Simple.

1. Stick around, soak up some more knowledge, and then when you can start answering questions, do so.

2. Keep asking thought- (and code-) provoking questions. It will help keep the community alive.

3. And, of course, you could always Buy Stuff. :-)

Along the lines of #1, perhaps beginner questions should be left to beginner monks to answer, unless they don't do a good job.

Hrm. That'd be relatively difficult to enforce, I'd think, though I certainly see the value. For one thing, when lots of experts start answering beginner questions, they often get into discussions about which way is (better|faster|easier to read), which can be intimidating to the person who just wants to know why print "Hello world; is printing the extra semi-colon...

I think that everyone feels uncomfortable with taking more info than they can give, and it's really uncomfortable for the first few weeks. Then you realize that there is really no way to give back as much as you take out.

This is what community is about. Those who think they give more than they get are either community leaders, or fooling themselves.

Follow the chatbox, and post where you can. Not everything is code. A lot of the draw of this site comes from its sense of community.

The path to enlightenment starts with humility, so I'm ++ your post...

P.S.-I stink at Perl, so please don't think that I am preaching this bit from some mighty place.

If you poll the people really do give more than they give back to this community, I believe most of them would mention that that is only because they already received more than they can give back.

It is the nature of knowledge that it is easier to learn than transmit, and far harder to generate than learn. As long as that remains true, the vast majority of those willing to learn will always have received more than we can give back.

I certainly know that I have!

Plus, I DO vote ;)

I was right in your shoes about two months ago (well, i'd been doing Perl for a couple years, but never doing it well :) see Thanks and Congratulations

I just try to sit back and watch, I only vote ++ because I don't know enough to see when it's wrong and when I see questions in the fields that I do know well, Databases, HTML, SQL, I make sure I offer options to solve the problems from those points of view to complement what the monks say about doing it JAPH style.

-- I'm a solipsist, and so is everyone else. (think about it)

But as others said, you can just keep getting to the point where you are answering questions, and that's good for all of us.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

Actually, keep ASKING good questions too. =) The best questions draw the best answers. I've learned more from people asking questions I THOUGHT I knew the answer for.

--
$you = new YOU;
honk() if $you->love(perl)

I have done the first, and after reading up, will do the second. Check your email, if you wish, to see why.