To sum up - don't worry about it.

Actually, I do think gnu@perl raises a valid point. It irks me too that there are so many postings that look like the poster is only interested in posting a reply as soon as possible - with any reply better than no reply. It then often looks like the replyer hasn't read the question, or perhaps has read the question, but a few keywords in the question just triggered a response. Is it the quest for XP - post as often as possible? Is it the short attention span people have nowadays.

On average, I only spend a few votes a day, but I vote -- much more than ++. Responses that look like the replyer didn't bother reading or understanding the question make up a fair share. Such postings are as irksome as questions where the asker of the question doesn't show any initiative. Most of us want a person asking a question to have read the documentation, and/or made an attempt to solve the problem. If we ask that from a person asking a question, is it too much to ask for a replyer to have read and understood the question?

Last week, a question was asked "What is the best way to add feature XXX to my to be written program", to which I replied that he was too early in the design phase to answer that, including explainations of why it was too early. Someone else had to critisize me for not pointing to various modules that might do that (without taking himself the trouble of listing them). That someone had clearly not read the entire question, because the question wasn't a quantitative one, but a qualitative one.

I bet the S/N ratio would increase if people replying to postings fully read the questions. But he, as long as the people voting don't read them as well, and vote ++ for useless answers, they'll stay.

Abigail

abigail-ii I think you are talking about Flat File Fun (or You Just Saved My Class) above. I did read the node, and I gave a link to Data::Dumper for one of the possible ways to store his data. Unlike you I assume the OP was not really asking what module he should use and take the first one that was posted but maybe a list of modules that could be used. I read (and still do) his question as a fact finding question to see what modules others would use to serialize his data.

Your responce says This is not an easy question to answer. No doubt, you'll see quick posts saying "use Date::Dumper", "use YAML" or some other serialization technique. But then what. So you decide the pick YAML, what's next? That's the wrong time to start asking questions. First you have to know, what is that data I need to save? Why am I saving? Is it for persistence, ... You assume the OP is going to jump on in and use Data::Dumper to serialize based on my post, then after long hours of work have a light turn on and question how he is doing it. -- I assume he is going to read the docs and see if it fits his needs (esp since he does not fully describe his structure), hell he may even have a brain and consider looking at all the options posted and chose one that fits his needs or modify the way his data is formed to make it easier to scope out the dump to disk. Just because you read a question one way does not mean the other guy answering questions or tossing info out there does not read the question.

-Waswas