And this particular monk has contributed over 200 negative posts.

• 500/23774 = 2.1%

  I've also contributed 2 with a reputation over 200; 29 with a reputation over 100; and 150 that exceed his best ever of a paltry 69

• 200/7798 = 2.56%

Now who's the bad guy?

Wow, was this BrowserUK's last post? A toys out the pram moment? I'm returning after years away and trying to work out what I missed. What other great dramas have there been?

Cheers,
R.

Pereant, qui ante nos nostra dixerunt!

Wow, was this BrowserUK's last post? A toys out the pram moment? I'm returning after years away and trying to work out what I missed. What other great dramas have there been?

Sadly, BrowserUk is not the only monk to spit the dummy and start deleting their posts. Fortunately, the gods here at PM have been able to restore most of the content deleted by disgruntled vandals over the years - and then lock the account/s to stop repeat acts of vandalism.

As you might expect, I keep a list of References on this unfortunate topic:

• Perl Monks Vandalism and Missing Monks References 🧌

... trying to work out what I missed

As for changes to the site itself, see Tidings.

> I'm returning after years away and trying to work out what I missed. What other great dramas have there been?

Top 10 PerlMonks Drama Threads (2015‑2025)

Detailed Summaries

Rank	Thread	Year	Key participants	Main points of contention	Outcome
1	The Great CPAN Migration Debate	2016	@csh, @brian, @johndoe	Whether to move widely‑used CPAN modules into a private internal mirror to improve stability.	Consensus to keep core modules on CPAN, create a vetted internal mirror for critical packages.
2	The ‘use strict;’ Controversy	2017	@simon, @lisa, @perl‑guru	Some legacy projects resisted mandatory use strict;, claiming it broke existing code.	Majority adopted strict with gradual refactoring; older code marked with no strict where unavoidable.
3	Perl 6 vs. Perl 5: The Never‑Ending War	2018	@rjbs, @mike, @perl‑dev	Arguments over which language to invest in; Perl 6 (Raku) was seen as a fork.	Agreement that Perl 5 remains production‑ready; Perl 6 development continues separately.
4	The ‘undef’ Bug That Broke Production	2019	@alex, @opslead, @bughunter	A subtle undef value propagated through a hash, causing a fatal error in a web service.	Created a checklist for defined checks; added unit tests for edge cases.
5	Module Naming Wars: Foo::Bar vs. Bar::Foo	2020	@nathan, @carl, @module‑maintainer	Two competing modules claimed the same namespace, leading to load‑order conflicts.	Adopted the CPAN naming guidelines; one module renamed to avoid clash.
6	The ‘no warnings’ Abuse Scandal	2021	@security, @devlead, @auditor	Developers suppressed warnings to hide bugs, later discovered during a security audit.	Instituted a policy: no warnings only allowed in isolated test files, not production code.
7	Perl 7 Announcement Fallout	2022	@perl‑core, @community, @early‑adopter	Mixed reactions to the proposed Perl 7 features (e.g., default use v5.30).	Core team postponed major changes; offered a migration guide for early adopters.
8	The ‘eval’ Security Nightmare	2023	@sec‑team, @devops, @hacker	An eval of user‑controlled data led to remote code execution in a CGI script.	Recommended replacing eval with safe parsers; added static analysis checks.
9	Legacy Code Refactor Showdown	2024	@legacy‑owner, @refactor‑guru, @project‑lead	Debate over whether to rewrite a decade‑old codebase or incrementally refactor.	Decided on incremental refactor with automated test coverage to minimize risk.
10	The ‘use v5.30;’ Compatibility Rift	2025	@new‑dev, @maintainer, @ops	New projects demanded use v5.30; while older systems failed on newer syntax.	Established a compatibility matrix; older services locked to v5.28, new ones to v5.30.

Yes it's AI slop...

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
see Wikisyntax for the Monastery}

> and 150 that exceed his best ever of a paltry 69

Now let's look at the details and eliminate the decline in votes over the years.

My 5 best rated post are

• Re: I want you to convince me to learn Perl 69 rep 2013-09-25 01:04
• Re: Syntax explanation required 64 rep 2013-01-02 13:35
• simple as math 58 rep 2013-12-24 21:33
• Deflation and "Selected Best Nodes" 57 rep 2014-01-07 16:16
• Re: eq vs == 55 rep 2009-11-10 13:06

Your best nodes per year

• 2013 Re: Is this ancient perl or just a cargo cult? 56 rep 2013-11-01 06:20
• 2014 is Re^2: Check randomly generated numbers have not been used before 66 rep 2014-06-20 21:28
• 2009 is Re: sorting very large text files 79 rep 2009-12-19 09:07 *

I must admit I expected a bigger gap between Great BUK vs mini me.

(Even that I personally don't give much about the up-vote stats and all their flaws, I'm afraid this might really hurt your ego ... sorry! )

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery FootballPerl is like chess, only without the dice}

*) minus my up-vote to see the result

update

and to be fair your negative posts per year

{
  2002 => 5,
  2003 => 15,
  2004 => 38,
  2005 => 109,
  2006 => 41,
  2007 => 21,
  2008 => 18,
  2009 => 13,
  2010 => 91,
  2011 => 49,
  2012 => 32,
  2013 => 19,
  2014 => 6,
  2015 => 17,
  2016 => 25,
  2017 => 10,
  2018 => 10,
  2019 => 4,
}
[download]

That's 294 since I joined, almost 4 times more than "paltry" me.

Your numbers of my negative posts are wrong. (by factor 3).

And this even after you started down-voting old posts of mine. *

update

Regarding the vanity about your best posts - sigh - all top 50 were written before I even joined.

It's a commonplace that it was far easier to collect reputation in the golden past.

Otherwise brilliant "late comers" like haukex and choroba would easily be top twenty and ten respectively.

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery FootballPerl is like chess, only without the dice}

*) Though I'm not sure about the effect of my "fan club", because mass down votes used to be corrected by the vote fairy IIRC.

update

poultry?