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Blogging accuracy - open invitation for any corrections

Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2009-11-29 11:32:09 - Graham Ellis

I make every attempt to be accurate on my blog - but they're written quickly, so you'll find typos in them (and the more passionate I get, the more typos jump in!). Usually, it's obvious what I mean and there's no significant change to the message I have - although it may be diluted by my confused wording, but on a few occasions a mistake can be significant. I'm always careful to get my "now" and my "not" right - that's a known trap - but there are others.

Code examples are cut and pasted from live working code, so are not subject to the same degree of error - however, on rare occasions the encoding of < and & characters for web publication can lead to errors.

Spelling mistakes and errors of hard fact can easily be fixed ... but it's less easy when it comes to posts which don't offer a full story (perhaps because I knew only a half of the story at publication time), where facts are challenged, or where we're looking at a point of view that I'm expressing ("In my opinion" / "As far as I know" type stuff).

What is my / or policy on corrections in the blog? Please tell me if you spot something that's in error and I'll check, usually agree, and add in a correction - if appropriate with an apology for the error and any confusion it may have caused. I say that I'll "usually" agree - I'm unlikely to agree (as in one recent case) that my report of a meeting I attended two years ago, written within hours of the meeting concluding, is incorrect and should be removed or replaced by an alternative provided by someone who wasn't even involved at the time, let alone at the meeting.

What about different opinions / other sides to a story? Please let me know with specific comments you would like adding, and I'll almost certainly add them in; I've had to turn off "Blog comments" simply because of the spam levels, but if it's on topic, and legal to post, it'll be posted.

Recent articles which have given rise to comment / requests for amendment include Perl Regular Expressions, Learning to program and a whole series relating to what was happening at the FSB two years ago - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.



P.S. I can also re-open the "Save the Train" blog archive if I need to in order to add comments; a recent such request was made for this item to be amended.



P.P.S - where - say 'tell me' - by email to graham@wellho.net, or through our web page here. Phoning me isn't very effective, as I'm usually in front of a class and if you do get through, I'll probably need time to go back and look the article up anyway.