Open question: How should you correct a bad tweet?

Twitter errors are inevitable, but a correction standard has yet to take hold.

Open QuestionRegular Twitter users know that deleting tweets is ethically dubious and technologically useless. A live tweet is a helium balloon in an open field — within seconds, it’s long gone.

But correcting tweets is a different matter, and that’s what I’m interested in discussing in this open question.

We’ve all tweeted incorrect links or made egregious spelling errors, and many of us live with the horror — real or imagined — of launching a direct message into the public Twitter commons. Yet, an agreed upon correction standard has yet to manifest (as far as I know).

So here’s what I’m curious about:

  • If you mess up a tweet, do you send a follow-up correction?
  • What isn’t worth correcting? Spelling errors? A tweet that runs too long?
  • Should Twitter accounts associated with established information sources (@nytimes, @cnn, etc.) always send corrections?
  • Is there a correction window? For example, if you notice an error in a tweet you sent two hours ago, should you bother correcting it?

Please weigh in through the comments.

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