Friday, May 08, 2009

Blog on, blog off

I was very disappointed to read about Damn Good Technician being forced to shut down her blog. Apparently her superiors in Big Pharma weren't overly impressed with what she had to say. This event has had others wondering about the prudence of continuing to blog or to outline their personal rules of blogging.

It's got me thinking too. My first post to this blog was on September 22, 2005. In four and a half years I've blathered on about politics, spam, making tenure (or not), teaching, obesity, grants, vending machines, ipods, plagiarism, research, and a plethora of other nonsense. There are plenty of clues sprinkled throughout as to whom I am and where I work. It wouldn't take much to find me.

And so I've been considering shutting things down. After all, who needs the hassle that would follow from my colleagues and superiors figuring out I was blogging about them? Just not worth it.

Thus dear readers, I bid you adieu.









Screw that. I have almost 10,000 hits. You didn't really think I was going stop now did you?

13 comments:

Professor in Training said...

Hahaha!

I think I'm going to continue blogging but may delete most/all the archives and try to restrict my rants to more general issues ... obviously the latter is going to be the most difficult thing of all. If I'm more transparent about my identity that might also force me to be less snarky about things/people.

Too many things to consider.

Prof-like Substance said...

I think in many ways it was a wake up call for the community and an unfortunate event all around. Being reminded that our bubble of safety is easily popped is not necessarily a bad thing and everyone can take from that what they will.

Unknown said...

I didn't believe you for a second. Glad you're still with us.

tideliar said...

LMAO, nice one!

Odyssey said...

PiT,
I honestly hope you can find a way to keep blogging. I look forward to your posts. If necessary there are plenty of us you can send a rant email to.

PlS,
Yes, it was very much a wake up call. In the long term some good may come out of it. It's very unfortunate that appears to be at DGT's expense.

AA,
You're right - I couldn't give this up so easily. Anyway, it was just a thinly veiled effort at getting over the 10,000 hits mark. :-)

Comrade PhysioProf said...

The key for me is to try to never say anything specific about any particular individual that is indentifiable enough so that if the individual stumbled on my blog they would be all like, "Holyfucknoly! That motherfucker's talking about ME!"

How successful I am with this is perhaps debatable.

Odyssey said...

CPP,
That approach is the key, and one that I haven't always followed as well as I should have. There are perhaps three people who might be able to identify themselves from what I've written (aside from family who are regular readers). I've thought long and hard about removing those particular posts. I still might.

Unknown said...

You did it!

10,018!

I guess you can quit now.

Odyssey said...

I guess you can quit now.Nah. Let's try for 100,000!

JollyRgr said...

You stop Bro and I'll hunt you down.....and I can definitely find you.......we're family ...remember...:-)

I need my fix of pithy science and social commentary.....so....DON'T YOU DARE!!!!

:-)

And for those who are concerned....I'm in law enforcement and if my agency find my blog it's likely I could be internally disciplined, criminally charged and then sacked (all of them!!). I'm not prepared to be threatened by the MAN!!!! Don't let them push you around!!

JaneB said...

Propter Doc had some pretty sensible advice in her comment on my post on the topic. I'm carrying on blogging - but for the moment I've hidden my archive, because it seems to me that both identifying and being offended where offence is not intended (just honesty and a little venting) is much more likely where the cumulative effect of months of ranting is available to read. Given how much I tend to write, I can't imagine people wanting to plough through all of it anyway!

Anonymous said...

Bastard. I believed you. I've always been way too gullible. . .

Jeff Seale said...

Dude, you're a comedian. ;o)
You'd better not ever quit.

Of course, I found a way to blog internally at MyCo. and will soon have one of my entries booted to the external MyCo. blog. ;o)

I try to keep my personal blog private from most of my co-workers and I friends lock things that I want to control access. That's one of the nice things about LiveJournal.