I don't remember why I first made a website - it was at least five years ago. I think I was bored one afternoon and taught myself some rudimentary HTML to fill in the time. I also can't really remember why I started writing a journal, since that too was several years ago, making this a fairly boring answer. I'm not trying to achieve anything in particular.

I'm not really a writer or a designer. It's just a hobby. You might build model trains, I ramble on a little about my day online. If people enjoy reading it, and I know that at least some do, that's all the purpose I need. I have occasionally had informative sections on various topics included in my site, but my interest in their subjects invariably wanes and I take them down after a while.

No. You'll get some good clues of course - find out what kind of things I do, some of my tastes and opinions, things like that - but definitely not the whole picture. I think that goes for everyone. It's pretty much impossible to express all the nuances of a person through a one-way collection of words and perhaps pictures.

There are some people online who I think know me at least as well as some of my offline friends, but in all cases I've been communicating with them for a long time.

It's a fun toy, basically. I bought one to play with, and ended up using it as a live webcam.

It's not much different to sitting at my computer without it, since I don't play up to it, or do anything provocative. I don't have any real sense of being watched, in fact, I usually forget that it's on.

No, however a few months ago JSR (my boyfriend) and I ended up on One News briefly, and I had a few emails from readers who recognised me.

Some strong efforts have been made in the past to bring us together, for example (the sadly defunct) journal.org.nz, and having get-togethers. I've met most of the well-known NZ journallers in person and I would venture to say that goes for others too, which helps with the sense of community.

A lot of us keep in touch regularly via email and ICQ, and have been doing so for a long time. It's an involving medium - we're constantly reading about each other's lives.

I think they could spell out their reasons to you better than I can, since I don't pay a whole lot of attention to detractors. I can see how journalling could be seen as conceited, or a waste of time, though I don't think it is either of those things. You're always going to have differences of opinion, nothing is liked by everybody. It doesn't really bother me.

I pay no attention to them, so I have no opinion. And these are the ones I don't have any answers to. I could make some up of course, but that would be pointless, so I'm not going to.