LooseSuits

I know what you're talking about. I like to keep it for personal reference but don't want it available to the public so I mark it "private" in WordPress.

I was about to say "I'd never do something like that" but I did, when I moved to a new database. I copied a load of stuff over, reformatted (the main issue) some of it, but ditched a ton of news-style posts that had no relevance anymore and were too much work to bring up to a proper standard.

I think it's sad to just junk old content. I'd still got the stuff I didn't copy over in a database backup so if I do ever want to take a stroll down memory lane (albeit without images) I can still.

So yeah, just make it private or move it to another database. Whatever warms your cockles most, I guess.

I imported a bunch of posts from my *cough* Xanga and then installed a plugin that moderated visible categories. Everything that fits under "uncategorised" is invisible--and that's pretty much every Xanga post. I totally feel you in that those are posts I don't really want people to be able to read, anymore. It's like a past life. It's still available to me but I don't want other people being able to reference it. What can I say? It embarrasses me.

installed a plugin that moderated visible categories. Everything that fits under "uncategorised" is invisible

Any chance of a link to that? Sounds like a better solution than just leaving them in moderation or marking them as private.

There ya go. :) Ugh, I don't think it's compatible with 2.1. I haven't done the upgrade myself so ... sorry I can't help much there.

I've been planning an overhaul for Think Artificial for a while, and one of things I've been considering is fleshing out the archives to better reflect the focus of the blog and/or improve overall quality.

I don't think there's anything wrong with "unpublishing" articles for whatever reason. Especially if you put them into moderation or make a local copy. To make a long story short: It's your blog. But I recommend evaluating each article independently, weighing the pros and cons of keeping it up.

My first experience with that was changing CMS software. I lost some things and I didn't realize it until I wanted to link to something and it wasn't there. From that experience I became attached to the data but not necessarily making it public.

My own policy: focus on what I'm saying now not what I said in the past. There is no guarantee the past articles will be there (how many times have I switched domains and not ported the old articles over?). But I won't remove something in order to hide the fact I screwed up, predicted something wrong, etc. and I think that is what most people care about...trying to re-write the past.

I've seen bloggers (particularly on personal blogs) remove content that doesn't reflect who they are. They were Jewish but not Catholic, Democrat now Republican, remove entries about an old relationship. I think on your blog you should be comfortable and I think the standard is different for a personal blogger vs. a blog that wants to be a resource. For example, TechCrunch, cNet, Wall Street Journal, etc. removing entries would have much more of an impact.

I'm partial to the idea of permalinks. The whole point of the name is that they're permanent. I don't want people to link to my stuff only for it to disappear so I fully intend to keep every page on my site as it is, irrespective of how rubbish or pointless it might be.

Weird, the more I kept thinking about this, the more I kept adding, deleting or rephrasing this comment.

It's quite the question. It's all over subjects like ownership, keeping records, our sense of history, the responsibility for what we write, the right to do with our own stuff what we like...

If we all deleted what we didn't like, what would the deep web still be worth in a decade's time? If we keep all the stuff we ever talk about, how could it paint a clear picture of who we are.

Tricky.

I've never done it, delete stuff, but I might. As you can see, I can't really say whether I should.

I'd probably keep a copy of them for posterity.

I've pulled one post from my blog. It was a post about someone I have regular interactions with, but it was quite negative towards said person. The person was never named, but I realized that if he/she found the post, they'd realize I was talking about them. And, considering my relationship to this person, I didn't want that to happen. :)

See, now I'm trying to cover my arse. lol.

Yeah, Josh, I did that when I was blogging but this was AFTER they found it.

I like to keep it for personal reference but don't want it available to the public so I mark it "private" in WordPress.

That is exactly what I do. Either that or I mark it as a draft rather than published.

If it's a personal blog I'll keep everything. The embarrassing bits especially. That way as I grow older I've an archive to remind me of my ignorance and stupidity, and I can see how I've grown through the years.

But then again that's my personal blog. I trim and prune Novelr from time to time, mainly because its topical and my job is to provide the best information possible to readers.

Keeping a personal blog, the number 1 policy to have is leave it after you blog it. I have never marked anything as private and show everything to the public. The worst I did was just to close comments on a couple of posts.

Of course, after realizing no one really pays any attention to what I write, I decided to take my gloves off and write everything that's on my mind no matter how scandalous it could be for me saving only to write cryptically if it involves other people or is too detailed.

Unless you're particularly high profile, no one really cares about your past except yourself. So deleting posts? Not for me at least.

I'd vote not cool. If I bothered to bookmark one of your pages (using your site as an example), its probably useful to me and I'd expect it to still exist when I revisit it. If posts are gonna get deleted all over the place I would have to start PDFing useful pages and I'd rather stop visiting your site than waste my time archiving. I'd be fine with if you hid an article from search or the list of articles on the site so long as its still accessible via permalink.

I commend you for being concerned about the content you publish and have published.

If you feel like removing the content there must be a reason, even if that reason is not obvious to you. I say, do future readers a favor, listen your id (or is it your ego?) and remove it.

I trudge through loads of crap each day looking for tasty content and would be much pleased if the road were crap-free...