I am currently working an essay about online journals as life writing: their �phenomenal popularity� and the social and ethical issues involved in keeping one. So, naturally enough, I am doing a lot of reading about them. There's not as much out there as you might suppose. Oh, there are dozens of articles on blogging - hundreds even - but they are largely unacademic, repetitive, and focused more on filtering style weblogs and weblogs as journalism, than on web journals.
At the same time I am evaluating other blogging software packages, thinking about how they can help me to structure this site in a more useful way. And how an examination of the ethical and social issues of weblogging might impact on that structure.
A while back, as regular readers would know, I segregated posts into two areas - journal styles posts, or posts primarily about me, would remain here, while externally focused/current events posts I moved to a different blog. I did that because I'd been posting a lot of the commentary style at the time, and when I suddenly wanted to switch gears and write about a pregnancy 'scare' we had, it seemed out of place.
But this set up isn't really working for me. There are too many occasions where I am divided about which section to post something to. For instance, if I write about the different styles of weblog - journal/diary, filter-style, current events commentary etc - and then write about how I see them and want to use them, is that externally focused, or is it about me? And then there's the fact that quite frankly my political commentary isn't all that hot. It tends to consist of small rants and links to better commentary. So on it's own I guess I�ve felt it was a little inadequate.
So I started thinking about other setups. I was thinking that what I might do is have a blog as my main site, posting there as a default be it personal or critical writing, but have a separate section for longer, more thought out, journal style essays. But then, sometimes I might want to write longer, thought out, non-journal style essays. One solution is to use a system that allows 'click here to read more' entries, so that longer pieces only have to have the first few paras displayed on the main page.
That still mixes up all different types of posts of course, but if I combine that with category pages maybe it would be OK. That way, if all you are interested in is parenting posts, you can just go read that page and forget the rest -bookmark it instead of the main page.
I confess to being, theoretically, something of a weblog/journal purist. To me, until recently, online journal/diary meant exactly what it sounds like, while blog, or weblog meant a reverse chronologically structured collection of links with commentary. The links were probably based around a theme - politics, for instance, or programming - but the main idea was of a web filtering system. However, all the reading I did for the article I wrote last semester on the use of blogging technology in business (as yet unpublished BTW) showed that most of the mainstream world has decided that the term blog will do for both categories and various others. I assume this at least partly is because of the proliferation of places like Blogger.com which publish both types of sites.
It�s also probably to do with the 'phenomenal popularity' of the weblog style, which has resulted in the proliferation of other types of blogs. Sites like John Quiggin's or like Troppo Armadillo. Sites that combine political commentary with semi-academic (or even truly academic) essays, serious discussions in the comment threads, and perhaps the occasional personal essay/journal style post. They simply don't fit into either of the above categories.
Thinking about the ethics involved in online journaling, and in life writing in general, has led to another level of my rethinking this site. Back when I first started 'Kay's Journal' more than four and a half years ago, I didn't think too carefully about the ethical considerations. Unlike various other people, like Tamar or the author of Daddyzine, who use primarily initials or pseudonyms for their blog's 'characters', I used real first names and had a cast page. This didn't make me unique - I only copied what I had seen elsewhere. And I told my family and a selection of friends about the site, rather than have them come across it accidentally. But it was at least a little thoughtless.
Well it wasn�t long before someone with a quite distinctive name asked me to remove it from my journal. Not her stories as they intersected mine, just her name. So I changed her name to an initial, and gradually made some other changes.
First I added my real name, having originally just used a nick name. Then I stopped linking to the cast page, and now it�s completely gone, although the broken links to it in early posts remain. And gradually I stopped using most other people�s names, although only in an ad hoc, unconsidered way. Of course I still mention Liam and Chris frequently, but I am rather more careful about revealing personal details about the other people in my life. Still, I haven�t really sat down and thought the issues through and come to any �policy decisions�. I�ve just changed what I do on an almost unconscious level.
Now that I am thinking of moving this journal to a different platform and a different host, the obvious question is, what do I do with the archives? Some of them are in Blogger, so I could easily just publish them to a Blogspot site and leave them there for the record. But the older ones � the first maybe two years worth � I did the long suffering way in Dreamweaver. For historical purposes I don�t really want to trash them � or not all of them anyway. My journal has changed quite substantially since those days, and while re-reading some of those early posts may well make me cringe (as reading over some of my old paper journals certainly does) something about honesty[1] makes me want to leave them there. But I also feel I would like to clean them up � take out some of the names, maybe delete an injudicious post or two, and certainly take out any links to a cast of characters.
The obvious conclusion is to do nothing for the present. I have an essay to write. And a whole lot of other writing to do for that class and other projects.
But, I am moving. This will be my last post here at Ocean View Verandah. http://www.kayoz.com/ will still be my domain, but it will soon point to a TypePad site called Narrating kayoz. There will be a link back to Ocean View Verandah for the time being, and eventually I will probably archive most of the last four years either to Blogspot or to another TypePad site (since my money pays for up to three weblogs). Future Liam's log and Mountain View Commentary posts will be rolled into Narrating kayoz. The beautiful picture of my ocean will be gone, but my dreams of writing in front of my imaginary ocean view or my real mountain view will remain.
Now I just need to get myself a good lap top and a wireless home network. Oh, and a house at the coast.
PS. I will post a link to Narrating kayoz, and move the domain name, at the time I post my first post there. I will also send an email to my notify list.
[1] Of course, talking about honesty and 'truth' in life writing opens up a whole other can of worms, but we won�t go there today.
**This post was orginially published on Ocean View Verandah using Blogger. Please let me know of any down links (especially to photos).**
