I recently joined PerlMonks and to be honest, initially I did not quite like this place. It seemed to ostentatious and rude with the users. The notion of reputation, experience points, the power of some one to just delete/edit your writeup and several such things. I thought I deserve a better respect and freedom

I am a user of different kinds of forums and sites, where I can just speak my mind, pose my problem and wait for someone to respond. There are no rules at such places. There are merely some guidelines, which no one bothers to follow and one cant be punished or rebuked for being sloppy

If I do the same kind of thing here, I can be chained by janitors, threatened by users through reputation. Essentially, I could afford to be sloppy. I need to frame my question very clearly and get to the point correctly and format my write up neatly, else I will be bombarded

After reading review about this book The cult of Amateur in NYT I suddenly realized how PM is quite different from the places where the author is referring. It struck to me how those rebukes made me think twice, search thrice before posting anything. It is bringing the best of me and in esesnce trying to make everyone act their best

Here what matters is quality of the content rather than the quantity. The site's primary objective is to spread Perl and solve meaningful problems not commercialization

I do not see any ideas of commercialization of the site- it does not even Adsense. So, this is a place where Perl lovers gather and muse and show what wonderful things can be done with Perl. Other than love for Perl and programming and to share and increase knowledge there is no other materialistic gains expected by any one - not even the maintainers.

It is not quite often you find a place over the net, which forces the users to go through several articles before posting anything, which forces you to preview the content before posting. It literally ushers users to be serious. While other places literally beg users to post something, even crap, this place is different. And the remarkable thing is this place maintains a kind of humor and interest with those rankings, XP etc..

PM is a quite different place, whose philosophy right from the beginning is what should be the philosophy behind other sites. I am sure that after a while of this user-generated content bubble and flow of amateur content over the WWW. Soon, sites with quality content will gain popularity. And PerlMonks will be an example of other sites. Hail PerlMonks! I revere you

In reply to Why Perl Monks is a place to be reverred by perllove

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