Maybe it's me, but it seems like alot of posts to SoPW have been vague and/or ambiguous. After doing a search of this site, the only information regarding and writeup do's dont's is Writeup Formatting Tips , I want to ask a question of the Perl Monks; where do I start?. Now, possibly, if I did a more exhaustive search, I may come up with more reference to this topic, but I feel that this type of information should be contained directly in Perl Monks Site FAQ or Site How To. So, I decided to write a little something:

Seekers of Perl Wisdom Writeup Guidelines

Here are some basic guidelines for submitting a question to Seekers of Perl Wisdom:

• First, and foremost, be able to articulate your question. Chances are, that if you can't, monks will not understand your problem and you won't get the answer(s) that you need.
• Written "descriptions" of what you're trying to do, and what problems you are running into will rarely suffice, without accompanying code. Don't be bashful! Post what you have - as "ugly" or "wrong" as it might be. No one will persecute you for trying to figure out a problem on your own!
• Which brings me to the next point: PLEASE, don't post a question, like, "I want a program that will do XYZ, then mail the output to ABC, and write it to a file. How can I write it?....". Chances are if you post a question like that, you will be downvoted, or altogether ignored.
• Read Writing Formatting Tips before actually posting code. As you write your post, you will always have the option to preview your post. Exersise that option =).
• Use Super Search to search for possible answers to your question. As this is a large, and active community here, there is a good chance that your question has been answered before.
• Read previous Seekers of Perl Wisdom posts for ideas on how to pose your question.
• There is rarely (if ever) a need to post hundreds of lines of code to get an answer to your problem. If you feel the need to do that, step back for a minute, attempt to debug your program yourself (I assume that you are already using -w and use strict;. Post only the code which is pertinent to the specific problem you are having. If you're post is going to be lengthy, be considerate and use <READMORE> tags.
• There are alot of online resources here; take the time to read through them.
• Read through: Voting Guidelines (or 'How should I spend my votes?'). There are some helpful hints contained in this document.

My final suggestion is that you are not already, become a member of PerlMonks.org. This is an extremely knowledgeable and helpful community we have.

Edit 2001-05-12 by tye to add a missing > that was preventing the subsequent </ul> from being parsed