Now You See It, Now You Don't
First off apologies to @Deeperblue who I imagine has enough on her plate without my shenanigans.
I sometimes delete or edit my WC posts that were intended as more of an ephemeral snapshot of a collector's life rather than content more solely centered on our shared interest in watches. My thinking is nobody needs to see what I was up to in the years ahead however an enthusiast in the future may be interested in any strictly watch related information I may collate and post to WC.
As an example my original post "Felco>Felca>Titoni" contained extraneous info about my entry into the hobby that I edited out a few weeks later. My intent was to temporarily share a little about my current self for the short term while leaving a more permanent (and occasionally updated) summary of the brand as a potential resource to others. Kind of like a Wikipedia entry for Watches.
In this vein I had posted about my wife's current involvement in the hobby along with some non watch related content about her. @Deeperblue had linked to that post in her "Bites" column though I had deleted the post without knowing about the link. My bad!
I first developed this "shelf life" practice from a private FB group where I use to regularly post. Pics of my wife and I would eventually be deleted and only the watch pics would remain. (I do get that nothing truly ever leaves the net entirely and hope no one finds my high school photos.)
Am I the only who does this? Should I leave non-watch related content up indefinitely? Should I buy @Deeperblue a Daytona as an apology?
I prefer in person gatherings over social media dialog and have a soft spot for vintage watches.
No problem!
The newsletters are just for a catch-up of the week, and I generally make the assumption that if people are happy to make a post they are happy for it to be referenced on here.
No worries though. I've removed the links to your posts and won't include them in future.
I'll DM you the postage address for the Daytona.
I don’t know how other people feel about it, but I like to see people posting about stuff that’s tangential to the hobby. Sure, we don’t want to lose focus and turn this place into facebook, but injecting some personality and showing yourself as a real person is by no means a bad thing if you ask me.
I don’t delete old posts here, but before I left FB, I followed the practice of deleting every post after a day or two. I tended to think of my posts as ephemera, and didn’t think they’d age well or be interesting beyond that time frame. I also never used FB as a photo album: Never posted my kids’ names, much less their images.
As for what goes into posts here, I’m with @OlDirtyBezel that personal context is great, as is the fact that WC doesn’t have officious “police” who chide posters for meandering.
I to, am human. I also enjoy other human related content. I enjoy reading and watching other humans enjoying their watches in other ways involving life. I get what you say about what we’re here for on WatchCrunch, but it’s the human element that brings the personal touch to these machines.
I did try again and again on multiple devices, clicking @Deeperblue s link, and thinking I was doing it wrong somehow 😂
It’s probably a good practice … but I can’t be bothered to delete stuff.
One exception : sometimes I look at what I wrote the following day, recoil in horror, and quickly delete a post before my nuttiness can be perceived by others 😬