i think the thread buzzcutbuddha is pointing to is On Monkness (mine, anyway).

many new monks confuse xp with experience. i, and many others that have been community members for a length of time, see it differently.

if the community at large was actually voting on perl knowledge/skill/ability, i fear there would be much more bickering and personal attacks based on downvoting. now, downvoting is rarely done, and usually explained. no one wants to offend, no one wants to be themselves downvoted.

a long time ago i updated wording in this post to avoid downvoting. that was back when i was newer to the community, and somewhat naive. i felt offended that my wording was mistaken as a personal attack. a added a winking smiley to the end of the first line, and it completely changed the context of the message.

last summer, i took a solo road trip across the country, which offered me a great deal of perspective on many aspects of my life and work. since i've returned, i've been less active as a member of this community. firstly, the knowledge contained on this site is now so great that ten minutes of SuperSearch usually gets me the answer to any nagging question i may have. secondly, it's faster for me to search the site than to wait for a well-crafted response i expect from a poster. thirdly, i vote positively only when i've learned something, and the post is well-crafted. i vote in the negative on extremely rare occasions, and always post a list of reasons. lastly, and importantly, i upvote more often for low-xp posters, to encourage them to be active in the community. this community is no more than the sum of its members. i have learned a great deal here, and if i can encourage more activity, i think it can only benefit perlmonks.

i've learned a few things since my trip. forget about xp. i will probably shake my head at the amount of xp i gain from this one post. it's not perl related. it shows nothing of my knowledge of perl. but it does show my knowledge and commitment to this perl community.

as i've said before, i say again. forget the xp, remember the experience.

~Particle

In reply to Re: Showing node writer's XP level by particle
in thread Showing node writer's XP level by ryan

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.