Thanks muchly for your time. The pointer (and probably the service) is exactly what I needed. My attempts at searches with google turned up so much and so in-depth I couldn't see the wood for the trees!

it's not like it really makes any difference, but rather than just marking a post down, it helps to let the person know 'why' you've marked it down.

if OT questions here are to be treated with such total scorn (even when the poster clearly knows (s)he's OT, and is apologetic about it, but still needs help) here, then why aren't such posts simply deleted?

or perhaps they are... i don't know enough about this place yet.

I just ++ed you for answering a question well. I find it annoying that such questions are immediately barked at. I just yesterday read a bunch of nodes on the issue of moderation/consideration. The consensus is that we are to allow some offtopic content esp if it can clearly have some relevance to the ordinary monk's life with Perl. And I believe this is relevant to anyone who might try placing scripts online; which is a large amount of the monks.

I tried looking around, but couldn't find the nodes in question anymore. I believe we really need to have everyone who has consideration powers read up a bit on how to use them; too much is considered and too often is it reaped, in my opinion.

There's a difference between offtopic as in discussing the latest Britney Spears and offtopic as in discussing server maintenance business.

Makeshifts last the longest.

Well, community standards are just that.. standards set by the community.

That said, i agree that there's a vast difference between OT things like "hot bi girl looking for geeky perl coders" and BrowserUK's question.

perhaps there should be a separate area for such related, but not-strictly-Perl questions?
Sort of a 'sump' for the things that might be relevant to a lot of folks' lives, but not quite up to the 'standards' of the regular SoPW or whatever.

hmmm...

While the poster was apologetic, it's not like there aren't a million places on the web this is covered. It would only take a second to search google to get some info. If the poster had paid a little due diligence and asked a specific question, it probably would fair a little better.

-Lee

"To be civilized is to deny one's nature."

I am (as yet) unaware of what -- and ++ or "consideration rights" are... I'll leave those subjects to others.

I DID do google searches and DID read a lot of stuff, which was either of the commercial "transfer your domain to us and for a fee we will host your domain and give a free web page with a free guest book and pretty pictures and everything variety". Or of the "BIND 4 -v- BIND 8 -v- MS DNS" and "RFC nnnn recommends this and RFC recommends that" variety.

Whilst a professional programmer of many years standing, I am a newbie at Perl, a newbie at server management and a newie here. My reasons for asking (my clearly labelled) OT post here, was because (I thought) that in these hallowed halls, there maybe many who have been throught this learning process and that may be able to short ciruit my climb.

I diliberately lablelled the subject as OFF topic, so those for whom this was a problem could avoid wasting their time by simply skipping over it.

I kept it short (ie. no long explainations of the previous searching I had done in my attempts to find a starting point, nor why I wanted to serve from my own server (cos I want to use it to learn and develop my understanding NOT to most pics of my holidays), so as to avoid wasting any more time of those kind persons that did choose to read my OT question.

And I thanked the kind person that gave me my needle in the (as you stated) "million places on the web" haystack. I would have asked a "more specific question" had I known enough to frame such a question.

The purpose if this post is not to beligerate whomever --'d me - I am guessing as to what that means anyway. I assume it has something to do with the (XP) experience level shown on my "homenode". In another place on a different subject, (actually several) I was the wizard. My purpose here is not to be seen as a wizard, but simply to add a new and interesting string to my bow, and to learn (and maybe help if I get the opportunity).

I will also not defend my choice of this place to ask my question: It seemed like the obvious place.

The real purpose of this post is to simply ask: was my approach to asking an OT question inconsiderate or wrong? Are off topic questions completely disallowed?

Thanks for your time.