Hi ho,
This morning at the ungodly hour of 5am I saw something weird on Tweetbot and wrote an article about it. I asked for corrections to my understanding in the article, and BillK was kind enough to give them to me.
I really did not understand how Twitter assigned account numbers. I misunderstood it so badly that I couldn’t really correct the article because I was so out of whack that there was no correcting it.
So I made it private, but instead of playing “nothing to see here” I wanted to put up this post and say three things:
1) I wrote a post about Twitter account counts.
2) I way misunderstood what I was looking at.
3) I took it down because my misunderstanding was such that I could not correct it.
I f*cked up and I removed the expression of my f*ckupdedness to avoid further confusion. But I own the fact that I did it, and I’ll try not to do it again.
My apologies.
Tara the F*ckup
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I think you just forecasted the end result of the Internet of Things with every ant on the planet with 2 Twitter accounts. 🙂
No I didn’t. And the more I think about that post, the more I can’t believe I was so stupid. There were several things that should have waved a flag in my face. I’m not a large-scale app developer but I know enough that I should have thought twice or ten times. I can’t even blame not having my morning coffee because I don’t drink coffee!
Darn, should have saved it ! 😉
Seriously though, might be interesting to write about how *not* be wrong about those Twitter numbers ?
I wouldn’t trust myself to write it. :/
Don’t worry!
I do worry! I want to get my stuff right, and I certainly don’t want to say wrong things about other people/sites. I don’t want to ever give y’all any reason not to trust me.
The article got me to thinking about how many emails were generated to complete those accounts and, if so, how large email space was. Oh well, I’ve made a ton of mistakes in my time. And it really got us to pay attention! The main topic, of figuring out the botspace on Twitter, is still an important topic.
That was one of the things that should have stopped me. I should have thought, “wait. This wouldn’t scale. You are out of your mind.”
I admire that you disclose your error, but you’re very hard on yourself. Quite apart from resolving never to press “Submit” until you’ve gone off to do something else in case second thoughts occur – a lesson we all of us need to repeat to ourselves regularly – what particular things did you learn about the way you reached your wrong conclusions, and what you learned about Twitter IDs. When you’ve a calmer moment to think about it, it could help some of us to learn too.
I have always wanted to be precise and not incorrect. In this day and time I feel like it’s even MORE important. The only “agenda” I have is telling you about resources I think you’ll find useful. I never want to do anything that would jeopardize that and make me look less than honest (or in this case, rock stupid.)
I had asked, in that article, to be corrected if I wasn’t understanding something. BillK kindly corrected me. Once he pointed out that Twitter account numbers are not assigned sequentially, many more things make sense. And then I thought, “Of course, this wouldn’t scale,” “Of course, this would create a trail of ridiculous e-mail addresses for validation,” and lots of other of course things that had not leaked into my head before. And then I felt even dumber for letting it get past me.
I don’t have a degree of any sort or even a high school diploma. That means when I screw up I don’t have a fallback of any kind of academic accomplishment – “Oh I goofed up but I have a PhD so you know I have the knowledge” – so I’m extra careful to get things right. And this time I really blew it.
You’re entitled to an error or two every once in a while, just keep up the good work. P.S. By 0500, on a typical day (PDT) I am done with breakfast and coffee, have been to Safeway, Walmart and finished my morning walk: Correct, I have no life.☺
Wow! I am in admiration. One thing this has taught me: first thing in the morning get downstairs and play Dance Dance Revolution for half an hour until the brain is awake; do not get on the computer!
Tara:
Don’t be so hard on yourself. I’m very impressed with what you do and the intelligence and humor you display in doing it. Plus you’ve done it every day when it’s not been your full time job. Degrees and academic accomplishments can be overrated. You’ve been educated in real life!
Keep up the good work.
I think the best signs of reliability are to
a) have mechanisms for catching errors (for instance, asking others to let you know) and
b) when you make an error, let everyone who is concerned know.
You did both.
Please notice that neither criterion requires always being right. That would be a qualification for divinity\, IM as usual HO.