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(NOTE: This is part of a series of postings where I published the results of my survey on people’s comfort zones regarding the overlap of professional and personal information online. More about this survey. Overview of numerical responses.)

SURVEY QUESTION 3: On a weblog you read mainly for business reasons, the author occasionally posts about his penchant for stamp collecting. Your reaction:

The big news here is that just over half of all respondents actually liked hearing about the hypothetical business blogger’s stamp collecting hobby – including 9% who liked it very much. Who knew?

Here are the responses for this question, and my observations about them…

Of the 176 respondents so far:

• 71 (41%) said: POSITIVE: I enjoy hearing a bit of personal context in a weblog I read regularly. It makes the blog a bit less stiff.
• 39 (22%) said: DISINTERESTED: I tend to skip those posts, but enjoy reading the rest of the weblog. (This includes one “other” response which uses the word “disinterested.”)
• 32 (18%) said:NEUTRAL: I have no reaction to the occasional stamp-collecting posts.
• 16 (9%) said: STRONGLY POSITIVE: The stamp collecting posts actually add value to the weblog, and they often relate to the business topics in surprising ways.
• 11 (6%) said: Other
• 3 (2%) said: EMBARRASSED: I’m not repelled, but it feels slightly inappropriate and causes me to question that blogger’s judgement.
• 2 (2%) said: REPELLED: I did not come here to read about stamp collecting and might stop reading because of those occasional posts

WRITE-IN “OTHER” RESPONSES

Some people’s reactions didn’t fit the categories I offered. Here’s how they described their reactions. (I’ll add new write-in responses to the top of this list in periodic updates.)

• Like anything, it all depends on context. If the stamp collecting has no tie in whatsoever, direct or indirect to the topic I would become quite “repelled”…
• Strongly positive, but not so much with stamp collecting I find interests and hobbies valuable in evaluating a person’s professional perspective.
• A person’s web site/weblog is their creation. If I don’t like reading what they are writing, I don’t have to read it!
• Distinterested but it quickly becomes a nuisance once I notice the trend, and I become sensitive to its recurrence. It will undermine my opinion of the person’s professional offerings if it happens so much that the blog appears to satisfy a personal need for expression.
• Depends on what gets included. 9 out of 10 times, I would pick “positive” from the list, but some things that people include, would make me pick “embarrassed.”
• It depends. Context is everything.
• If it is relevant, I like to know more about the person behind the blog otherwise I’m disinterested.
• It depends on what it is – I don’t care for stamp collecting, but if it was something I cared about, that would be different.
• If it suits the blog, is fun to read and or is relevant to the person I am reading, I am likely to read it with more interest. And it does add value to the person’s blog – if a stamp collector wants to come across as funky up-to-date persona, he will have a problem explaining his stamp collection – these personas usually don’t mix.
• Depends if its relevant to the context.
• Disinterested. I’d don’t really care, I am reading the blog for work related info and someone’s personal hobbies are of no interest to me.
• If it’s relevant to the rest of the post, then it’s appropriate. If not, I can’t see why it would be mentioned.

AMY’S OBSERVATIONS ON THIS:

• Why I asked this question. I wanted to gauge the reaction to a personal disclosure that could not in any way be construed as “controversial” or “tangentially sexual” – in order to see whether “personal” really means “personal,” or if that term might really be code for “socially controversial” or “prurient.”
• This disclosure was mostly a non-issue It was no surprise that occasionally mentioning a tame, familiar hobby like stamp collecting (even in a professional context) was pretty much a non-issue for most repondents. In addition to the 50% of respondents who declared a positive or strongly positive reaction, a further 40% declared a neutral or disinterested reaction. Only 4% found it embarrassing or repellant. The remaining 6% mainly cited relevence concerns.
• Relevence is key. As the “other” responses for this question (above) and indeed throughout this survey indicate, the online audience mostly cares about relevence. If you wish to disclose anything personal in a business context, find a way to work those mentions in naturally with your primary topics. Usually that’s not too much of a stretch – life and work often resonate on many levels.
• I doubt that “personal” info is the real issue. The results from Questions 1 & 2 indicate to me that when people have been debating the appropriateness of “personal info” in a professional context, their true concern is more likely to be info that is “tangentially sexual” (except for mainstream relationship structures such as marriage) or that touches on a current social “hot button” (such as religion) or taboo (such as mental illness). Which begs the question…
• Why resort to code words? Why object to “personal info” if the true concern is far narrower? Why not instead object to “anything non-mainstream, taboo, or controversial?” (Assuming that personal tidbits offered in a professional blog are presented in a relevent, occasional, and not-overpowering way, of course.) Hmmmm… Could it be that such frankness might sound like an admission of intolerance or fear? Or at least like blind allegiance to social norms? (And remember, that’s just my own personal guess, I’m not putting it forth as the only possible interpretation.)

NEXT: Disclosure of being gay
PREVIOUS: Disclosure of marital status
Index to the survey results.
Overview of numerical results.
About this survey.