Robert Green's Visual Basic Blog

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Blog rules

This morning, I posted What's in a name? where I discussed the new announced name for Visual Studio. I mentioned that we had been asked what to call ASP.NET “Whidbey“. I said I would ask the ASP team and report back. 10 minutes later I got the answer. Now what? Do I edit the 10 minute old post with the correct info? Or do I do a new post?

Is editing the original post okay? I know Web sites edit their online stories all the time when they get new info or need to clarify something. Should I treat my blog entries like online stories? Or is a blog more a historical record of what I said and you shouldn't change that history. You should amend.

But given that the original post was 10 minutes old, I bet nobody had read it yet, so editing it shouldn't have mattered, right? Plus, you now come into my blog and the first thing you see is this message asking what should I have done about posts you haven't read yet? And then you read the correction to the original post, which you also haven't read yet.

How should this work? You tell me.

Published Tuesday, March 16, 2004 12:25 PM by rgreen_msft
Filed under:

Comments

 

Drew Marsh said:

You can edit it with an "Update:" section to append information, but my rule of thumb is generally to leave the post as is for historical purposes. Unless you're fixing spelling/grammar or bad links, there's no real reason to change the post entirely. It just confuses readers.

My 2¢,
Drew
March 16, 2004 12:29 PM
 

Oddur Magnusson said:

Update[date]: <Insert update description>
appended to the end of the post. Makes sure the post does not contain invalid info, but keeps a history of updates.
March 16, 2004 12:31 PM
 

Nicholas Paldino [.NET/C# MVP] said:

Robert,

First, I think that you need to breathe. =)

I would think that it necessitates a new blog post, personally. I treat a blog like a diary, or newspaper. Once published and distributed, edits have to be placed in future releases.

- Nick
March 16, 2004 12:32 PM
 

Neil Cowburn said:

It does really matter if you're using Newsgator as your chosen RSS aggregator. Newsgator will treat edited posts as new posts (unless you tell it otherwise) so you still would get two posts in your inbox. Most aggregators are capable of flagging updated posts in some way, either by italicising, using bold, or a font color change.
I personally tend to append info and prefix it with "UPDATE: " to distinguish it from the original text. The chosen methodology is entirely personal.
March 16, 2004 12:35 PM
 

Chris Darnell said:

If you choose to create a new Blog entry to update a prior, then it is a good idea to include a link to the prior blog entry.

My opinion is to update a blog directly if there is an error.

If you state in one entry "I'm going to find out something and get back to you" then I would create an "answer" blog entry with a link to the "question" blog entry.

March 16, 2004 12:47 PM
 

Jeremy C. Wright said:

I tend to treat my posts as conversations or free-flowing ideas. I'll often reference a post I've made before... And then reference that one... And so on. There are probably about a dozen 'threads of thought' that are 5-10 posts long on my blog.

It just happens.

Personally, I'm glad you created this entry, because the last entry's title obviously never caught my attention ;)
March 16, 2004 12:59 PM
 

Scott Galloway said:

Whatever you like, it's your blog. I tend to add an 'Update:' block though...
March 16, 2004 1:00 PM
 

Rj said:

I would suggest a new post, since many people might not get down to the original post to see that it is updated. I like the idea of /also/ updating the original post with the new information, using the update tags that were illustrated above.
March 16, 2004 1:19 PM
 

Ludvig A. Norin said:

You need to solve bigger problems, really :)
Anyway, my 2 cents are: The blog entry may be bookmarked (albeit not probable in this case, though), and thus it would be useful to put any updates in the entry, rather than creating a new one. Putting them at the end/beginning and marked "Update:" is easy enough. I don't know how the RSS feeds (and UA:s) will handle it, but they probably won't do it very well. Changing the subject (adding [updated] or something) might help, but who knows...
March 16, 2004 5:14 PM
 

Shannon J Hager said:

my usual method: if it is the last post I made and it was made today, I will update it. If the post is older than an hour or so or I have made other posts, I will make a new post (and make sure to link to the first and put something in the excerpt so that it will show in the trackback/comments area of the old post. This way if someone finds the original post via google or something, they won't be stuck with the old/wrong information.
If the info is a broken link or something, I think it requires an update and I will always put an [UPDATE: asdfa saf etc] section so people will know why the post is showing up as new or changed in their aggragators.
March 16, 2004 5:14 PM
 

Ian Ringrose said:

In this case I think you should do both.
a) Post a new post.
b) Update the old post to include the information that is in the new post.

Normally I think a new post is best, with the old post updated to link to the new post.

Remember that a lot of your readers will be looking at a post on your website in months/years to come, and will therefore not get the benefit of “threading” in a RSS client.
March 17, 2004 7:30 AM
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