Mea Culpa to Dave Winer

My last post contained a pretty big error: I put up two posts that were from Dave and stated that they were one post that he had edited over time. In fact they were two different posts from different days. How I made the error is, at this point, irrelevant (but it is explained in a comment to that post if it matters to anyone).

I was quick to jump on Dave (and obviously improperly so) because he has expressed the view that he believes in editing his weblog throughout the day. I assumed, without checking carefully, that the two posts I was looking at were different versions of the same post that he had edited. I obviously don’t think it is a good idea to edit posts substantially without notifying the reader that you are doing it, but I also think –in the grand scheme of things– this is not a momentous issue (maybe when bloggers become an important mainstream source of information it will be). In any event, the question of when blogs ought to be edited after a post is published is going to be discussed at BloggerCon and maybe some consensus will be reached about this topic.

Dave told me in an E-mail that he thinks they might take up a discussion of “fact checking” too. Obviously, my last post will be a good illustration of the importance of getting your facts right. So, to recap, I screwed up. I apologize to Dave for suggesting that he had edited his post. Here, in case it matters is Dave’s stated editing policy:

“I edit my weblog as the day goes by. At 10PM Pacific, the contents of Scripting News is sent via email to people who subscribe. At that point, unless something exceptional happens, I don’t edit any further. This policy has been in place since the by-mail-subscription feature was installed.”