To back date or not to back date?

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Well, I finally posted the entries from my sailing trip. I had written them mostly during the trip, but I couldn't post them due to the lack of connectivity.

When I got around to posting them, I was confronted with an interesting question: should I back date them so the entries appeared on the days the events occurred (and the day I wrote them) or should the dates reflect the date the entry showed up?

This is more than an philosophical topic. For my readers who use the RSS feed, I didn't know what effect the backdating would have, especially since I had made one live post in the middle of the trip. I was concerned it might confuse others who visit the site regularly and suddenly saw entries from previous days.

Despite those concerns, I decided to backdate the entries. Since its inception, the blog has primarily been for me, serving as a journal. I decided to optimize for my usage; I wanted the entries to appear on the day the events occurred.

Any opinions?

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2 Comments

meder Reply

my RSS reader (aKregator) displayed entries the way it should and it didn't really cause any confusion (especially with the disclaimer you had on top) :)

Duffergeek Reply

I think the back dating is ok. Once you get past that first day of people who read on the feed, it makes everything make more sense.

When I was in Germany last week, I had the added confusion of posting in German time or Seattle time - my posts started showing up 9 hours in the future!

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