I agree with you -- except when I want to post something off topic.

For example, a while back, I asked a question about where the best postgres forums were, because I know a lot of perl people are also postgres people. I marked the question as OT, and got some downvotes anyway. The downvotes hurt my pride a little, but do I regret I asked the question? Basically no, I don't, I got good help.

Could I have figured out the same thing just by googling around? Maybe, but I have come to rely on the collective wisdom of the monastery, and I don't want to censor myself if I feel intimidated by something, whatever, and feel like posting to perlmonks could help me grope towards an answer. And yes, maybe now that I know the ropes a little better I would have asked in the cb, but at that point I was a little cb shy. So what?

Because of the downvotes and the rebuking, I won't post OT casually, but only when I feel desperate. In other words, my feeling is that the existing mechanisms for keeping the discussion are on topic suffice.

I sometimes answer OT questions myself, maybe rebukinglyly, but I answer them. It's all about helping people that need help, including myself when I need it.

Like everything else, moderation (as in the opposite of extremism) is the key. Some questions *are* maybe so off topic they shouldn't even get approved. But my impulse is more to err on the side of tolerance.

In reply to Re: Rule change re: reaping OT nodes by tphyahoo
in thread Rule change re: reaping OT nodes by friedo

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