Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Input please!

Hello my dear readers,
Privacy has been on my mind a lot lately. I'm trying to decide of I should make this blog only accessible to people who have permission. This would mean that in order for you to read this blog, you would have to come out of your lurking shadows and give me your email, which you would have to type in when you want to read my blog. It would also essentially mean that no new readers could read my blog, unless they found out about it through some other way. Obviously, it would also mean more privacy for me and eliminate the worry of who is reading.  As you may have noticed, I just posted a new poll on the topic. Please give me your input, and leave me a comment if you would like to elaborate or argue your points. Don't be shy :)

-LAM

8 comments:

  1. Worried about privacy? I don't see you sending out your name, address, or SSN here... but, truthfully, anyone who knows you personally could get that and much more from the web in 30 seconds flat.

    Folks like me, however, don't have any clue at all about you other than what you might type in your publications. I tend to read three different printed newspapers a day, a four news web sites, and I also skim many blog headlines as well as read blogs each day. I also like to see what other CI enabled folks (like myself) are thinking and doing. What can I say? I like to read :-) and I like to ponder on what I read if it's good writing.

    Anyway the thing about writing in a public forum is that it's like a person planting seeds, willy-nilly, all about the landscape.

    Every one who reads the published work, "waters" the author's seedling-thoughts and each person who reads can not help but instantly carry away the germ of the topic... if the reader continues to "water" and nurture (ponder upon) the thought, then that little thought-seed grows, and it can evolve and/or eventually reproduce itself, and the new seeds are then carried away by new people who happened along, and so on, and so on....

    Personally, I would hate to see you limit yourself by setting up a "no trespassing" sign on a narrow patch of land, upon which you would be forced to grow your "crop" of ideas.

    Your writing has a lot of kick... I wouldn't recommend you hide it away just yet.

    Just sayin'

    Best.

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  2. I think you might lose alot of new followers! - I found your N5 blog post through google. Had your blog been private I wouldn't have even found it in google.

    I can understand concerns about privacy though. Are there things on your blog that you worry about strangers reading?

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  3. Either way I'd still be a reader. I can understand why you want the privacy heightened.

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  4. I don't mind most people knowing who I am, but recently it seems that I've been getting a lot of stuff/friend requests related to my blog on social-networking sites, and I kind of life to keep the hearing-loss/virtual friends aspect separate from the friends I see in person daily. I don't mind being added by people with HL who I've corresponded with, either through my blog, their blog, or on email, but I've gotten some requests from complete strangers. It was pointed out to me that by clicking on a few things, you could easily find my full name and therefore most of my information. I guess I'm concerned about who is reading, and what I'm comfortable with certain people seeing. What if I blog about a teacher that I dislike, and then he/she makes his/her way to my blog? What about college recruiters and potential job interviewers? I like to think I'm pretty conservative and play it safe with whatever I post, but sometimes I'm not entirely sure.

    Dan- Loved the analogy! Speaking of which- why haven't you planted any seeds of your own in a while? I miss reading your posts! Thanks for your input, and your comment has made me hesitate about hiding away my writing, and I really do like the idea of reaching out to other people I wouldn't have met otherwise.

    Matt- Thanks for giving me your view! I wasn't sure if (m)any people found my blog through search engines. What were you searching for when it came up? I'm guessing it was about the N5 :) I do think I'll hold off on going private, at the very least.

    Melissa- Thanks for letting me know what you think, I appreciate it :)

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  5. I went through this situation a couple of times. It's easier to write for people you don't know from school or work. My solution for a while was to default all my posts to "friends only" and then decide when I was done writing if I could share them publically. I was using livejournal.com at the time.

    I also stopped writing for several years until I started the CI process and had a lot to share. It still feels odd sometimes to know that my mom reads my blog, but I think as an adult we can tell ourselves a blog is like having our own newspaper column and just not write anything that we would be uncomfortable with everyone in the world seeing.

    Definitely harder in school

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  6. I agree with Dan BTW - I do like your style of writing. It's entertaining.

    I was searching for FM System with N5! - Which you were pointing out the lack of :(

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  7. That's a great question, PinkLAM. I think it speaks to your own maturity that you are considering it rather than just posting every thought you have without any concern about the consequences.

    I love your blog and would hate for others to miss out on it if it were private. I know for myself that I have had to restrict myself and not publish some of the things I'd like to say on my blog because I'm not speaking just to trusted friends but to the world at large. I'm also being more careful of what I comment on others' blogs because that can be traced through Google as well.

    On Facebook, I've assigned each of my friends to categories which give them different levels of access depending on how well I know them or what I want to share with them. For now, I am not accepting friend requests from people I don't know. I may be missing out on some great social networking opportunities by doing this, but I have been burned once in FB and now I am twice shy.

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  8. I think it's a personal decision. I like to see a lot of resources for available for anyone to stumble upon, so I'd say leave it public. But you are the only one who can decide what fits best in your life.

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