May I humbly suggest that you take a few moments to reflect on what you want out of this site and your participation in it?

You appear to know Perl quite well. The fact that you've published something in TPJ is a good thing. Since you offer consulting services, you clearly have a certain amount of confidence with the language and its idiosyncracies. These are accomplishements to be proud of.

Unfortunately, you appear to be somewhat, er, agressive when defending your ideas and/or presenting conclusions you've drawn from your observations.

This is where, I think, you're rubbing people a little raw.

As nearly everyone's grandmother has said at some point: You'll attract more flies with honey than vinegar.

If, as you say, you've got a couple of ideas that will help in that regard, I think you'll find progress toward whatever goals you choose for yourself.

It may help to consider the Monastary as a team of professionals, each offering free advice in their spare moments. I'm not sure what your workload is, but I'm reasonably certain that some folks spend far too much time out here, at the risk of their deadlines. Personally, I call that dedication, something worthy of respect in itself.

It may also help to review the posts from monks who consistently demonstrate a genuine desire to help others learn perl as well as they do. With no disrespect to anyone not listed in the following, here's a short list of the people I've come to respect over the last several weeks (in no particular order): merlyn, vroom, chromatic, ybiC, tilly, jcwren, Fastolfe, PsychoSpunk, japhy, Ovid, kudra, and several others that I can't recall off the top of my head. Each of these have gone out of their way to share their knowledge and to invest their time into specific problems.

I believe you'll find these folks rarely make absolute statements or wild claims. Sure, there are noted exceptions, with appropriate reputations on those posts. However, the overall tendency seems to be a spirit of teamwork and a desire to promote the best practices of Perl.

My point is: There is more than one way to earn accolades, but respect can only be earned through demonstrated commitment to an ideal. It takes a lot of hard work. It also takes the maturity to accept ones limitations and mistakes. We need to learn from what we do poorly and move on. Work with the team toward the goals of the Monastary.

You're clearly capable of doing the work and you've expressed a willingness to do it. Good.

Let's move on and see how things progress, okay?

--f

P.S. I would also suggest you choose a single 'nym and stick with it. Multiple personalities don't appear to be overly popular here. Also, please try to avoid trolling.

I normally refrain from posting "I agree" and "me too" nodes.

But (aside from mistaking me as being clueful {grin} ) this is the best example of constructive criticism I've seen in a damian1301's age.   footpad++ for both message and delivery.
    cheers,
    Don
    striving for Perl Adept
    (it's pronounced "why-bick")

...certain people will attack you blindly and hatefully after awhile even if you are correct

I read your last post and you were complaining about the length function not being intuitive. One point you made was

it may be best for a trained Perl programmer, but think from the mind of your boss or your secretary or someone else who just wants something simple and fast ...

I also find it interesting that in this node, you respond as metaperl to one of your own posts without cluing people in to who you are and with a reference to a programming language "whose stated intent is to replace Perl." If you don't like Perl, don't use it. It's that simple. There's nothing wrong with not liking Perl, but don't keep coming back to Perl programmers and telling them that there language is broken (unless you're right).

Cheers,
Ovid

Join the Perlmonks Setiathome Group or just click on the the link and check out our stats.

Maybe I am a little naive, but this suggests to me that the system can be seriously abused. When people use pseudonyms, trust becomes very important. The recent controversy over logging of the chatterbox is a case in point. The use of alternate logins is just as serious, in my opinion.

-----
"Computeri non cogitant, ergo non sunt"

And while I can see merlyn's point to an extent, you have provided enough service as an agitator that one more agitation shouldn't be enough to condem you as untrustworthy, if anything, your stubborn insistence on staying here is sort of admirable. As long as you don't swing over too far toward the "I told you all so" side. =)

--
$you = new YOU;
honk() if $you->love(perl)

If you're expecting that people will not build a reputation based on past posts, you are quite naive. I've just reviewed the things you've said as metaperl, and never once did you come to to table without having done your homework or attacking Perl when really it was something you did wrong. Both things which you as princepawn eventually got a reputation for.

I don't think you could have been metaperl without having also been princepawn for a while. You learned what pushed people's buttons here as princepawn, and you consciously avoided those with metaperl.

Sure, I could create other_guy that says only uncontroversial things too, and probably would have gotten to saint a bit faster. But I believe that would have been an abuse of the XP system.

You are using pseudonyms to hide, and for me, that just lost my trust of you. I hope you're happy with that. I feel conned. And I don't like feeling conned. I won't be helping princepawn or metaperl any more. Period. And I would ask others to join me in this stand.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

That's your perogative, but I can't agree.

Neither of us get paid to post here, and it's a hobby for both of us (though it relates strongly to our respective jobs), so I do appreciate the time you've spent here answering questions.

That said, I don't see anything hostile in princepawn's methods or intents. Posting with a second account is certainly a control operation to see if he's attracted serial downvoters.

Whatever the case, I'm willing to answer an honest question from anyone, be it a person who doesn't want to seem wishy washy by prefacing every question with the phrase "Maybe I just don't understand things, but here is what I tried and I can't seem to get it to work" to a fat Alaskan electrician who says, "What's wrong with this guestbook from scriptarchive?"

When people don't put forth a reasonable amount of effort to answer their own questions, or become abusive, defensive, or offensive, then I won't help.

I think people have the capacity to change and to grow, and I like to give them the opportunity to do so. There's not much written on a web site or on Usenet or in an IRC channel that's worth getting angry about.

(and the more tricky concepts I explain, the more likely people will realize my untapped brilliance and pay me lots of money to write chromatic's guide to doing cool stuff)

Inaccuracy of content should not be a reason for downvoting. Maybe not a reason for upvoting; but posting, and doing so after sensible amounts of reasoning, as Princepawn normally does, shouldn't be punished. (The Apparent Inconsistencies thread that he started is probably the most interesting one in the past days.)

As for tone, I don't care about tone! Stronger opinions make for vivid discussions!

Princepawn is entitled to post what he wills (within reasonable limits) and should accept what he gets (-- or ++). Hiding under another name just rubs the wrong way.

If Princepawn wants to change the tone of his posts, great. You just do not need to change your name to do that.

Roy Alan