Actually, monks sometimes do bite. Like any group, there are occasional grouches. However, overall this is a very helpful, friendly bunch of people. If someone gets excessively hostile, others tend to downvote him or otherwise show disapproval.

I think almost everyone here understands that we were all beginners at one time. What seems like a ridiculously simple question today, was once a difficult one for us. What seems to get some monks riled up is the person who comes here and wants to be spoon-fed scripts, without making an effort to work out the problem him/herself. Most of us understand about being a beginner; but we're not so tolerant of someone who can't be bothered to help with his/her own question.

So yes, I agree that any newbie ought to speak up, as long as they've done some of the work themselves (and simply saying that they don't know where to look is a start). This is probably the most useful site I've found for getting reliable information about Perl.

2006-04-17 Retitled by planetscape, as per Monastery guidelines
Original title: 'Re: A Cautionary tale for Newbies “Monks don’t bite”'

Update: Sentence had wrong tone. Sorry!</Update>

Nicely put. I'm a recent join myself. I've found that the people here are quite reasonable. Sure, there's the occasional polite post to inform us of How (Not) To Ask A Question, but overall they tend to be polite.

I think it's due to the experience system--I suspect that the offensive ones just aren't destined for sainthood! 8^)

(Aside: I find the experience system quite amusing--I've been surfing the net for a bazillion years, and ever since I got a few XP for helping someone out with a question, I've been drawn back time and again to do more. Nearly addictive!)

--roboticus

I have to agree about the XP system. I notice that XP is not usually issued for doing something extraordinary complicated, but something that is simple and explained well.

This node was around 40 rep for explaining the difference in localtime. Not exactly rocket science but evidently people seemed to think it was useful.

My last node, I was not paying attention and posted a bad code and it got quickly marked down. When I noticed I fixed and it got marked back up.

I was a bit embarrassed that I had submitted such bad code and I did not like the idea of negative rep, so I believe the system works to motive people to contribute, by not allowing bad explaination or examples.

I think you've got XP nailed.

I'd also add that just asking an interesting question can get you lot's of XP.

-QM
--
Quantum Mechanics: The dreams stuff is made of

Herkum:

It seems like such a simple thing, but it sure seems to work well! I find myself reviewing the reputation of my nodes to see what is appreciated by the community.

In person, we have body language to give us feedback. On the phone, we get tone of voice. Here, we get XP for dual feedback (XP number for node you write, and XP number for nodes you vote on) so you can see if your tastes align with your peers.

My own example is that for the last 10 years, I had the habit of starting an EMail like:

Herkum--

But someone here recently messaged me and asked if I was downvoting someone. So I started either using a colon at the beginning, or omitting the name entirely when I start a reply. (I don't want to unintentionally insult someone: My friends know that when I insult someone, I'm not very subtle! Those who don't know me, though, might assume I'm being coy...)

--roboticus

2006-04-17 Retitled by planetscape, as per Monastery guidelines
Original title: 'A Cautionary tale for Newbies “Monks don’t bite”'

I think it's due to the experience system

Partly. I think it's also partly due to some of the people who got involved rather early, in the formitive stages. Several of the people who've been active on Perlmonks for rather a long time are not only very knowledgeable about Perl, but also interested in seeing other programmers pick up and use the language. (One person in particular springs to mind as having been a major advocate of the language from very early.) When the experts who have been around forever are polite, it sets the tone for the people who come along later, because these are the "community leaders" that they respect.

---

Sanity? Oh, yeah, I've got all kinds of sanity. In fact, I've developed whole new kinds of sanity. Why, I've got so much sanity it's driving me crazy.

I think it's also partly due to some of the people who got involved rather early, in the formitive stages.

That makes sense. Once a community is established, you get the "birds of a feather" effect. After all, you humans (Heh!) do tend to hang out in groups with similar taste/style/etc. (OK...I think I'm taking this pseudonym just a little too far!)

I wonder if it started at Larry? After all, there are quite a few nice languages to play with out there, but in my experience, while Perl has ugly syntax (e.g. @{$foo{$gnord}}) it has a great community surrounding it (CPAN, PerlMonks,...). Many times, when I have to get something done quick, I first check CPAN to see if it's already 90% done for me. If so, I start writing it in Perl. Otherwise, I then look at the problem to see if hashes/regex/... are going to be helpful. If so, I again start writing it in Perl. Otherwise, I start coding in C/C++ (which is what I still think in).

--roboticus

(Who, in fact is pink and squishy under the gears and wires...)

2006-04-17 Retitled by planetscape, as per Monastery guidelines
Original title: 'A Cautionary tale for Newbies “Monks don’t bite”'

Monks may not bite; dragons, on the other hand... ;-)

Seriously, this is good to hear. Thanks for your post, and welcome to the Monastery. :-)

I've been an occasional lurker in comp.lang.perl.misc for a while (curious about Perl, but never really tried it until the past few days). Like in quite a few usenet groups, clpm regulars aren't slow to slap down people who obviously haven't read the FAQ or the Google Groups archive, or even really tried to solve their problems themselves before crying for help. That's fair enough, but a few seem to go out of their way to find fault.

It's particularly difficult when trying to learn a new language. It's all very well to say RTFM, but if you don't know the name of the command you want, it's not always obvious where to look.

This looks like a more welcoming place to be.

Polonius

As a person who's been both in clpmisc and here, and is now regularly visiting both regularly, I can say that the different behavioural approaches have each their own advantages and disadvantages.

In particular the alleged or perceived attituded of clpmisc's regulars is nothing but striving for efficient and fruitful communication. The typical scenario goes like this:

• newbie asks how to do something, whihout showing code, possibly multi-posting and so on;
• knowledgeable regular asks him what he's tried so far, and possibly points him/her to the posting guidelines;
• newbie replies that if he doesn't know how to answer, then he/she'd better not post, and gives him/her names;
• sub-thread goes on about how much the knowledgeable regular is an ar**hole on one part and about why he/she did answer that way in the first place on the other one - trying to convince newbie that that is really helping him/her;
• very-little-knowledgeable poster supplies a ready-made solution, often buggy, at the very best spreading (or even cargo-culting) that kind of bad practices that give Perl a bad name in so many circles;
• newbie thanks and is content with that solution.

Now, there happen to be basically two categories of newbies: those that learn rapidly who are the knowledgeable ones who could give them good advice and realize that if they behave somewhat (seemingly) harshly to newbies then there must be a (good educational) reason, and those who refuse to learn this simple lesson and prefer to go on writing huge threads insulting this and that - basically remaining poorly informed newbies forever.

To some extent the same goes on here too. But there's more tolerance, especially wrt questions that are OT as far as perl is concerned but are really about webservers or html.

Oh, well, as I wrote there are advantages and disadvantages: in clpmisc I'm now able to tell in a few seconds which threads to follow and which to ignore. OTOH PM has a richer UI which is sometimes convenient...

...and other times is a time sink! 8^)