I found myself giggling at this. Why? Because Jeff Atwood at CodingHorror once picked me up on a similar inappropriate choice of words. My solution? Apologise and edit the offending text.

Where comments have been created merely to highlight simple typos and similar errors, I have corrected text and deleted the comment. Where the error has been significant, I normally let the comment stand and indicate that the update has been made. Maybe Atwood considered this no more than the former case?

In related news, I am working on a new blog post about CAPTCHA triggered by the very same CodingHorror article you commented on – I just need to check one or two things before I post it.

I’m not sure of the ethics here but if it was my blog I would have owned up to using an inappropriate term, and apologised.

You can choose for yourself whether you share their apparent outrage, and whether you express that outrage via consumerism (i.e. by purchasing their competing products).

I just thought it was an interesting illustration of what’s possible.

[I also think they made her eyes a bit too large.]

Casey,

I’ve ranted about it here and here

I read your ‘rants’ when you originally posted them, but I am still only beginning to realise just how right you are. See also the updated version of the Editing Own Comments article.

PS. You have an dangling parenthesis at the end of your third paragraph about Greg Apodaca. Will you leave it there?

The answer is No. I corrected it (and a capitalisation error I also noticed), However, I didn’t correct the missing full-stop in your “I’ve ranted about it here and here” comment! That line on the hill that I will not cross is curvy and difficult to make out clearly!

As an aside, any writing or photography or anything else involves “editing” [...] I think that there is a big difference between your creativity in your own work (however that manifests itself) and changing someone else’s.

“Don’t alter the creativity of others.” and “Don’t alter the voice of others.” seem to be just different ways (voices?) of describing the same thing. I agree. (Aside: By paraphrasing Casey’s and Aristotle’s positions here, did I change their voice too much?)

However, it is difficult to apply this to photographs – what does it mean to not change the creativity of a photograph of a shoe or a friend – especially if you are the original photographer?