I'm sure that at numerous points in the Boidem before the 23rd column I had reason to add updates to some of the material in the columns. Actually, I even did this ... quietly. Occasionally I corrected an outdated URL, or added an explanation about a no-longer active link. And of course I corrected spelling and/or syntax when I came across mistakes that demanded correcting. So was an updates page really necessary?

Perhaps the updates page was the first acknowledgement on my part of the possibility that perhaps there really were a number of people who read the Boidem columns, and that they had reason to be interested not only in the new columns, but in changes or additions that had been made to previous columns. A new reader wouldn't really care if I'd changed something in that column after the listed posting date, but someone who had already read a particular column might have a reason to take a look at changes that were made, if they were called to his or her attention. These updates were also a sign that the Boidem still lived and breathed for me, after posting.

Updates have come in different flavors, with altogether 19 of them since they started. Some updates simply give the reader some additional information about the original topic. Others, however, actually link to the spot in the original column where a particular topic was raised. At that spot readers can usually find a link to a new page that, through being added to the original column, has expanded and changed it. On the one hand, I prefer that the columns remain in their original form. But on the other hand, if I can expand on those columns without doing them any more than minimal damage (usually in the form of a link that lets it be known quite clearly that this is a later addition) I prefer that each column continue to be a coherent, but continually evolving, whole. A new reader wouldn't necessarily notice that a column had undergone an update, though I certainly don't try to hide the fact that the column in its present form is different than the pre-update version.

Newspaper columns, of course, don't have the possibility of making these changes. If a correction is called for, the columnist (or all too often, the editor) will report that a particular passage should read differently. If there is new material to add, it will appear as a new column. Perhaps a correction, or even an apology, will be printed in a later edition. I like the possibility of making corrections and/or additions directly into the body of the text. At the same time, I'm quite aware of the possibility of rewriting history, of retouching the photograph so that Andropov is all of a sudden standing next to Bhreznev. Thus I try and make my changes or additions clearly identifiable as just that. Digitized text can be a useful tool in the rewriting of history, but not in the Boidem, thank you.

Go to: A bit of Boidem chronology, or
Go to: Staking yet another middle ground, or
Go to: What a difference a da... makes, or
Go to: Trying to make some sense out of all this, or
Go to: An introduction to the extroduction, or
Go to: Web Essays - The evolution of a (personal?) medium