I know I said I hate blogs that write about other blogs, and generally I do, even though I do it myself. But I was looking at the MetaFilter thread that sprung up discussing Meg‘s source log and it triggered a pretty strong visceral reaction in me.

As far as the "blogging in the source" concept goes, that wasn’t what really struck me. I’ve done it, I’ve seen lots of other sites do it, and, as I told Meg yesterday, Mr. Kottke and I had even discussed the idea a few years ago without any real conclusions. More recently, I talked to what’s his face about a complicated thing he had done to automate the viewing of comments. There was a lengthy discussion involving the ethicality of publicizing comments, but the only point we finally agreed on is that, once you’ve viewed someone’s comments, you oughtta just keep it to yourself.

The thing that got my dander up, though, wasn’t the whole reading of comments thing. It’s that anything Meg, or Jason, or any of a handful of other people, does on his or her own personal site is so overanalyzed and nitpicked. I’m supposing anyone who reads this site knows about what they do, and how well they write, and blah blah blah. But these are just people, good folks. And they ought to be able to say and do whatever the hell they want to on their sites without others pulling it apart.

The temptation to take the precious things we have apart to see how they work, must be resisted for they never fit together again.

I’ve done everything from making an ass out of myself to taking personal shots at people here on this page. And I am very grateful for my relative anonymity because it affords me the ability to not have to self-censor. The only factors that compromise what I write here are whether the item is too personal, or whether it’s something I wouldn’t want my parents, friends or my (theoretical) kids to read.

I don’t know how many people read my site; I really have never looked at the numbers long enough to figure out how many people they would translate to. That’s because I don’t really care how many people look at this site other than myself. But I do appreciate however many of you it is that read my site. I would suspect that if any of you read regularly, you know that I write for me, and if it pleases you, then I see that as an extra bonus. If it ever seems that I’m changing that, please let me know. I’ll be sure to add you as my current Peeve.