Etched in web

Welcome to the year 2007. The internet has been popular for a few years now and it seems that a few people are realizing that the web has a memory that lasts a bit longer than anyone expected.

I’m not going to get into specifics, but I’ve been asked on a couple of occasions to change photos that were posted in the early days of The GATE. Now, these weren’t nude photos, they weren’t even very racy, but since The GATE has been around almost 8 years now, and Google has always been a bit of a fan of my content, well – some photos get higher priority when you do a search.

The catch for me is that, even if the photos were racy, I don’t feel like I need to be a censor for something someone might have done a few years ago. Just because content is on the web, and not in print, doesn’t mean it should be editable. I also sincerely believe that even a website can be a reliable source of information, and changing content after an article has been posted does not reinforce the idea to me that The GATE is reliable.

And maybe that’s why I get a bit touchy on this subject. The web is always looked down on, as if print is some sort of god of the media realm, and when people ask to change things it just seems to reinforce that concept.

So, all that ranting aside – don’t ask me to change things on the site unless I’ve made a factual error. Consider what you see on the site a digital record of events, and something you can always come back to in 5, 10, or 20 years. The GATE will be around, and so will the records of whatever damn stupid thing you decided to do on TV, on stage, or where ever.