I'm amazed at the response that I've gotten from my minor comment about the "Stumbit" button. I'm not referring to the postings--those are pretty interesting. What I'm amazed at are the reputation points for my posting. It's the only posting for which I have received a negative point total. What's more interesting, though, is that sometimes when I check, the reputation points are at zero, other times I'm down one or two, and others I'm up one. It really has been a neck-and-neck race on this issue. I never would have thought that the correcting of the spelling on the most common of HTML buttons would bring out such a divided interest amongst the monks.
I see a similar banter going on with the discussion of the text for the navigation bar link for "Seekers of Perl Wisdom" sometimes wrapping to the next line. There's also some curious comments going on in a posting about the Node Reaper and whether he should or should not be more polite. That's amazing! We're discussing whether a semi-mythical character, named as he is to give a certain aura of grimness, should be friendly. Obviously I can't resist these discussions either as I have contributed to them. So please don't think I'm condemning them or attempting to criticize anyone. Instead, I'm leading to an observation for discussion.
Here's the meditative point: These postings and others like them seem to say something about us and this community. I'm not sure what, but I thought I'd call upon the meditators among us for their thoughts.
Here are some possibilities I'll through out to start: Those of us, like myself that call for tidiness on the site (e.g., the non-breaking spaces and the spelling) are drawn to Perl, itself because one can write code in a tidy manner. For instance, extra spaces are ignored; the language isn't overly wordy, while many of the commands are English-like making for code that's easier on the eyes; most of the commands are in lower case, again easier on the eyes; comments can be disbursed throughout the code for more clarity and visual organization. The result: this community is filled with people who make picky comments about spelling and line wraps.
Here's another take for those of us who like things to be different and a little unruly (e.g, those who like Stumbit and those who, like me, like the mysterious and not so socially conscientious Node Reaper). Perl is different. Those of us who are different and like to be different, like Perl because it's different. And yet, since many of its roots are in other languages, it's very familiar in an important way, in a "true" way. (Boy that's a meditative statement for you.) Those who like "Stumbit", I would suggest, also like Perl because it's not so uptight like other languages can be. It's not controled by Microsoft, so we're told that we're not supposed to like it. However, we feel comfortable with it. The result: we feel comfortable with "Stumbit" and if we keep that spelling, which I now hope we do, we will all chuckle every time we read the posting of a novice pointing out that it's misspelled.
The result of all of this, besides that it reveals that I'm both overly tidy and too laid back, is that some times I'm down by one for my Stumbit posting and other times I'm up by one.
Edit Petruchio Sun Dec 23 15:48:41 UTC 2001 - Changed links to square bracket notation, so as not to log out unsuspecting monks.
In reply to Stumbit is Not a Curse by Spenser
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