Poll Dancing #3: The Results

Following up on Aside: On the Importance of Backups, I asked readers how paranoid they were about Enron unexpectedly trading away their local power supply and turning their hard drives into paperweights.

The Question: Do you back up your writing?

The Results:

24% (9 votes)Only when I write something worth keeping.

11% (4 votes)I put a fresh backup in a safe deposit box every afternoon.

11% (4 votes)I only think to backup after a crash.

0% (0 votes)Every word I write is printed, bound and on sale at LuLu.

5% (2 votes)Doesn't Windows do that for me already?

16% (6 votes)Hang on ... Yep, I just did.

16% (6 votes)Lost work is God's way of saying "Not right for us".

18% (7 votes)Other

['Other' responses included specific backup strategies, most of which were obsessive but not funny]

Total votes: 38

Glad to see my readers have enough shame not to admit to the LuLu option. But I think in general this poll has only demonstrated one thing: Backups are not funny.

Poll Dancing #3

As a follow-up to a recent aside on the importance of backups, let's find out what value you subconsciously place on your work. Today's poll (in the sidebar) asks "Do you back up your writing?"

I'm assuming, since you're using a computer or similar electronic device to read this, that you're using a computer or similar electronic device to write. If you've developed some romantic delusion that you can only write using a battered Royal No. 10 typewriter, or that Mont Blanc pen you got as a retirement gift instead of a pension, then imagine the expression "back up" means "write/type another copy".

(I heartily advocate handwritten backups, as time spent copying is time not spent writing.)

Aside: On the Importance of Backups

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