{"id":145,"date":"2005-12-08T18:57:47","date_gmt":"2005-12-08T07:57:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/?p=145"},"modified":"2005-12-12T08:20:45","modified_gmt":"2005-12-11T21:20:45","slug":"why-no-author-photo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/2005\/12\/08\/why-no-author-photo\/","title":{"rendered":"Why No Author Photo?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recently summarily dismissed Jakob Nielsen<\/a>‘s recommendation to have an Author Photo<\/a> on your blog. That wasn’t intentional. My post was rambling all over the place without a clear direction, and I forgot I had another point to make.<\/p>\n

I don’t have an author photo here for a several reasons.<\/p>\n

Anonymity<\/h3>\n

I am trying to maintain a level of anonymity.<\/p>\n

I don’t pretend that, having found this site, you couldn’t find my name after only about 5 minutes digging, but I would prefer that people googling my real name didn’t find this site. My ideas are open to anyone. The fact that they are my<\/em> ideas is not. I don’t want to be judged by them in 20 years’ time, in the same way I don’t want to be judged now by what I said 20 years ago. When I become President of Australia, I will quietly delete this blog, and I trust each of you who know who I am not to give way my secret identity!<\/p>\n

In the act of making this point, I think I have seen through it. Having my picture here will not enable people who searching for me to find it – it will only allow people who know me and know this site to confirm that it is the same person. Which just goes to show: I don’t want to be judged by what I said 20 minutes ago!<\/div>\n

Irrelevancy<\/h3>\n

I don’t think it relevant for being persuasive. My ideas should be able to stand on their own no matter what I look like.<\/p>\n

If you need to see my photo to understand my arguments, there’s something very wrong with my arguments or your way of understanding them. If you use my photo to decide not<\/em> to believe my arguments, well how much more ad hominem<\/em> can you get?<\/p>\n

There’s an argument here about seeing my face while I talk<\/em> to get a better feel for my emotions, but an author photo doesn’t provide that. <\/div>\n

Author photos do<\/em> help with tribal affiliation; Neilsen’s chosen photo<\/a> with a blue suit and yellow tie can probably used to draw many conclusions about him – conclusions you shouldn’t trust, because they are so easily manipulated.<\/p>\n

Neilsen writes:<\/p>\n

You enhance your credibility by the simple fact that you’re not trying to hide. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Interesting! I am<\/em> trying to hide my identity, so I can speak more openly. You should trust me more because of it!<\/p>\n

Not Playing on my Looks<\/h3>\n

I am not trying to to play on my stunning good looks to get readers (c.f. Soccergirl [NSFW]).<\/p>\n

Compromise<\/h2>\n

I do agree with Nielsen that using faces helps people remember and recognise a site better than names alone – it is a better branding device.<\/p>\n

My proposed compromise is to use a non-identifying, branding image instead – see LiveJournal for many examples (e.g. Silhouette<\/a> who uses a non-identifying photograph of herself, or Vinz Klortho<\/a> who uses a real name but an arbitrary photo of a B-grade actor<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The only reason I haven’t followed up with this compromise, is that I don’t have an OddThinking logo… yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t have an author photo here for a several reasons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-oddthinking","category-influencing-others"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}