Anonymity and (finally!) a new web page.

Those of us in academia but without tenure tread carefully. With few exceptions I can think of, everyone in the category of LDS, professionally unestablished, and online has shifted to an alias or first-name only basis.

And now, so have I. I’ll just be going by “Ben” from now on, and my bio has been appropriately changed (though the text is doing funny things. You may have to scroll down, then back up to see it.)

More importantly, my webpages have been moved to a brand-spanking new home (thanks to J. Stapley) that won’t appear when I’m googled by search committees.

Yet, it’s my hope that these pages will continue to rank high on google so that LDS can find good information. If you linked to the old ones, please change your references so it links to the new one. Please comment there instead of here…

Many thanks!

13 thoughts on “Anonymity and (finally!) a new web page.

  1. So is there any way that you can arrange things so a website mentioning your name will not appear when your name is googled?

  2. If it’s your page, you can tell search engines not to index it. However, if one’s trying to disseminate information, the goal is to get the search engines to pay attention, not the other way around :)

    Beyond that, I’m not tech-savvy enough to know.

  3. I understand the concern all too well, but personally I take people who use their full names much more seriously than those who hide (and especially criticize) under the cover of anonymity.

    Anonymity gives the impression that one either does not think his or her current views will stand the test of time, that one wants to tear down others positions with impunity, or that one is in living fear of some sort of fideist authoritarianism, such that which dominates much of modern academia.

  4. Spack spack spack spack sp*ckman! Hah! There goes your pristine page! :P
    Good luck on your change to incognito-ism. (I sometimes think I ought to just go by “Kaimipono” online; and then I think, that wouldn’t really help much, would it?)

    (Side note: Won’t google searches for “Ben Sp—man” still pull up this site, since you’ve got a Tanya Sp—man blogging here?)

    P.S. The old comments on your bio-photo are pretty humorous given the new photo.

  5. That wouldn’t work for me. I will have to use my first & last name, as there’s at least one other Charles who posts on LDS-themed blogs, and my nom de guerre, “Bloodthirsty Warmonger,” seems too militant for this site.

  6. This is, of course, what worries me when I go on the job market.

    I have way to much web presence – there’s no way I could make it all go incognito. Search comitties will just have to deal with my weird mormon views.

  7. Hey, at least you’re lucky enough to have a nondescript first name, Ben. I have to go by:

  8. Oh, and hey, any luck with the thesis trouble you were having a while back?

  9. “one is in living fear of some sort of fideist authoritarianism”

    Just because one can name a fear, doesn’t mean that it ain’t real

  10. Ben, you may want to consider a content management system (CMS) as opposed to a blog package for your site. I’ve used Drupal and liked it a lot. There are others as well.

  11. Glad to see it easily accessable again.

    But surely you know that googling your name and then going to cached versions of your former pages works. At least it did a couple of weeks ago when last I checked.

    How to Read the Bible, by Marc Brettler. is a really good book. Maybe I would have found it sooner if your site had been up sooner.

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