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January 12, 2008
No Protected Posts, Not Here
This is a rant. I'll say that first. It's just one man's opinion. But here's the thing:
I feel strongly that personal blogging is about making your readers feel included.
Protected posts work contrary to that. They are exclusionary and elitist. They say to me:
- You cannot be trusted.
- You are not in my inner circle.
Equally annoying to me are password protected blogs.
If you have to be that cautious, it should not be online. It is not a blog nor is it blog material.
Don't even mention that there is stuff you can't tell us. We know that. We know you made up your name and altered the details to protect the innocent.
For the rest of it, keep it offline. Keep it in email or IM or chat or in snail mail or on the phone.
Or put it in a different blog with a different audience.
Password protected posts are a pretty fine "Fuck you."
[+] Posted by Sinner, who was transgressing at the time (January 12, 2008 4:44 PM) by ranting evil. [+]
8 Comments
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Quite agreed.
i agree. it's a dumb thing to do.
Couldn't agree more. Protected blog posts diminish the blogger as well as the reader. If a random posting needs protecting, it shouldn't have been posted at all, putting both blogger and all other posts under suspicion.
I wrote a blog that no one much read but all were welcome to. My has blogged vanilla for years. It is only fairly recently that I started surfing others blogs (Blurfing she calls it) IN the process it reminded me of a kinky blog she started to writed little stories then abandoned, so I encouraged her to restart it and then we were blogging together.
IN the course of becoming acquainted with the blog-o-sphere, I surf from blog to blog and comment to blog and back. It does seem odd to me when I run into a brick wall at the end of a long arc on pendulum of webbing. It is odd that there isn't a feature built in at all to at least send a "knock knock" to private blogs.It leaves one to speculate frustrated with nothing but the name of the blog to go on.
We, initially had privacy concerns or the idea that the online bullies , trolls and other n'er do wells would inundate us with invective. What we found though that you can have 100 to as many as 1,000 visitors a day glide through with nary a comment at all let alone offense. And a peek at site meter assures us that in nearly all cases the visitors are unlikely to know anyone that knows us. SO everyone throw open you blinds and drop your drawers would you?
Bravo. Very well said. It's akin to the rudeness of whispering secrets in a crowded room.
I have to agree with you here. Protected posts make me feel left out. Rejected, pushed away... And I get enough of that in the real world...
Eden
i protect some posts. They're posts that belong in the chronology of my blog, but are intensely private. Only one other person, to my knowledge, has the password.
i thought, for a few moments, about apologizing for those protected posts. But then i realized i don't really owe an apology. People IM or email me all the time to ask for the passwords, and i politely explain to them what i've explained here.
i do, however, appreciate how others feel about it. In the end, we all blog in our own individual ways, just like we converse and carry on our relationships in individual ways. ~smile~ And none of us need apologize for ... being.
elise
S...
Thank you.
elise