I'm not stalking Burningbird

Shelley Powers has posted a nuanced exploration of the persistence of presence on the net and in weblogs. Without reducing the issues involved to the bipolarities so common in online discussion and debate, she manages to tease out a lot of important ideas in her entry, On Identity and Edits.
Here’s the crux of the biscuit:

I’m not a journalist, and this isn’t a professional journal. I fuck up. I get angry. I make statements I regret, usually about my own person life. I hope I hold myself accountable for uncalled-for attacks, with issued apologies and retractions. I try. However, I will continue to edit out material I feel has violated personal confidences, including my own. Without making an annotation of of my actions, justifying it, or making excuses for it. I wil try harder in the future not to do this – but no guarantees.

Up on the meta- level, it seems safe to suggest that weblog writers ought to address their own policies on reconsidered posts and the edit trail of public statements.