Friday, January 05, 2007
Redactions
It's always a risk when writing about other people, so it wasn't too surprising when I got the following:
Looking at it further, could you ask him to strike the whole part about who XXXXX decided to write about? I mean, that would point directly to him. I'd really rather not have anything that could possibly identify him out there like that. Tell him sorry, but I'm weird.
in reference to yesterday's entry about creativity (I also had to remove all references to the college as well). And while I may think that Bunny's friend (who requested I remove the material) is being a too cautious, she didn't ask to have the material placed on a website in the first place (even though I thought I removed enough identifying material).
It's not like this hasn't happened before.
Bunny had written me earlier about removing some information (before she wrote me asking for a whole bunch more stuff to be removed):
Hey, here's something that didn't occur to me. XXX says they check the internet for plagiarism and stuff, and [the college] might google and find your post. Not likely, but do you think you could strike the reference to [the college], just in case? … I know they wouldn't stumble upon it just by the premise for the essay alone. … I can't imagine they have a filter or something set up to ring a chime every time somebody mentions [the college]. But I guess she'd feel better about it. She loved your stories and creativity, though, and wished she'd asked me sooner.
While [the college] itself might not actually check, there are other services that do, and one such service (if not the service) is TurnItIn. So, it is conceivable that [the college] could come across these entries (although I thought that I made it clear that I did not come up with the kid's essay idea, but hey, things I wrote a long time ago have a habit of resurfacing), but whether it will hurt the kid? I doubt it, but hey, like I said, the kid's mother didn't ask for this to be posted, so best to remove it (am I making a mountain out of a molehill? I don't think so—it's just something I can write about, that's all).
