Comments

Very well said and tactful...thanks for all you do. Totally agree! When I signed up the information about doing so was all there and very clear. Keep up the good work Laurie, I love this site! I admit to still being bemused by much of the naivety that surrounds posting to internet sites. Some rules:

1. Don't post anything you wouldn't want anyone, and I do mean anyone, to read.

2. Google (and all other search engines and spam collectors) trawl sites collecting information. That's how they work.

3. Once it's on the net, it's effectively forever.

4. Don't post anything you wouldn't want anyone, and I do mean anyone, to read.

Neil

Laurie, Has violinist.com ever been asked to take down something by someone who said they were defamed by a member's comments? Sure, but if it's acceptable criticism we leave it up. If it violates the Guidelines for Writers, we take it down. Neil, I know of another site, where I occasionally post in discussions, which is not searchable by Google. The issue has come up among users of the site, and everyone always agrees that we would not be able to talk freely and personally if anyone could find what we said on a Google search. It is a good place to seek personal advice or to discuss personal matters freely. On this site, it is permissible to use an alias instead of one's real name, and one can also post as "Guest." Neil, I just checked my own statement by Googling some user names from the site I mentioned above. A small proportion of the ones I checked did appear on Google with links to the site I mentioned. I guess I'd just say that talking freely and personally with anonymous strangers has its ups but also its considerable downs! Laurie - an eloquent and well-put post. I'll bet you "thought before posting" it. : ) While I haven't tried this myself, it may be possible to insert a meta tag into your profile page or a blog post to prevent search engines from indexing it. See the webmaster guidelines at Google. This is beautiful - thank you for posting this, and congratulations on eleven years! Most forums let you edit a post at any time, and it goes back up to the top too, so all you'd have to do to make this that way is comment out some time check.

I know your approach is journalistic; once it's out there it's out there, but a forum isn't journalism. And I belong to a couple other busy forums, and they don't go wild, certainly not due to people being able to change what they wrote.

Patty, no inserting a meta tag is not possible within a message.

Again, I'll state - don't post something you wouldn't want everyone or anyone to read. Even if you delete it there's always a chance it was trawled by a search engine between posting and deletion.

Even things posted on websites long gone can still be accessed. The Internet Wayback Machine is one way sites are archived. (Ironically, that link isn't working as I write this, but to read more on the Internet Wayback Machine go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Archive

Neil

"Again, I'll state - don't post something you wouldn't want..."

You're asking for something impossible - for example search engines "crawl", not "trawl." Also, pretty sure a site can opt out of the Wayback.

When they introduced media on this site, at first there was no user control, couldn't edit, couldn't remove, was just there forever. Now that there is control, people use it. Give control, get participation.

Laurie,

Thanks for an incredible and lively sight.

It is a pleasure to read peoples' opinions, get their insights, and be rejuvenated with everything about the violin and music.

Though I have had to slow down a bit, I hope to contributed much to the sight in the future and continue reading others' thoughts and impressions.

All the best,
Drew