholly private blog for the stuff I want to write but I don't want anyone to see. All of the posts there are locked.

Leila said...

Thanks for all the input. I'm a pretty open book person and I like to think that I wouldn't say anything here that I wouldn't be willing to say to someone's face, so I guess in that respect I shouldn't be overly concerned. I have no interest in posting anything about work (I try to think about work as little as possible) or the people there, unless they happen to be friends of mine, so I'm not concerned about being dooced.

Just some things to think about. It seems like this blogging thing could be somewhat addictive, and it is a bit odd to feel the self-censoring inclination start up because I'm not overly good with that.

Anonymous said...

Go to http://stephanieklein.com for an example of someone who holds absolutely nothing back (and you really wish she would, although she has rabid fans and a two-book deal, so some must like her). I don't know how the people in her life deal with it. Maybe they are all attention-hounds too. Anyway, I don't blog, but I do read a bunch of them, and yours seems to be a model of restraint compared to many out there.