Perhaps a voluntary method would be more called for- something like "Associate your School or Organization with Perl at PerlMonks" or something where schools might post various interesting public lectures, offered perl courses, perlmonks currently at that location, and other relevant information. That would provide a useful forum for perl users everywhere.

AgentM Systems nor Nasca Enterprises nor Bone::Easy nor Macperl is responsible for the comments made by AgentM. Remember, you can build any logical system with NOR.

I am more than happy to offer advice where I can to anyone asking a question, be it homework or workwork (hmmm... /me runs off to register workwork.com), but (and I don't think I'm alone in this), I do want some effort and honesty on the part of the questioner. What I want is some way to ensure that the time and effort expended by those people contributing here is not wasted on people who:
- can't be bothered to edit the text of the homework assignment down to what is actually giving them trouble
- want the solution e-mailed directly to them so they needn't return here to risk perhaps learning by observing the flow of knowledge
- can't be bothered to even read the answers they've already received (e.g.here and here)

I think it would be good if everyone with a question registered, but I realize that this restriction would probably shut out some people, so that's not on either.

How about a separate section for homework? Would honest students voluntarily post in an area where they know they would not get a complete shrink-wrapped solution? I think and hope so, but I just don't know. Either that or how about all Monks (me included) just stop complaining about homework questions? We could agree to just ignore them or respond as we wish, but this debate is getting tiresome. I like to tell people "don't complain unless you're willing to work on a solution", and that's why I'm writing this, but if my fellow monks want to agree to drop the issue altogether, I'll go along with that too.

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I'd like to be able to assign to an luser

Maybe a simple guide to postings should be written and made obvious to posters of questions. Maybe, in fact, only obvious to Anonymous Monk. This would contain such points as you have mentioned above. I have worked in technical support before and been faced with many an inappropriate question. It's annoying, but if people do not know what to ask, or how to ask it ... we can't expect them to get it right. Maybe all that is needed is a little education.

I commend the idea to the house.

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Brother Marvell

I think anonymous should continue to be truly anonymous.

Much of the homework questions are somewhat obvious and seem to be treated accordingly by the most adept of our monks. And if some students get work done for them...they get a freebee. they will eventually have to do the work in the end, so it all evens out it seems (or not). plus, others not doing homework might even learn from an answer, so someone not cheating gains enlightenment.

above all else, I'll always go with...anonymous should mean anonymous.

update:On double/triple postings...not sure how the data here is stored (mySql?), but it seems Perl would the perfect tool for determining an exact duplicte post and perhaps taking care of it :-) perhaps prompting the poster..."are you sure, this appears to be a duplicate post" prior to commit. doesn't happen often enough to bug me in the least, but it does present opportunity for a Perl "solution"...

Sigh. No lessons learned from USENET?

Just ignore what you don't want to read. Maybe a killfile feature is missing here, but basically, just hit the "Back" button.

Christian Lemburg
Brainbench MVP for Perl
http://www.brainbench.com

Oh I learned plenty from USENET over the many years I read it daily, and I still do read it from time to time when I can. Alas, even with killfiles it's often just too much noise and not enough signal to make it worthwhile anymore. My ideal is that a site like this could and would be different, something like the difference between open and moderated newsgroups, but I guess that is not to be. I hear you, I appreciate the advice, and I'll start ignoring them.

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I'd like to be able to assign to an luser

If there's something to be learned from USENET, it should be the various ways that USENET could be improved upon. A little probing in that direction isn't a bad thing.

There are not that many of those type things (I think) relative to "real" questions for it to be a great problem.

*shrug* at least that is how I see it.

Roy Alan

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Brother Marvell

Doesn't that rather defeat the point of what is going on here. It seems to me that a lot of what we do beyond sharing and learning from eachother is to answer the questions of the masses. If we restrict to only registered monks, I find it hard to believe that so many people will ask, and with that we become an almost closed community.

Having said that, it may not be the case that Anonymous Monk has not asked that many questions. Does anyone have stats?

What would be the benefit of knowing someone's email address? I maintain the point that the few people that send us their homework are going to do it from home.

At the end of the day, I think that we as individuals are best qualified to judge what we should answer. And ultimately, if someone has a question associated with their homework, there's no reason we should not help. OK, if people are to expect us to write an entire project, then that's a bit rude, but helping people out who are at school is no different to helping people at work.

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Brother Marvell

I dunno I am new here, I am not sure if it would or not. I am sure tho that registering is not a big bother. If I had a -real- question then the time taken to register would not prevent me from asking.
Also it is likely to encourage people to particiate in dialogue long term, rather than asking for help and leaving. Growing in the monastery this is where next years saints will come.
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Zigster