June 6th, 2008The Back-Date Debacle
This is my 600th post on j2fi.net and, to mark the occasion, I’d like to ask your opinion on something that’s been quite common for me, lately: back-dating posts.
The last few months have been pretty busy for me. Between work, marriage and all sorts of other responsibilities, I just haven’t had enough time to accomplish much on this site. Of course, most of my posts are still written on a PDA and then uploaded after being formatted and double-checked for consistency, but the amount of time I have in front of a computer is still just a fraction of what it used to be. For this reason, I’ve been backdating quite a few of my posts in order to have them published on the same day they were intended to be released on. As of this post, I still have another three posts that need to be written and back-dated, as well as four partially completed posts which I hope to release in the next few days.
But does this break any rules for blogging?
I really wouldn’t think this was an issue, as this site does not receive an incredible amount of traffic, nor does it have many time-sensitive content that could be misunderstood if something was back-dated … but still.
Filling In The Blanks
The other day I had come across a few of my really old posts. These date back to before winter of 2003 and, while they’re just as random as anything I post on this site, I’ve been unsure as to whether they should be posted. Would these posts add any value to j2fi.net? Would people even care to look at them? Would it be nothing more than Google-bait?
A little while ago I had wondered where all the historic blogs were. Sites that are essentially filled with the journal entries of those who have passed away, but left their decades of trials and worries behind. Not only would this be “free content” for whoever was writing the information online, but it would be a great resource for future sociologists that would want to study first hand what life was like during a certain time period in a specific region of the world. Sure, one person’s site could be biased towards their own understanding of the world at the time, but this kind of information is always useful to those that would study it in the future.
This raises another point, though. Many people have great memories of a particular day or moment of their lives at some time in the past. Is it worthwhile to post this information and back-date it accordingly?
I’ve been asked this by a few people in the past, and my answer has always been the same: It’s your site. Don’t let others tell you what to do or not to do on there.
The only exception, however, is if I’m hosting their site. Because my only rule is that they don’t do anything that might piss off a national government. The last thing I’d want to hear is that my web server was confiscated by Homeland Security or some other foreign body because of something that was said or provided on someone else’s site 
What do you think of back-dating? Is this something that makes sense? Does it not matter at all, as everything that’s online is already considered “old”?
I’m not entirely sure what you mean. If you back-date a post, does it not get shown on your front page and in your feed? If that’s the case, no-one’s going to know so what’s the harm? If it does get shown, but the date is old, it might look a bit odd, but even then, most people won’t notice. Am I missing something?
I used to back-date posts when my site was really new, but I have since decided to not do that and if I miss a post, then so be it. Backdating might be a neat way to do it if you were using a blog back-end such as wordpress to digitize someone’s old journals though, that might be kinda cool.
As far as backdating a current site like yours, I’m somewhat split 50/50 as to whether it should be acceptable or not and whether it should be done. I’ve decided no for my site, but I guess it’s something that everyone has to decide for themselves.