I understand what you mean. I've been victim of insults for no other reason than I was there. This seems to happen more on the non-professional areas (I found with online bridge people walking away from the table..and I was at the beginners table!) Areas such as this area and the forums over in Sun (2 places I've been, just starting to learn Perl) people seem to be well behaved. I'm guessing it stems to question "how would I like to be treated?". People in code forums or in tutorials have something invested in their on-line time. Whether it's a particular question or a general question (like "what do I do now?"), there's a point to us coming here. Well, that's my first comment posted here, and I hope it makes some sense.