So, only a few days after I posted the original version of this, I’m doing an about-face.

I was keeping my feed locked, because Twitter is such an informal, impulsive broadcasting platform, that I like knowing only a small circle will see my brainfarts.

Keeping it locked, however, means that anyone I “allow” to see my Tweets is added to my own feed (and I have no choice in this). And I already have too many Twitterers to keep up with as it is.

But a lot of really wonderful people are wanting to add me and see those brainfarts. Why, I do not know. But it seems downright rude to lock them out.

So I’m going to try to keep it open for a while and see how that goes.

Disclaimers

• Please don’t be offended if I don’t follow you back, or if I stop following for a while and then start again, or whatever. I’d expect you to do the same to me. All of you are terribly interesting and awesome people, but I have limited attention.
• Please don’t assume I’ll ever actually see it if you “@” message me. (I don’t assume it when I do it either.)
• Direct-messages are fine, but emails are even better and more reliable for most things (imho).
• If you’re twittering more than 10 tweets a day, I may have to stop following just so I can keep up with other folks.
• If you add my feed, I will certainly check to see who you are, but if there’s zero identifying information on your profile, why would I add you back?

A Few Guidelines for Myself that I Kind-of Sort-of Expect from Others

• I’ll try to keep tweets to about 10 or less a day, at most, to avoid clogging my friends’ feeds.
• I’ll try to avoid doing scads of “@” replies, since Twitter isn’t a great conversation mechanism, but is pretty ok as an occasional comment-on-a-tweet mechanism.
• I’ll avoid doing long-form commentary or “live-blogging” using Twitter, since it’s not a great platform for that (RSS feed readers give the user the choice to read each post; Twitter feed readers do not, and allow over-tweeting to crowd out other voices on my friends’ feeds.)
• I’ll post links to things only now and then, since I know Twitter is very often used in (and was intended for) mobile contexts; and when I do, I’ll give some context, rather than just “this is cool …”
• In spite of my best intentions, I’ll probably break these guidelines now and then, but hopefully not too much, whatever “too much” is.

Thanks for indulging my curmudgeonly Twitter diatribe. Good day.