Welcome to the Scharrer family's real life story! Most of our story is written for, and about, our four kids and the spice they add to our lives. It's our story of happiness, craziness, and sometimes ridiculousness. We've journaled through childbirth, the terrible two's, private school (and our public school experience), an autism diagnosis, medical school, residency, and long-term mission work in Africa.

Now we're following a new adventure, which involves a 45 foot motorcoach, homeschool, and as many ski slopes as we can go down in one year.

For posts from while we were living in Zimbabwe and updates about our future plans in Zimbabwe, please see our mission blog...

www.ourzimbabwejourney.blogspot.com.





08 September 2008

Going Private

Yesterday I added a feature to our blog which shows us where people are reading our blog from! It’s a little map at the bottom, left hand side of the blog. I checked it tonight and was so excited to see all the different places people read our blog from just today. Wow! How exciting… and scary at the same time! For a while now I have been contemplating making our blog private. We’ve had some friends go private with their blogs (so only approved people can see the blog) and I’m really not sure if I want to take that step or not yet. This blog maybe isn’t the typical “family” blog. I use it as my journal and also to connect and bond with my girlfriends who are spread all over the world. I also know that family really enjoy using the blog to keep up with Maida, even if it just means looking at the pictures. Erik likes to advertise the blog openly to everyone (which I love, because I know that he’s proud of it and wants to share our life with everyone) however you just never know who is reading it. I’m not super concerned about stalkers, but I’m nervous about people reading this blog who don’t know me, that will think I’m nuts for posting what I do or judging me by what I say. Anyway, let me know what you think (either by email or commenting)… has any of you thought of making your blogs private? Why or why not? If you have gone private, what was the deciding factor?

8 comments:

  1. Anonymous8:00 AM

    The deciding factor for me was this: Everyone's blog on blogspot.com is accessible to anyone who does google searchs. Online child preditors (and they are out there) can search for "pictures of children" and then access pictures of kids on blogs without clothes on or in the bathtub, etc. Then those pictures can be printed and used for....I won't even go there.

    Maybe having a psycholgy background helps me understand that these things happen more than we want to admit. Or maybe its because my brother is on the SWAT team and you wouldn't believe how many houses he raids that have child pictures in the home used for disgusting reasons that they get from innocent online families.

    It is however YOUR choice! This is just my experience and why I choose to go private. Protecting my boys as much as I can is important to me.

    I do have another friend (like you maybe) that didn't want to go private because she wanted a lot of people to see her blog, so she started screening the pictures of her kids she posted. Basically no nude or partially nude pictures of the kids.

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  2. Summer, when you make your blog private, is it possible to enter in more than 100 email addresses that can view the blog? We have about 100 hits a day and so I wouldn't want to leave anyone out. Just curious! That's a big deciding factor. I went ahead and make our old blog private because that has a lot of pictures on it that I want to save... that's where I thought I saw something about only being able to enter in 100 email addresses.

    Thanks for your advice! I can't believe how gross people are these days.

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  3. Anonymous1:51 PM

    Hmm,good question. I honestly don't know if you can enter more than 100. I only entered around 50 for ours so I'd have to look into that more. Dang, you have a lot of friends:) I'll look into it and get back to you....

    I know, some people are gross. For awhile I wanted my brother to stop telling me stories like that but then realized I should probably know those things.

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  4. Anonymous2:01 PM

    Okay, I know I'm responding quick but I called a friend who switched to private. She nor I could find a way to add more than 100 people's e-mails. However, she said that what she ended up doing was giving extra people (people over 100) an email address and password in order to access her blog so that she is still in control of who can see it but has more freedom than just 100.

    Also, I did want to say that it seems like a lot of work to go private but the people/family/friends who really care will go through that extra log-in step to view your blog. I haven't had many complaints yet...

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  5. Anonymous6:43 PM

    Hi Kara, I'm de-lurking to let you know that I'm one of your readers that you do not know personally. I began reading your story on baby crowd when you were pregnant with Maida. I appreciated your honesty with your pregnancy and I felt like we have a lot in common. When Maida was born and you moved to the old website I loved reading along and following Maida's firsts. I'm certainly not a crazy person by any means, but I am a stranger to you. I would miss checking your blog every few days to see what y'all have been up to, but I completely understand why you would go private... to protect your family. Either way, whatever you decide, good luck!

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  6. Hey Kara- this is an easy answer for me as Dan and I talked a lot about this issue as well... especially considering his occupation, he definatly knows things that go on that you and I wouldnt even ever think. Scarry. Anyhow, he told me to just be careful of what I post. I am careful about what I post related to his job as a K9, I dont post school names, address.... blah blah.. I am careful with picture of my kids as far as tub time, so on. If you are careful in what you post I think non-private is fine. But it is your choice in the end of course! It is the people who aren;t cautious or who dont care about these things that seem to be affected negatively. Good luck- PS I hope to be 1 of 100 if you go private!! :)

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  7. Amanda- I'm so glad that you commented! You gave me a boost when you said that you appreciated my honesty because I think that's something that others can't handle. I give a little too much info sometimes! But that's who I am, I've always been known to give a little too much info (ask my college friends!!! Ha!) Thank you again for commenting! I really don't want to go private because I know there are a lot of people (like you) who we don't know about that read our blog. I read millions of blogs of people I don't know, but in a way I think the blogger-world is a way of finding people who you can relate to, it's kind of like therapy! Anyway, thank you so much for commenting! And as of now, I don't think we're going to go private. :) YAY!

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  8. Summer and Heidi- thanks for all your suggestions and answers to my questions about going private. I think for right now, I'm just going to try to be careful of what I post (content and pictures - like you both suggested) and see how that goes. If I'm still feeling unsafe, I think we'll go private. It does seem like a lot of work to go private, which is one of the reasons why I don't want to! Anyway, thanks again for your suggestions!

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We write to taste life twice, once in the moment and in retrospection.”
~Anais Nin