Today I had a little chat over the CB with a few people regarding a particular post. I was curious why it had such a low rep and also why it had been put up for consideration. When I discussed the later with the person responsible I realized that were some good reasons, but that these reasons were not obvious to me because the question was not within my scope of experience and perhaps because I havent been around as long as the individual concerned.

Now of course its up to senior monks to chose their comment when they put a node up for consideration, and its up to peoples conscience about how they vote but it is a generally held belief that downvoting someone without explaining yourself is bad form, and I think the same is true of consideration. Now this doesnt mean that you should downvote someone and post 'Cause you have a bad attitude' or things like that, theres no point in starting a flamewar if you dont like a post. But do consider that until TheDamian completes Perl::Mindreader written feedback is about the only way the OP will know what you didnt like and be able to put effort into changing their approach. You never know, you might even get a /msg containing an apology or explaination.

OTOH there are many reasons why people might not like a post, downvote it, consider it or just plain ignore it. So a few thoughts about new posts: (this list is not in the slightest bit exhaustive

• Dont use module names as title/subjects.
• When you pick a title ask yourself if you really think that anybody would be able to find it via a search.
• If its a SOPW then before you ask do a search, at least on the same words as you will put in your title.
• Try asking on the CB _first_ if its a simple question, or if you just need a pointer in the right direction
• Post an example of code that you can't seem to figure out
• Avoid the expression 'It doesnt work'
• Read this excellent article by our very own Dominus

Oh wait. Lets do that again:

• Read this excellent article by our very own Dominus

Anyway, just felt like a post like this was needed. Its too bad to a certain degree that we dont have a set of posts like this that automatically show up on the monastery gates every now and again, and maybe always for anonymous monks and monks under a certain level.

Yves
--
You are not ready to use symrefs unless you already know why they are bad. -- tadmc (CLPM)

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