You know those shadowy government types that reluctantly reveal documents and then redact information out of them until they are meaningless? I’m now one of them.
It started with a request by a former student that contacted a department on campus – their name was showing up on a document on our site as the result of a google search.
And they wanted it removed. The department contacted my boss who then assigned it to me. Based on their notes on where the reference lived, I located the offending PDF file and used the “redact” tool to draw a big black line through the name – removing it from the document and eventually from google once the index updates.
It was an odd request. There wasn’t anything about the entry that was defaming or inappropriate. Nothing that could be used against someone as far as I can tell. Nothing to really warrant removing it – which it why we didn’t fight it.
Even though it didn’t really mean anything, it still bothered me to go all “1984” on the file. Or not even that much – we didn’t change the past so much as draw a line through it. Crude, but effective, I guess.
I’m hoping this doesn’t start a trend – I’m busy enough adding information and don’t want to spend my time redacting it.
Though I will admit that I like the word. Redact. See, it’s fun to say even if it is kinda evil.
Redact.
This line has been redacted – sort of. The real thing would remove the text and what’s the point of going to the trouble of typing this if it’s really gone? So, not really redacted, just kinda.