In Monday's Guardian Reader's Editor Siobhain Butterworth ponders a universal standard for evaluating citizens' requests for retracting their comments in published stories, noting the difficulty of creating such a measurement - especially in the digital age.

At the Guardian, "We usually resist requests for deletions of names and quotes that don't identify significant errors."

"Should users who ask for their comments to be removed from blogs be treated differently to people who request the deletion of their names and quotes from articles, or the removal of their letters?" Butterworth writes.

Butterworth mentions other factors involved in the evaluation process, such as timeliness and sensitivity. In the latter case, a rape victim's wish for anonymity is a suitable request. However, Butterworth questions whether "letter writers who in youth, anger or enthusiasm managed to get their missives published in the Guardian, but now wish they hadn't" are suitable requests to the former.

"If you gave a quote to the paper or had a letter published several years ago you may not have given a moment's thought to your digital footprint, but even before the advent of search engines people needed to think carefully about what they put on the record.

"The difference is that in the pre-digital age a letter to a newspaper or quote in an article, from someone who was not in the public eye, was less likely to resurface."

Butterworth's musings are not prescriptive but rather cautionary, warning users to be mindful of their "digital footprints." For the editors left to sift through user retraction requests, the directions are less clear.

How can editors deal with the delicacy of such requests without compromising the integrity of their newspapers? Butterworth doesn't say.

Source: The Guardian