I need some advice (regarding moderation). When is a post of pure questions considered a Meditation?

There have been many good tutorial type of posts on Meditations where apparenty they belong (if not Tutorial).

There have been many good inquiry type of posts on Meditations where the authors offer many sound insights along with some questions, provocative and/or interesting.

If a post offers or teaches something, whether or not it askes any question, I feel it probably makes an acceptable Meditation. But if it's just pure question, however interesting, shouldn't it go to SoPW?

Can a post of profound questions (without offering any teaching and insight in return) be considered an epiphany and a Meditation?

Thanks.


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I know sometimes SoPW could get a lot of traffic. But most of the posts did get descent answers. Nothing wrong for a poster to repost on SoPW (after waiting for a short while) if he didn't have his problem solved. Posts appearing on the "wrong" sections could confuse new readers where they should post what, as they learn by example.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Pure questions on Meditations (agreed)
by tye (Sage) on Aug 06, 2003 at 18:53 UTC

    It is my impression that some prefer that some non-Perl questions be put in Meditations as they aren't "Seeking Perl Wisdom" even if they are only seeking wisdom and not offering any wisdom.

    My preference would be to mark such at "OT" and leave them in SoPW as I find drawing the line in the sand at "just asking question" (exactly as you have stated) to be a nice, simple division and so is easier to apply.1

    But I don't feel that strongly on the matter.

    1Note that the "primarilly about the site" division comes before the "just asking a question" division so "just asking a question primarilly about the site" goes to PMD not SoPW, IMHO.

                    - tye
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Re: Pure questions on Meditations
by ajdelore (Pilgrim) on Aug 06, 2003 at 19:12 UTC

    Well, if you are a fan of the Socratic method, then asking questions is probably the best way to think about things. :)

    It seems to me that questions that are more abstract, or don't really have one answer, are more appropriate in this section. They can generate a lot of interesting discussion that might be at a higher level than SoPW.

    Also, particularly for a thoughtful, well-considered node that takes a lot of time to prepare, the signal-to-noise ratio in SoPW means that a lot of someone's time and effort might not get the full consideration that it should.

    Speaking from personal experience, I had a major epiphany around scoping $_ in loops a while back that I put in Q&A. It seems to me that something like this, where teaching is available, should find their way into Q&A rather than meditations. The exception being something that the majority of monks, including the wise ones, might not know about.

    It is always kind of fuzzy... I guess the best policy is that good posts should always be welcome, no matter what section that they are in.

    </ajdelore>

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Re: Pure questions on Meditations
by BUU (Prior) on Aug 06, 2003 at 20:59 UTC
    My personal criteria for things of this nature is a simple question. Does it have a right answer? For example, a question like "What module should I use to parse CGI params" has two or three right answers, CGI, CGI::Lite or Apache::Request. Those are all right answers, so the question belongs in SOPW. Now a question like "Which templating system should I use?" Is much vauger and doesn't necessairly have a right answer so it belongs in meditations.
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Re: Pure questions on Meditations
by castaway (Parson) on Aug 07, 2003 at 08:22 UTC
    As far as I remember, Tutorials can't be posted directly to the Tutorials section, but need to be voted in using consideration, which is why they start out in 'Meditations'.

    (Someone correct me if I am wrong.. )

    C.

[reply]
      That's right. Before posting Running Scripts from Right-Click Context Menu in Windows, I asked where the appropriate location would be in the Chatterbox. Limbic~Region told me that Meditations was the way to go. From there, it could be considered as a Tutorial.

      Since I'm here... I was going to ask the Chatterbox-folks about this, but what happens next after a node is considered as a Tutorial? Mine was a week or so ago, but nothing's happened with it since. Does anyone know?

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        Have a look at the Nodes To Consider for the status of the consideration. In the past, nodes have usually stayed in consideration for tutorialization until they clocked up a good 150 or so total votes. Yours has about 30 so far. There is no hard and fast rule though, and how undivided the voters are may or may not accelerate the process.

        This is a monastery after all - we're in no hurry. :)

        Makeshifts last the longest.

[reply]
      One can post directly to 'Tutorials' - there's a 'Add your Tutorial' box at the bottom.

      (As it happens, mine appeared as a 'New Tutorial' for a week or so, then disappeared...I guess there may be a few tutorials in Limbo, waiting to be stuck on the main page...or maybe mine was just rejected :( )

      Ben.

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