It's odd that your follow-up did not appear, as using [reply] is indeed the proper way to post one.

Perl Monks Discussion is indeed the place to discuss anything related to the site itself.

The Monastery Gates are special, as they can contain nodes from any of a number or sections of the site - it is no section of its own, rather posts from Seekers of Perl Wisdom, Perl Monks Discussion, Meditations, and others, may be placed there by any level 6 or higher user (which is called "frontpaging" a node).

It is true that the site is a bit hard to get into; I was somewhat lost at first when I signed up.

For example, note that the search box at the top only searches on topics (you can also enter a node ID there to be taken directly to the node in question); what people usually want when they want to search is the Super Search which searches inside posts as well (not to mention it has all kinds of whiz bang).

Although it is probably possible to help newcomers get a gentler introduction to the site, the mere amount of features inevitably means you're bound to take a while until you have familiarized yourself with everything it has to offer. It's much more than it appears to be at first sight.

On that note, welcome! Have fun exploring the monastery's catacombs. May your stay be enjoyable and educative. :-)

Makeshifts last the longest.

"reply" and "comment on" do exactly the same thing. My guess is that when you tried "reply" you hit "preview" (perhaps more than once) but you never hit "submit".

I've now logged and I'm posting this via 'reply'. I would have thought that 'reply' would be a thread in response to a specific comment, while a response to 'comment on.....' would start a new thread.

Not Anonymous Monk anymore!

nedals

"Comment on" on displays underneath only the topmost node that you can see. Then the nodes below it (its replies) get "reply" next to them. But if you pick one of those and click on it, so that it becomes the top level node (from your pov) it will again display "comment one", and the "reply" button will disappear. Having a "comment on" underneath each node would get annoying.

Dont worry, youll get used to it.

:-)

--- demerphq
my friends call me, usually because I'm late....

Your specific questions were answered nicely by Aristotle and tye above, and I'm glad to see you signed up for an account. There have been many, many, debates about possible changes and documentation improvements to the site to help newcomers. The fact that it's still being debated doesn't so much say the implementers are stubborn, but that it's hard to get a bunch of smart people to agree on a solution to a complicated problem.

<quote voice="emily litella">Never mind.</quote>
To continue your quest (perhaps you've already found these), take a look at the top part of the Tutorials, the one labelled "Welcome to the monastery". There are some great pointers to good documents there, my favorite being Welcome to the Monastery! Make yourself at home.

You're right, there's a lot of stuff here, and it's easy to get lost. But don't worry, monks are very forgiving. ;-)

Update
Just realized the whole second paragraph is pointless....

Update 2
The explanations below are all on the mark. I only struck out that paragraph because I re-read your note and thought you'd already visited Tutorials. If you haven't, check it out.

OK! So how did you do that? Cross out the text and add an update or maybe that's all explained, but where do I look?

I'll be happy to write something up on all this and, given a few more comments, I might even understand what I'm talking about.

Incidently, I checked the "Writeup Formatting Tips" and they suggested I use <br> tag to break up the lines but elsewhere, I don't remember where, it said don't use <br>, use <br/> instead and then only sparingly. Preferably use <p>

nedals, Monk with reputation:0 (What's that about?) :-(

1. The cross out is achieved by the proper html tags. I believe the one in question is <STRIKE> Like this Perlmonks allows certain HTML tags in posts (indeed requires a minimum knowledge, which you seem to have :) )
2. As an unwritten custom, Monks don't like to delete info. A post you made may already have comments from others. Rather than leave bad info out, it's customary to correct any bad info, and leave an indication that you did so. Sometimes through strikethrough, sometimes just with an brief note labeled "Update" at the bottom.
3. Note that you can (in general, I believe each section has it's own rules), edit a comment in a thread, but not the node that begins one. Thus, you can edit your question that I'm replying to.
4. Reputation comes in two parts: A node gets voted up or down by other users on Perlmonks. (When to vote up or down is the subject of much debate, but in generic terms up is good and down is bad. The sum of plus and minues is the nodes repuation. The other half is a user's reputation. As you write nodes that gain or lose reputation, some of that reputation is associated with you. (Generally this is referred to as Experience). As you gain experience, you will increase in level, until you achieve Sainthood. There are a few Level Powers associated with making levels, but in general it's just an indication of how much a given monk supports perlmonks. (At your next level, which doesn't take long, you will gain the ability to vote on nodes, for example)

Hope that helps!

Update: Here are some links that might be useful:

What is reputation?
Voting/Experience System
Number of Monks by Level

The site relies on [X]HTML to present content, so you can use a subset of HTML tags to format your post. Please note that we've tried to provide flexibility while restricting the possibility for abuse. While we don't have a lot of trouble, we ocassionally get invaded by a troll or two and then have to regrettably lock things down a little tighter.

So, to answer your first question, VSarkiss edited his reply, added <strike> tags to the text he felt was no longer needed, added the additional text, and then used <STRONG> tags¹ to highlight the word Update.

(By the way, that's a local convention we use to indicate that we've edited our posts, either by adding additional information or by removing stuff that's no longer relevant. The idea being to let people know that's things have changed and that it might be worth re-reading the node.)

We appreciate any contributions that folks are willing to make. There are a few of us trying to keep the site up to date. We would rather folks slouch about for a time, get their sea legs so to speak, and then think about the contributions they can bring to the table. We're a varied and talented bunch and we fully appreciate the unique contributions that people are willing to offer. It's part of the ethic of the place, one I've personally found very rewarding.

As far as the inconsistent formatting tips go, well, that's part of the evolutionary process. You may have noticed that more than 200,000 nodes have been posted since the Gates were first flung wide. That's a lot of content to keep clean. Again, we're trying to get the job done, but it's mostly a volunteer effort, so things get done when they get done.

Some of the material predates the current suggestions from the W3C. That's why you'll see different suggestions. Personally, I prefer to see people use <P>...</P> tags to mark their paragraphs, but it's a question of style in some respect.

We are working to make the site more XML compliant, so we've asked people to begin being more aware of XML strictness in their markup, e.g. <BR /> instead of <BR>. While it's not fully clear what (if any) impact this will have on future site changes, it seems prudent to reduce the possibility of time-consuming changes should the data need to be converted at some point.

Finally, a Reputation of zero means you haven't earned any experience yet. That'll change as you participate and the basics are covered here.

I would recommend checking out the Tutorial section VSarkiss struck through, as well as this most excellent home node. There's a wealth of material covering the local culture and preferred operating style. It will also provide insight into the mindset and history of the site. It may even answer some of your questions in more detail.

--f

¹ - Update: Replaced reference to <B> tags with more accurate reference to <STRONG> tags, after VSarkiss gently corrected my mistake via /msg. Thanks!

What the others missed, I think, is how you get to the place to edit your node, although demerphq mentioned the procedure: click on a reply's title. This is called reparenting, since the page you get lists displays reply as the parent and shows the attached subthread below it. If the new parent was a post of yours, you also get a form to edit it.

Makeshifts last the longest.

As swiftone mentioned the appropriate links above, I will mention something else about the experience system. As you gain experience points, the experience node will also tell you how many points you require to achieve the next level. When you *finally* achieve the vaunted level of Saint, you then are told how many experience points you need to reach that of vroom, who is mostly responsible for this site. As of this post, I need another 997,586 experience points to get there :)

TStanley
--------
It is God's job to forgive Osama Bin Laden. It is our job to arrange the meeting -- General Norman Schwartzkopf

It's much easier to find answers to questions when you register and log in prior to posting your question. The number of posts by Anonymous Monks are great and tend to get lost in the crowd.