onfocus

I received a thoughtful response to my silly post about timestamps and weblogs the other day—

The main reason I (and, I'm sure, plenty of others) don't use timestamps is that I sometimes blog from work and don't want the higher-ups knowing about it or (worse) being able to "prove" that something was posted during work hours.

With the cases of people being fired for their weblog, I understand why bloggers want to be careful. (We never hear about the stories where people are promoted because of their weblog.) I still feel like a weblog without timestamps cripples one of the weblog's primary functions. I think this problem points to the need for employers to clarify their stances on weblogs, and personal use of the web. Ross Mayfield wrote about this in his post, Standard Weblog Employee Policy—

Employees want to do the right thing. They want to have a voice, get approval and use it for the benefit of their company. Right now, they can point to the Sun Policy on Public Discourse, Groove Weblog Policy and the evolving Corporate Weblogger Manifesto as examples. They can talk their executives into considering it by pointing to Jonathan Schwartz, me (heh) and Bill Gates any day now. But its still an emerging issue.

It's a bit different when employees are posting to their personal weblog on company time, but people send personal email all the time. (Which employers can easily track.) Weblogs shouldn't be treated differently.