I've been thinking a lot about individuals publishing content of a personal nature to the web and its social ramifications (see Self Expression thought). Hmmm... too many syllables, so let's try again.

I believe that the web should be a personal expression, whether it be someone posting their poetry, or events in their life, or just what they think. There seems to be too much e-commerce and corporate brochures on the web and not enough pictures of people's pets.

To this end, I've been publishing my poetry, the events in my life, and what I think … oh yeah, and pictures of my baby. Then I received an email from someone that I don't know, who mentioned how much she liked my baby's pictures and such.

While there was nothing alarming about what she wrote, and I'm sure she was sincere, it surprised me that anyone who didn't know me and my family would care enough to regularly view family photos.

But the paranoia of a parent kicks in at this point, and one notices both the freedom to be able to share baby pictures with her grandmother in another state, and implications that anyone with a casual interest in Search Engines could do the same.

My solution was to password protect her site. Now, all of my family and friends have to register for the ubiquitous username/password combination in order for them to get access. Of course, we've all got passwords that we can't remember, and now I have to help everyone remember theirs ... maybe this added inconvenience is keeping out some of my audience ...

Then I went back to an old favorite web site ... chokingpear.com, and here is a wonderfully personal site … just what I love about the web. I feel like I know the author personally … that she has a cockatiel that likes to sing and dance, she loved the book Watership Down (don't we all), and that she reveals more to the anonymous web than she does to her parents.

But I don't know her name.

With all this personal information, there isn't enough information for me to actually contact her if I wanted to... and maybe that is the key. †

I mean, a good novel, while about fictious people and events, is really brutally honest and accurate about the internal life and feelings of the author. And maybe a personal web site can be so personal, but without any details that can be abused by the prurient sector of our society.

So, you can have a soul-revealing web site without ever using your name, address, or any other identity-stealing or person-abusing information. But just to be on the safe side, I'll keep the password on.

† You can actually get the name and address of the owner of a domain name from a domain name registry, but this information doesn't need to be too revealing. For instance, the owners of many domain names appear to have used work addresses.