yes.

It should not matter, but people lose jobs and get into other hot water simply for having web sites. I was reading about some teacher that was fired for having a myspace site. Nothing racy on her page but some of the people she had friended or whatever, they had offensive pages and that was enough.

I think it is mostly because of all the child predator stories about it right now. Myspace pedophiles = sharks from a few years ago. Shark attacks still happen with the same frequency but you do not here about them.

If you are ashamed of the content, then of course you should. If you are prepared to hide what seems like a significant part of your life to avoid offending other people, then of course you should.

If you don't think you have done anything to be ashamed of, then no, you shouldn't. Obviously, anything illegal shouldn't be there in the first place for obvious reasons and you seem smart enough not to do that in the first place.

But don't forget that you actually can't take down most of the information - between Google's cache, waybackmachine.org and any number of other nooks and crannies on the Intarweb, whatever you put up stays up forever. Taking things down from the Web is like trying to put an octopus into a string bag. Trying to hide it could even make it worse.

Removing links to sites that could be considered offensive may be an acceptable compromise.

As for what consequences may fall, I guess it'll depend on whether or not you're a popular TA or not =)

Why not take down the links? Do you want the undergrads to know that you "have a life?"

Alternatively, (possibly) naively assuming that certain subsets of clients/potential-bosses do not google your presence, perhaps give that subset of people a link to a sanitized domain/personal-page?

(congrats on getting into your department!)

I'm really rethinking the real name thing, after nearly 20 years of being dhartung (as you can see).

Just in the last month we've had a Wikipedia administrator quit because someone unhappy with her actions exposed her RL employer, and now the whole Armando thing at DailyKos.

Ironically, both people took pains to hide their identities. Maybe that makes it worse.

I would take as much stuff down as possible.

Undergrads can and will come up with stuff and use it on contexts that we can't imagine right now.

Good luck.

Yeah DanF... that's what I was wondering about. What a pain. I want my pals to be able to find me, but not my students. :(

I want my pals to be able to find me, but not my students. :(

What are WE, chopped liver?

hmmph!