A recent meditation reminded me of something that I've been feeling somewhat embarrassed by for a few years now. I think that it is time to address it.

Several years ago there was an unfortunate incident with NodeReaper that inspired me to write I think Casey West is right. The only person that I knew was associated with that incident was one Andy Lester. So he was singled out for some fairly harsh criticism, about an incident that I felt justified it.

Now my personal philosophy is kind of unusual. I'm not one who goes in heavily for forgiveness in any traditional sense. However I do believe in learning. To me the past is only relevant as a predictor of future behaviour. If subsequent events convince me that a person will act differently in the future, that is all that matters.

So what has Andy's behaviour been since that one isolated incident? Well I've noticed over the years a number of things. First, there has obviously never been a repeat of that incident. Secondly he privately asked for feedback on at least one related issue, and incorporated that feedback into what he did. I've seen him advocating more civility in talks like geek culture. He has also been fairly prolific on CPAN. For one specific instance, the original question that got reaped? If that question was posted today, the answers given should include pointers to WWW::Mechanize, written by one Andy Lester.

So for several years now I've been in the embarrassing position of having my only post about a very positive and prolific contributer to Perl be a rather harsh piece of criticism which could definitely give people the wrong impression of him.

This post was written to correct that. I will also update my original node to point here.