I am a Perl Monks Novice who is disturbed by some of the personal conflicts on the site. I'm learning a lot from Perl Monks, and I hope it will survive and thrive long enough for me to put as much back into the community as I have received. To that purpose I have written this post. I know that it is reckless for a novice to post a meditation about etiquette. To allay suspicions of egotism or XP harvesting, I am making this an Anonymous Monks post. In any case, none of the following ideas are original to me.

All of the communities that I feel attached to, except for Perl Monks, are non-internet, face-to-face communities, so I don't know if the amount backstabbing, bitterness, and open hostility on Perl Monks is typical of internet communities or not. I can say that in the face-to-face communities I've been in, it is a sign of ill health. Like a technology, a community is driven by the needs of its most influential users. If a community is controlled by people who derive satisfaction from the community via displays of power and ego support, then the community will evolve to serve their egos instead of its original purpose. People who have little influence over the community may remain out of loyalty, but they will eventually leave if the community no longer serves interests that they believe in.

I'm sure that some people have decided after reading this far which side I'm on. Frankly, I don't understand the politics here well enough to know whether I'm on a side or not. Regardless, here are my points:

• Vote on nodes, not on people. Some people evidently think that if a post is bad enough, the person posting it should be punished by down-voting other nodes that might deserve a ++ or a no-vote. This is a circumvention, albeit a technically legal one, of the policy that a person may only vote on a node once. It is childish, self-indulgent, and passive-aggressive, and it also prevents good posts from rising to the top where they might receive more attention and thus benefit the community more. Give consistent, firm, fair criticism. Don't try to drive someone out of the community or beat them into submission through insincere voting.

• A terse reply to a post is better than no reply at all. I'm basically a newbie, and sometimes I can't understand a one-line explanation. But Perl experts are busy people. How do you think they became experts? If a busy Monk refrains from answering a question because he or she feels obligated to provide a complete write-up, perhaps the question is never answered or an important issue is never brought up. Contributors should feel free to contribute what they can. Taking extra time to make the post as complete or comforting as possible is appreciated, but should not be required. Taking extra time to speculate on the personal shortcomings of the original poster is not appreciated.

• Constructive adjectives that are sometimes unjustly criticized: dangerous, unreliable, insecure, incorrect. One assumes that these words refer to code or technical comments. (If a poster explicitly applies them to another person, though, that's not good.)

• Gratuitous adjectives that are sometimes praised as "critical": stupid, careless. How can code be stupid? (I guess this is a legitimate theoretical question in AI.) These words implicitly refer to the programmer, even if they are explicitly applied to code. (For those who don't understand how "critical" can be a term of praise, I quote my handy-dandy desk dictionary: "critical …. 2. Marked by careful evaluation.")

• Remember that the Perl Monks community is about sharing Perl knowledging, helping people learn and use Perl, debating Perl issues, and keeping up with Perl news. Notice the word "Perl" in each item. If you don't get enough validation, love, and compassion elsewhere, please seek counseling. It's not healthy to depend on Perl Monks for these things. I say this primarily for the well-being of individual Perl Monks, with the well-being of the Perl Monks community a far lesser consideration. Reputation (or experience points) in the Perl Monks community is a bad proxy for your worth as a human being, and I really feel sorry for people who try to make it such by obsessing over their XP or by intentionally attacking the XP of others. In a more pragmatic vein, if your response to criticism of your code is to feel hurt or afraid, then your need for validation is inhibiting your ability to learn.

• All members of Perl Monks should be made to feel welcome, with the proviso that no one should be exempt from fair criticism. On the other hand, members should be willing to rein in their sense of humor, their personality, and even their joie de vivre if other members find it offensive. It might be suggested that Perl Monks can survive without a few malcontents who are more powerful than they deserve to be anyway. That's what Adolf Hitler thought about Albert Einstein, Theodor von Karman, Eugene Wigner, Edward Teller, John von Neumann, Wolfgang Pauli and hundreds of other brilliant intellectuals who happened to be working in Germany in the early 1930s. If you can't simply be nice, consider this: Why alienate someone who might help you solve your next problem?

I'm afraid that people will find this post ambiguous or superfluous because it doesn't directly stake out a position on, attempt to resolve, or even address some epic conflict that they personally care about. Those conflicts seem to be between people, with ideas as weapons, rather than between ideas, with people as battlegrounds. Hence, perhaps, a feeling that this meditation dodges the "real" conflict - whatever that is.

Here's hoping that this post will generate comment from all the Perl Monks, and that we will be civil while discussing civility.

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