Re: a place for other monks?

I am actually torn here. See, I am quite intrigued by zentara's idea of a "watercooler" type of section, because main stream society is generally not interested in a lot of geek discussion, so a social outlet for programmers, located where we could simultaneously learn, research, code and have some nice relaxing social interaction (getting to know our fellow monks, making new friends, etc.) is really quite a cool situation to contemplate.

However, I also share toolic's views, about the potential for slowing down the site. Off-topic sections, would attract quite a bit of attention and newcomers (along with quite a bit of trash, I'm sure) and since I too often search and research through the site to increase my knowledge of the language, productivity and understanding, as I'm sure countless other monks do on a daily basis, I'd have to say that the need and demand for that particular benefit, is not worth compromising. Then again, how big would the compromise be?

Would it create a wonderful oppurtunity to get to know each other on a closer level, make friends and ultimately nit together a network which could now include a more social aspect...or would it create such a distraction that not only would the site slow down, but the trash it brought and the janitor's inability to keep such a busy section clean render the whole thing useless?

As I said, I'm torn. Our monks always have such good points to make about each suggestion, that just about everything brought up can be made interesting and worth a thought. One of the reasons why I love this place so much ;)!

Comment on Re: a place for other monks?

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Re^2: a place for other monks? by zentara (Archbishop) on Nov 16, 2008 at 13:04 UTC
*about the potential for slowing down the site* One thing that could be done, and would probably be needed, would be to only allow registered monks to post to a social area. If anonymous monks were allowed, it would quickly fill with spam. I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth Remember How Lucky You Are	[reply]
Re^2: a place for other monks? by sasdrtx (Friar) on Nov 16, 2008 at 14:47 UTC
I'm a little ambivalent myself. As said many times by many monks, PM is about Perl; there are an infinite number of choices for every kind of discussion already available. However, there is a social dimension to a community, even of geeks discussing their favorite language. Almost all of us feel the need to go off-topic now and then. The CB is an outlet for that, but is really ephemeral. I almost never participate because it's essentially real-time only, and I just don't click often enough to keep up. zentara's idea about limiting an off-topic forum to monks with a certain XP level (say 1 to 3) is really good. That would help keep it a community thing, not just another free-for-all. In fact, it should be invisible to the outside world. Maybe it should be excluded from search, too. Also, it could be a time-limited thing, anywhere from a week to a year. But more than the CB's 3 minutes. sas	[reply]
Re^3: a place for other monks? by koolgirl (Hermit) on Nov 17, 2008 at 16:40 UTC
++ zentara and xiaoyafeng. Both very good ides; limiting posts in the "watercooler" section to monks, and then limiting those monks to certain levels, really would be excellent ways of filtering the spam/trash/etc.	[reply]


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