Which types of Perl questions tend to get a better discussion here than on c.l.p.misc? And vice versa?

I have personal biases that make me tend to post here before I will post to a newsgroup in general. First off I like the community feel here at Perl Monks a lot more than what I experience in a newsgroup.

Don't get me wrong. I have long been a denizen of USENET as it was once called. I also belong to several email lists one of which is specifically a list oriented to beginners to Perl.

The flood of newbies (and I blame AOL and WebTV among others for this) and the unfavorable signal to noise ration have dulled my desire to participate in USENET newsgroups any more. I still do, but less frequently than I used to.

Now: when to post in general.

Before I post to any forum I ask myself these general questions:

• Have I done a thorough job of researching the problem?
• Have I done a thorough job of definining the problem set?
• Will this post be beneficial to the community?

Once I have answered those questions I then make a decision to post or not to post and where.

The beauty of having mutiple places to post though is the variety of answers you have the potential of geting. So if I can't get an answer or solution here, I might post elsewhere.

Having said that though I must say that one of the things that has kept me here is the fact that historically I have gotten answers to my own questions more frequently and better quality answers. I think the reason the quality of the anwers here is better is the fact that there is a peer review that happens to every post on this website. Something that USENET doesn't have the facility for other than flaming folks. All flaming does is drive people away and not necessarily the folks being flamed either. I know that if I see too many flame wars happening in a particular forum (such as I used to see in an animal behavior forum I used to participate in) I tend to shy away. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

So, post away and see if I'm not right in the long run.

Note: I'm well aware of c.l.p.misc's many shortcomings, so you don't, for example, need to denounce newbies who fail to read the Posting Guidelines there.

I'm glad I re-read your post before responding .. while I found c.l.p.m useful, it was really difficult (not to mention time-consuming) to wade through all of the junk, spam and idiots to get to the few interesting discussions.

I don't think I've posted a single Perl question to a news group once since joining Perl Monks about three years ago. While Abigail or Merlyn may respond, one may also expect to hear from an 'expert' (someone who skipped the hard parts in a SAMS book on Perl) or some psychotic spew from PurlGurl/Godzilla. In addition, I find the web interface of Perl Monks much more friendly than the 80s BBS style interface I have to deal with on a newsgroup.

I'd say most Perl questions of all levels get better treatment here than on CLPM. Although Abigail does still post typically excellent answers on CLPM; that's one of the (few) things PM currently lacks.

I've noticed that the fraction of hostile posts on PM is much less than that on CLPM, maybe because of the moderation scheme. I'd suggest that's why PM is more beginner-friendly than CLPM.

Personally, I would post here exclusively. That's partly because floating a newsgroup configuration between the many machines I work on is very annoying. Then there's that whole thing where my employer blocks Usenet (and even Google Groups). So, if I have questions that are even vaguely work-related, this is the only place to ask, really.

Add to that the ability to have a productive conversation, and the possibility of updating one's question (to rephrase or add more detail, perhaps) make for a better overall experience. If nodes had a wiki-esque version history, this place would be just about perfect for my tastes.