How personal should I blog be?

nesf

I am of course refering to the diary style blogs here.

Is there such a thing as to much information on them? Should someone writing one that they know is read by others refrain from discussing highly personal topics such as their sex lives, their true opinions on people, or family matters?

These aren't things that your average person would talk about in general conversation, but alot of people seem to have no compunctions about discussing them in their blogs even though these blogs are generally open to view.

I'm curious as to what people's opinions are on this form of blogging and whether there should be an informal kind of limit on what should be discussed by serious or at least considerate bloggers.

I know that one reason why I prefer not to read blogs written by people in their early to mid teens is that they get way too personal for my tastes. Also they rarely discuss anything that would be of interest to me or that I could relate to as a person.

Any thoughts?

BuffyBot

For me, a personal blog is exactly that - personal. As the owner of the blog, you should be able to post pretty much anything you desire on it. This (to me) is one of the best things about personal blogging - the ability to publish whatever you want, when you want. The seeming impersonal nature of the net allows you to put out a lot more than you might in real life.

Limits are tricky devils - the "what exactly is too much information?" debate is a bit similar to "how long is a piece of string?". It's an individual responsibility really - you have to decide your own limits, and accept that you might win some fans with the style of blog you maintain, and lose others.

topgold

Before you get too personal, know that even if you pull your blog, it might remain in the web archive [www.archive.org] and I know from personal experience that some headhunters trawl the archives for details that later emerge in the form of interview questions.

You need to be able to stand by your writing. If you don't like that standard of writing, pick a persona that has no photo of you and no cross-reference to your correct location. In fact, if you need to cloak your real identity, assume the features of another. Twenty Major is good at this feat in Ireland.

Also, it isn't right to mention the full names of others or show their images if you intend to focus on personal issues. That only leads to a loss of friendship and worse.

Terminator

You can use a robots.txt to block archive.org or any other site that crawls your data

nesf

Terminator wrote:

You can use a robots.txt to block archive.org or any other site that crawls your data

Or if you use livejournal, you can friend's lock entries that are particularily sensitive.

Amz

I believe that it's up to you what kind of information you want to "divulge" in your blog. I'd be reluctant to reveal too much information here on boards, for example, as I know too many people here and would rather the vast majority didn't know too much about my personal life, my political opinions etc.

However I've seen journals/blogs where people publicly reveal the tiny intimate details of their everyday lives, often to the point of monotony.

I don't think that limits should be placed on what info your blog contains unless it has legal ramifications for someone down the line.

the_syco

Too much info would be "today, the boss was a total f*cking retard". A few people have gotten into trouble for writing stuff about workmates in their blog.

Also, as someone mentioned before, use robots.txt to stop online search engine's from looking through your site. Example of a robots.txt file

Its up to you what you write, weather its going to be dull, or taking the piss out of most things.

fortysixand2

I'm going to raise my hand and admit I'm not quite sure how to apply this robots.txt to my site :S