Blogson Jeff of Au Fait is pondering what to do with his old blogposts:

I'm thinking of a system that throws complete blog posts in the trash, under some kind of strict rules, like "if no one has posted a comment, and the post is 'x' days old, out with it. Forever." Comments?

From a purely fiscal standpoint, if it's a matter of the storage space costing you money that you can't afford, then trash them.

Otherwise... well... personally, I still refer to my old Bad Money site fairly regularly, especially if I want to make an inside joke about an old post. I like to be able to include an explanatory link so the new folks can understand a punchline.

My observation is this: only about 10% of your blog entries will be looked at by you or anyone else ever again.

Trouble is, you can't know ahead of time which 10% that's gonna be, so if you dump everything, sooner or later you'll find frustration when you don't have that old post any more.

My other thought is to keep it because you'll be getting a trickle of new readers for as long as you blog. And I know that when *I* find a new blog that intrigues me, I like to poke around in the archives a bit - especially the first few posts - to see who the blogger is and what they hoped to accomplish with their site. Those first couple weeks are often very revealing.

In the end, though, the decision of what to keep and what to throw away is a personal choice, and I wouldn't presume to make it for someone else. For myself, though, the things I've written are a part of me, and I like being able to look back and see who I was, what I thought, and how I've changed.

That, and I wouldn't want to disappoint all the people Googling for "XXX black peeing porn".

Posted by: Harvey at 10:06 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 340 words, total size 2 kb.

1 Keep them. If storage cost is an issue, move them to your new site. Close comments on posts over 30 days old (to prevent spam). Those posts are you. They are what you felt, thought, believed, and were at the time you wrote them. The ability for you to look back and see yourself in that light - through that lens - in the years ahead will be priceless. Keep them. Or I will personally hack into your computer and erase everything.

Posted by: _Jon at October 28, 2004 08:39 AM (uHRYR)

2 Hear that, Jeff? :-)

Posted by: Harvey at October 28, 2004 05:57 PM (ubhj8)

3 Yep... and storage cost isn't an issue, either. Great comments (both); and thanks for posting on it here, Harv. _Jon's comments are quite sensible, and you really sunk sense into the matter with the observation "Trouble is, you can't know ahead of time which 10% that's gonna be..." How true. Durn... I was hoping to somehow escape writing code to archive stuff.

Posted by: Jeff at October 28, 2004 07:19 PM (bqJRc)

4 Quitcher bitchin', Jeff. All that coding will build character :-P

Posted by: Harvey at October 28, 2004 11:12 PM (ubhj8)

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