In my last entry I "quoted" Earl Weaver. I stole the quote from this article on ESPN.com. But if you go there, you'll notice that quote is no longer on the page. Earl is no longer considered part of the top 10 list of managers or coaches flipping out. Heck, he's not even on the honorable mention list. I had read this article this morning and had seen it; When I connected to my computer at home, I still had the article open, and Earl was there! Relieved to discover that I wasn't crazy, and that I could steal that great quote, I began to think about what ethical problems there may be with changing stuff you publish online with no indication you changed it.
Obviously, this article isn't that important. Maybe they pulled the quotes because they were completely fabricated (good thing I used em!). Anyway it's a list and a fluff opinion piece, not real news in any sense of the word. But websites seem to do this all the time, go in and change and edit articles or news with no indication that they did so, other than what might exist in the wayback machine. Hmm, seems Earl isn't there.
Magazines can't retract things or change them without new editions, in fact in no medium before the internet could you just change it and hope no one saw the original version. Is this ethical? I don't really know. While on one hand I don't see the purpose of announcing you made changes, it does seem kind of underhanded to just cover up your mistakes with no acknowledgement. Also, what if the changes are due to some totally different reason? Political or social pressure on a website to censor an article? If you don't keep an archive, you'll never be able to show what you saw was really there before. I don't know, perhaps it doesn't matter at all, but it really bothers me for some reason.
As an Evil Pundit, I feel obliged to reply to this post.
You raise an interesting issue, and one that concerns me a little. I'm a bit obsessive, and I like to go back and tinker with my posts to get them "just right".
Perhaps future versions of blog software could include an update tracking option that allows readers to see what has changed if they want to.
Beyond trusting the producers of content, there is only archiving by web bots - and even that can be faked.
This has been discussed by other bloggers in the past. Different people have different opinions.
Mine goes to ethics. I don't feel it's unethical to fix grammatical mistakes, punctuation problems, etc. after publication. It is, however, ethically questionable to substantially change the intent of what you had to say. I thus try to go with what my gut says is right in any given situation.
Some bloggers refuse to do this in any way. That's their choice. Otherwise, I think it just comes down to how much you trust the online source you're reading.
I do think some kind of on-line tracking system for changes would be a good idea, but I suspect it will be a few years before we see such technology--a practical use of it, anyway.
Normally when I change something I'll put a note next to it in [brackets]. If there's a significant update, I'll put it at the end as an Update.