ASCII by Jason Scott

Jason Scott's Weblog

Errors of Inclusion —

Sometimes it’s easy to think that if a project or production is missing something, it’s because the creators totally forgot about it, are in some way mentally damaged and didn’t know about it, or otherwise screwed up. In fact, the amount of effort that goes on behind the scenes to make something usually means that the creators are totally aware of the missing thing, and for whatever reason, chose not to include it.

In that way, I just wanted to let you know that this weblog intentionally, through conscious decision, avoids the following subjects:

  • Religion
  • Governmental Politics
  • That awesome link that just happened that everyone is talking about
  • My home life and/or home
  • My day job and career
  • My relatives/family
  • Really taking someone out back and verbally beating the utter, living crap out of them

Now, obviously some of this subject matter will leak into some things I talk about, but it’ll generally be for a specific point or because I took a calculated risk in doing so.

I avoid these subjects because I either think they’re boring, irrelevant, unnecessary to go into detail about, or otherwise derail what I write in here, and the subjects I do like writing about. I’m sure I could hold forth about any variety of these subjects, but they cost me unnecessary grief. In fact, sometimes I’ve crossed into these subjects by mistake, like a person with a pitchfork backing warily into a swimming pool, and each and every time I regret it.

So the next time you feel like something’s missing on this weblog, now you know that it’s probably on purpose.

Back to editing.


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3 Comments

  1. Thank you very much! Your posts are always detailed, well thought out, and a pleasure to read. The signal-to-noise ratio is very great.

  2. joat says:

    I think that the occasional exception to the verbal beating ban is permissible (catharsis is considered healthy).

  3. Flack says:

    Although our personal “do not touch” lists differ, I agree it’s important to have one. I agree with you on the “no writing about work” rule. I personally know three people who have been fired for things that they have blogged about. Every time I’m tempted to talk about work I think about how much I enjoy receiving a paycheck and then I think otherwise about posting.

    I experimented with running two blogs for a while — one for “tech” stuff and one for “family” things — but in the end all my readers agreed that it was easier to read one blog and ignore the posts they weren’t interested in than it was to follow two blogs.