If you took a close look at the timestamps on those replies, they were probably posted very close to each other. The fact that there were three nearly identical replies shows you that:

1. There are a lot of people following this site that wish to answer questions for people
2. Those people are looking at new posts frequently enough that several of them will see a new post at the same time
3. Those people are very knowledgable about perl and the best practices for using perl or else they'd be coming up with different answers

I think I would rather see three similar answers to a question than no reply at all (which is the likely result in a lot of other places like newsgroups).

---
print map { my ($m)=1<<hex($_)&11?' ':'';
$m.=substr('AHJPacehklnorstu',hex($_),1) }
split //,'2fde0abe76c36c914586c';
[download]

Many of these happen when folks write their replies near simultaneously - either at a point where they haven't seen anyone else's reply yet, or at least not one mentioning the point they bring up.

There doesn't seem to be much that can sensibly done about this - nor, however, does it really seem to be a problem.

There has been discussion of this before at Possible first post syndrome remedy (including a pretty humourous spinoff by ignatz, which alone makes the thread worth a read).

Update: see? This thread is a perfect demonstration of the effect. :)

Makeshifts last the longest.

It's also highly unlikely that the duplicate replies match word for word, due to the different styles of answering questions monks employ. To illustrate, one monk might say "You'll need to use <this module> - see the docs"; another might say "You'll need to use <this module>" and follow it with a brief but useful paragraph of tips on implementing this. A further monk may just give a single link to a node that has already covered the question, with no explanation at all.

All of these answers are correct, and I think the only person who has the ability to say whether or not an answer was helpful to them is the person who asked the question in the first place.

-- Rozallin J. Thompson
The Webmistress who doesn't hesitate to use strict;

I didn't vote either way on your post. You've only been here for a month, and I know it can take longer than that to get comfortable with the site and its culture. It certainly took me some time. Your question was a bit naive maybe, but that comes with the territory. I didn't think it was a bad one per se - an opportunity to learn about the general view on things at the monastery, if nothing else.

Makeshifts last the longest.