Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2010-05-23 22:31:05 - Graham Ellis
A "Thank you" to the person who commented as follows:
"Your website and articles are one of the best I have seen in on the internet. Thank you so much for putting forth these write-ups of so many complex Python topics in a very easy to understand manner." about my recent blog article on running operating system commands in Python.
Substantial quantities of "blog spam" have pushed me - over the years - to reduce the opportunities given for commenting on the blog; I could (and have in the past) spent considerable time cleaning up comments in various places that relate neither to the subject as hand, nor to the subjects the site is designed to cover. Call these comments "the graffiti of the web" if you like. But you can always email me - my graham - @ - wellho.net address is well known, and you can rank and review individual web site pages, including the archives of the blog.
Constructive criticism is also welcome - just this morning, I answered a commenter who suggested "In the second example, $_ should be @_" in an article on Perl's special variables. And my answer was - basically - "what you suggest would work - but I don't agree ;-).
Destructive criticism is - err - less welcome. If a visitor here feels it's a "shit website", he's welcome to that opinion ... but if he doesn't tell me why, I can't do anything about it. And if he doesn't give me his contact details, I can't ask him either. His opinion clearly isn't universally shared - take a look (for example) at our MySQL join v MySQL left join page and you'll find streams of comments, 95% in full favor.
You'll find a "rank and review" link at the base of many of our pages - please feel free to use it to give us your feedback - positive, or constructive. And please feel free to ask me questions via email or via my "Ask the Tutor" page too.
P.S. I just find myself wondering occasionally if the odd negative, destructive review is born from jealousy of what we achieve here, rather than frustration at the visitor not finding exactly what he wanted.