(Shrug...)   David, in making these statements, I think you pretty much sum-up the status quo of every programming-related forum out there.   :-)   Homework is very easy to spot, as are questions from the hapless of far-far-away companies who “got the lowest bid.”   It has always seemed to me that the responses given to such things are ... ahh... very appropriate.

Nevertheless, I do think that this site remains heads-above sites like StackOverflow for Perl because it is “quite unabashedly focused on Perl.”   SO is loosely-focused, by design, whereas we by design are not.   I have often referred wanderers on SO over here to get better answers faster about Perl, and they almost-invariably do.   So, I think that we always should strive to keep that “tight subject-matter focus.”   We can’t prevent the non-Perl answers from showing up.   (There is noise on every communication channel.)   But we can continue to be the “go-to site save time come here first site” for truly Perl-related questions.   Filter out the irrelevant, yes.   But, beyond that, be wide.   If they’re using Perl and they’re stuck in the mud (whatever sort of mud it is ...), [try to] pull them out.   (Be “patient, gracious, blunt, and curt” with all the rest.)   We have all been in this quicksand, and most of us stop by frequently.