We are, if anything, more forgiving than many forums such as Usenet, or even StackOverflow for questions that aren't well related to Perl. I find there are several categories of non-Perl-related questions:

• The asker doesn't care who answers his question, or what the forum's "on-topic" is; he just wants some free code written for him and may find a sucker here, or at one of the many other places he's crossposted to. Occasionally he gets lucky, and sometimes the luck comes from PerlMonks members. Often he gets a rebuke.
• The asker has no clue about programming, or at least about the fact that Perl and PerlMonks is dedicated to Perl, not to JavaScript or HTML. Occasionally he gets lucky too. Often he gets shown the door, or at least invited to come back with a Perl question.
• The asker thinks that because his JavaScript problem comes from a Perl script that outputs JavaScript, it must be on topic. This meets with more success nowadays than in the early days of the site. It's still misguided, and is still off-topic.
• The asker thinks that he's asking a Perl question, when in fact, there's no Perl anywhere to be found. This individual is often asked how it relates to Perl, and usually he will discover as he investigates that there is no relationship to Perl.
• The asker knows he's not asking a Perl question, but has cultivated relationships here that will forgive his intrusion as long as he's clear up front that he's coming here with this question because he just can't find anyone who knows how to answer it anywhere else. This is usually a successful off-topic post; when someone comes forward saying, "I'm working on a C project and just don't know where to turn. This is off-topic, but a nudge in the right direction would really help me."... people here generally respond favorably so long as it doesn't become too frequent of an occurrence.

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