Holding Back

As part of some renewed discussion on blogging such as in New Blog, No Trust, and Audience Member, I had in my notes to go back and discuss the issue of holding back.

When is holding back better than posting?

Clive posted The world's a safer place today (talking about the Obama victory), took some flack about posting something political, so he wondered if things were a bit too serious.

One anonymous reader commented that he or she was "close to dropping you from my feed list, as I've had about enough of the irrelevant political commentary. Please get back to online learning, instead of pretending to be a political pundit."

He mentions something that I just felt through my poor choices with Little Sandwiches. A time when I should have held back. Clive tells us:

But the response to my Obama posting has made me think that perhaps the situation does change once you get a wide readership, and that this probably does places an extra responsibility on you, the blogger. Having a readership gives you power, not to influence voting in an election of course, but certainly to influence buying decisions and choices as far as e-learning is concerned. If you don't take that responsibility seriously, you can hurt people that don't deserve to be hurt.

What that gets us to then is having to decide what we can/should write. We need to censor ourselves. Dan Roddy talked about the issue of holding back:

There are posts that I've started that I've never published since they run contrary to my employer's position on the matter, or pieces that I've re-read and dropped since they could be interpreted as a critique of work by colleagues and clients (or even my own) that some people may not interpret as being helpful. There posts where I've simply not been comfortable with the way that I've articulated by point and I've left them with the intention of coming back to edit them and, well, they're still waiting. Heck, there are even comments that I would like to have made on other people's blogs that I've pulled after typing.

My guess is that most of us have gone through a bit of transformation learning when holding back makes sense. I probably suffer from not self censoring enough. But hopefully I'm learning to hold back.

When do you find yourself holding back?