walk of shame
I have a shameful confession to make: I'm a shame-deleter. If I'm really ashamed of something I've written, I will delete it. I'll always try to leave it up *somewhere*, if someone really wants to find it, but won't link to it anywhere. And I realize that's completely unfair to people who may actually like it. And it's not like it will erase it from my memory, or make it so that the people who may have read it and hated it didn't actually read it and hate it. So...I guess part of being an adult is learning to live with my mistakes. Basically I know I need to stop doing it.
This is an aspect to the topic of "what do fanwriters/artists/creators owe their audience" that I hadn't yet considered. And I'm still not entirely sure. Do we owe it to our audience to keep our works available (partly so they don't have to go through the trouble of correcting broken bookmark links?) Obviously people often delete things for reasons other than being ashamed of them, and many times we don't know exactly why someone has removed something. Is it OK to take something down if we offer an explanation? Is It OK to take something down with the intention of editing it and re-posting it later? Lots of people I've talked to have the belief that if you've put something up on the internet that's its final form and they have to learn to live with it. But it can be tempting to tweak--there's always that EDIT and DELETE button.
And if we're just like "oh my god this SUCKS I can't deal with it anymore", is it insulting to assume that our assessment of our work is superior to theirs? If I am ashamed of something I've written, I certainly don't think that the people who like it have terrible taste--I tend to separate the two in my mind in some illogical way. But I'm curious to know what you think about this, so I've made a poll. (If the poll doesn't address something you have to say, please say it in the comments & feel free to discuss any you've had with this subject.)
Poll SHAME DELETING
This is an aspect to the topic of "what do fanwriters/artists/creators owe their audience" that I hadn't yet considered. And I'm still not entirely sure. Do we owe it to our audience to keep our works available (partly so they don't have to go through the trouble of correcting broken bookmark links?) Obviously people often delete things for reasons other than being ashamed of them, and many times we don't know exactly why someone has removed something. Is it OK to take something down if we offer an explanation? Is It OK to take something down with the intention of editing it and re-posting it later? Lots of people I've talked to have the belief that if you've put something up on the internet that's its final form and they have to learn to live with it. But it can be tempting to tweak--there's always that EDIT and DELETE button.
And if we're just like "oh my god this SUCKS I can't deal with it anymore", is it insulting to assume that our assessment of our work is superior to theirs? If I am ashamed of something I've written, I certainly don't think that the people who like it have terrible taste--I tend to separate the two in my mind in some illogical way. But I'm curious to know what you think about this, so I've made a poll. (If the poll doesn't address something you have to say, please say it in the comments & feel free to discuss any you've had with this subject.)
Poll SHAME DELETING