Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Either an extra or replacement quote-of-the-day for today, copied from badmagic: "Friends protecting a post is like wearing a condom. It's 99% effective if used correctly, but people don't, and sometimes it breaks."

Today's pre-dawn, automatically posted quote-of-the-day is temporarily hidden, after redaxe pointed out that I had accidentally posted something from a friends-locked entry. The person who wrote the entry in question has said it's okay, and I'm waiting for a response from the person who wrote the comment I snipped the quote from. If I get an okay to unlock this morning's QotD entry, I'll mention it in a later post so anyone who a) missed it this morning and b) actually gives a damn can go read it. Don't worry about it; this one's merely cute.

I screwed up. I do try to be careful, double-checking for that little padlock icon when I highlight and copy text to paste into the QotD-queue, but this time somehow I missed it. On the one hand, this instance is really a small thing, given that what I quoted was a stray witty remark, not some social psychodrama or dark secret. On the other hand, I know that some people get worked up about privacy and trust issues much more than others, and for some of them the fact that it was possible for me to make such a mistake at all may be a Big Deal.

So, at the risk of coming across as too melodramatic for polite company, I figure it makes sense to openly acknowledge that I screwed up. The "no harm, no foul" folks and anyone who things it was a goof but a trivial one can scratch their heads at my making a five-paragraph deal out of something that didn't hurt anyone; and the folks who are paranoid, or are legitimately concerned about privacy, or have been painfully bitten in the arse by inapropriate revelations in the past, or are just extremely private, can, I hope, understand that even though I did manage to screw up, I don't take their concerns lightly and maybe still trust me to read their friends-only journal entries. I don't want to make a Great Big Dramatic Scene about putting on the hair shirt and saying what a Horrible Person I Am so that most of my friends can rush into the drama and pat me on the back to reassure me that I'm not so horrible -- I know it was an honest mistake and that it doesn't mean that I have a casual disregard for security tags or will blab truly sensitive stuff -- but at the same time I don't want anyone who's skittish about privacy to think that by letting this go unremarked it means that I don't realize it's important to them. And while I'm at it, I can let anyone wondering why the offending entry vanished know what's up.

The thing is, that's an awkward balance to hit for an audience where attitudes towards privacy and security vary so much. I am going to come off as a drama queen to some folks, and I am going to sound cavalier to others, because I suspect the folks at the extremes are kind of alien to each other, and there are these gut-level trust issues involved. So there it is. I screwed up in what appears to be a small way, I hid the entry when it was brought to my attention, if I get permission from the person I quoted then I'll un-hide it, I feel bad about the mistake, I'm acknowledging and apologizing for the mistake, and I really don't want this to be a Big LJ Drama. If you comment, please don't tease or mock the folks whose attitudes towards privacy and trust are the polar opposites of your own.