Trying not to Intrude

In case you're curious, I follow these principles with my blog for privacy online because once content is out there, it's out there and also I don't like to intrude.

Visitors

I don't track page views or visitor's IP addresses.  [edited October 20, 2010 to add that Blogger has a new statistics function.  I can now get a report of what posts and pages were viewed and how many times they were viewed, but I cannnot see who viewed them.  You should know that through the stats I can get a list of referring websites and search words that led visitors to my blog.  Some of the websites have been Ravelry profiles with users' profile names on them, which means I can tell when someone who has me listed in their Ravelry friends clicks through from their friends' blogs activity page.  If you don't want me to get this information in my stats, you can click through to my blog from my Ravelry profile (from the friends' blogs tab, go to the friends tab, click on my Ravatar to go to my profile, then click on the website link). Alternatively, you can bookmark the blog URL on your browser and use that to go right to my blog.  You won't go directly to the post that interested you on your Ravelry activity, but probably it will appear close to the top of the page and the archive list in the right hand column makes navigation easy.  For a link to my blog on Ravelry that appears in a group or a list of projects for a pattern, if you click on it, the stats will show that as the referring website and show nothing about your personal profile.]

I do look at whoever signs up to follow publicly or whoever comments while signed in, visiting their profile and blog if available.

I occasionally check the number of total subscribers in Google Reader.

I moderate comments. I may decline or delay publishing your comment.

Content

I restrict references to people to relevant parts of my spinning journey where I'm learning something about the skill.

Wherever I post a photo that singles out someone's face and makes them personally identifiable, I have gotten that person's verbal release to use their image on this blog.

I mention the full names and location of people who operate in a public capacity, for example, wool vendors. Often I speak to these people before posting about them, but sometimes I don't.

I mention only the first name of people who operate in a private capacity, for example, friends and fellow guild members. Sometimes I don't even mention their name. This is an effort to not be intrusive and to not treat all y'all like blog fodder. However, if you want your fifteen minutes of fame, let me know and I'll consider it.

I don't give away the location or schedule of people I know in a private capacity. Well, sometimes I might mention the country.

I never name children and minors or show a child's face.

I cite the references for all quotes from published sources, limit quotes' lengths, and balance each quote with an equal amount of original content.

Hopefully the reasons for my principles are clear, but do ask if you'd like to know about any point.

While my experiences with putting content out there online have been good, mostly, online content is a wild and woolly thing which can persist and spread beyond the originator's control.