Greetings all. Like virtually all of you, I'm assuming, I admire and respect this site as strongly as I recommend and advocate its use among all those who practice or want to learn Perl. In other words, I love this site. I also appreciate the dialog that goes on here. However, there's an interesting trend that I've noticed that, at first, strikes me as being somewhat bad. Perhaps I'm wrong, but here goes.

I've notice that, on occation, some monks will reply to questions posted in "Seekers of Perl Wisdom" with messages quoting only a module name for a solution. Immediately thereafter, they (maybe) down-vote that node because the user didn't know about or search for the module. For example, someone might ask, "How do I load variables sent from an HTML form submitted to a Perl CGI?" The reply might be as simple as, "Try use CGI;!" Now yes, I agree, CGI.pm should almost be required if you're going to write a Perl CGI. But does this reply really help the poster of the question?

My observation, perhaps wrong, is that if a student of the mysteries of Perl were to post such a basic question, s/he would not find the "module name only reply" at all useful. If the objective of this site is to force Perl newbies to RTFM and fumble around with newbie code and no support in an attempt to gain familiarity with modules and the language in general through trial and error, fine. But I submit that one of the great abilities of this site is to mentor the Perl newbie (or not so newbie) in his/her quest to learn. What possible harm would come from actually writing a short couple of lines of code after you reference a module showing a basic way to use that module in the way the question poster needs?

Now about the down-voting of nodes that are replied to by "module name only" replies: Granted, in the example I used above, the user really should have used the search feature. They'd get a wealth of information on the subject and certainly some good cut-n-paste code too. But still, if the user is a real newbie, is down-voting his/her node really going to foster interest in that user to repost another question? Generally, I don't down-vote the initial node on a discussion thread in "Seekers" because I don't want that user to feel like they don't want to ask a question for fear of loosing points. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I think down-voting should be limited to replies. Some replies definately deserve down-voting. Don't get me wrong. I totally support the idea of completely hidden voting as well as unrestricted voting (as the system is setup now). But perhaps consideration should be made to the Perl knowledge/skill level of the question poster. Keeping in mind always that at one time we were all at that level.

-gryphon

In reply to Don't just provide a module name by gryphon

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.