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Yesterday’s post, Rewriting blog history: Bad idea, sparked some interesting discussion in its comments thread and in other weblogs (by Dave Taylor, Tom Simpson, and Kent Newsome).

I realized through this conversation that I hadn’t expressed my thoughts clearly enough, so here’s a second go at it.

From my perspective, it’s perfectly fine to change your mind and revise, retract, or clarify your statements, whether on a blog or elsewhere. In fact, I’m writing this post for exactly that purpose.

I also think it’s a good idea to revisit postings to fix typos, tighten up sentences, etc. — and if those nit-fixes don’t substantially alter your meaning, no need to point them out.

That said, in my experience it is indeed almost always a bad move to delete statements or postings without acknowledgment or explanation. I’m not talking about minor edits — I’m talking about trying to make content “disappear” and then acting like it never existed.

That strategy is almost certain to backfire — causing a bigger fuss than a simple explanation would have done, and possibly damaging your reputation or credibility in the process.

In short, ethical conduct online means owning up to what you publish — even if you have to remove it. And there may well be good reasons to remove it (legal, factual, ethical, social, and so on).

Here’s a fairly recent example from my own experience…

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