This reminds me of Give a fish or teach to fish?

Sometimes I find it easier to simply answer the question than tutor the monk asking the question. I can think up a solution faster than I can think up a solution and then figure out how to hint at or explain it without writing it outright.

Spoiler tags are good for these.

Being rather compulsive, I'd categorize "stupid" questions into a couple of categories: ignorant questions (where rtfm is an appropriate answer), lazy questions (cheating at homework), and "bragging" questions: the multi-page questions involving the deepest crevasses of Perl, applied in esoteric problems.

Eh, I upvoted your answer and a couple of those critical of the OP. I think there is room for both attitudes and different people will be helped in different measures by each. Tough love is all that works with some. The only thing I downvoted was-

Thanks, but I wait till someone who uderstands the purpose of hashes comes along and gives me the appropriate syntax.

And if I were allowed to spend more than one vote downvoting that, I surely would have.

"Thanks, but I wait till someone who understands the purpose of hashes comes along and gives me the appropriate syntax."

++ Your Mother My sentiments too so I'll add my downvote to yours, not a PerlMonks way to respond when help was offered.

I think that the appropriateness of your own answer, in contrast to some others, shows that stupid answers are as much a factor here as stupid questions. Perhaps more so.

I'm an absolute beginner to programming...

I read every week, I took a 5-day course.

I enjoy perl, but I currently lack the strength to solve logical problems efficiently. That is why I post here with more questions than answers. I really appreciate monks who show me a better way; and I try to include as much information and relevant code as possible. Most have helped tremendously.

However, some remain critical not to what the question is, but to why it is asked. And that's OK. But this criticism is usually accompanied by a sense of exclusion. This makes me think that I should really think about my posts beforehand so I don't sound like a total goon. Maybe this will make me a monk someday...

I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.

The sum of intelligence on the planet is a constant; the population is growing.

A woman's appetite is twice that of a man's; her sexual desire, four times; her intelligence, eight times

Ohhhhhhmmmmmmmmm......

With vague questions, it's hard to know if an OP needs a simple pointer or step-by-step guidance. From what I've seen in my short time here is that both kinds of answers are often posted. That's got to be the best situation for the OP's but can of course be bothersome for the others. As this site seems to openly welcome Newbies (eg, Anonymonks and Novices can participate), there will always be those who won't RTFM, check the FAQs, follow the Tutorials or use Super Search before they post. One way to look at it is that if the OP's could do that, there'd be a lot less traffic on this site. ;-) [I'll probably to get trashed for that last quip.]

As a side note, it seems that there were several unfortunate comments in that thread. I was especially struck by the harsh way that moritz was treated by the OP. [One could imagine a misunderstanding earlier in the thread but that's not the point here.] It's a shame that anyone needs to be anything but polite but PM still seems to be a very open and friendly place. It's good that TIMTOWTDI when it comes to answering even the most vague of questions.

I was especially struck by the harsh way that moritz was treated by the OP. One could imagine a misunderstanding earlier in the thread but that's not the point here.

Is that so harsh? Having already questioned being given a vague and wrong answer, to the wrong question once, and having re-stated and clarified the question. To be given essentially the same vague and wrong answer a second time, is that response really so harsh?

---

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.

"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".

In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.

"Too many [] have been sedated by an oppressive environment of political correctness and risk aversion."

Is that so harsh?

Yes. Any personal attack on somebody who didn't give a wrong answer is too harsh.

Actually I think that neither vague nor wrong answers are a sufficient reason for personal attacks at all. To me it doesn't matter if somebody else gave wrong answers in the mean time. You can easily see which postings belong to which user, at least if they were logged in. No need to confuse them, and no need to over-generalize.

Is that so harsh?

Guess it's all a matter of your point of view but the OP's reply of:

Thanks, but I wait till someone who uderstands[sic] the purpose of hashes comes along and gives me the appropriate syntax.

seemed harsh. Hard to explain without "I know it when I see it" but it just didn't seem appropriate from someone who was asking others for help. Good answer, bad answer, misunderstanding -- doesn't matter. It's fine to disagree, wonderful to disagree, but in my protected little world, it's best to remain civil.

My comment was a bit OT and this reply deviates even further. I certainly don't want to debate etiquette or get into your dialog with moritz but it would have been rude ;-) of me not to answer your question (even if was meant rhetorically).

My opinion in answering stupid questions is that there is no problem if you are willing to do it. Maybe you are feeling generous. Maybe the particular problem triggers an answer that makes you satisfied you've thought on it -- and you're happy to publish it and give it away for the sake of it.

If you have didactical concerns, you may hesitate and think the requestor should probably make an extra effort to phrase better the problem and try out his/her hand so he/she can learn instead of having a ready answer he/she does not understand. The ready answer can send him/her in a vicious circle because not thinking for oneself, the connections to other problems are not seen and one has to ask again the same questions in other disguises.

What I think it is a sin is to give a stupid answer to a stupid question, because that takes the answerer to a probably lower level than the requestor. Ignoring is probably a best choice (if you don't have time or think the question is a bad or poor question). Sometimes you must resist temptation -- the stupid answer may be amusing to yourself and part of your audience, but if it bashes other people, it won't make you the king of sympathy. But that is only a point of view, and being a nice guy may not be in the agenda of everyone. But that's ok, because that entry is only my opinion, one among so many others.

In the spirit that the question was posed I have to agree and think that this quotation by Charles Steinmetz is very apt in the circumstances and sums up my feelings on the matter

"There are no foolish questions, and no man becomes a fool until he has stopped asking questions.”

In Atlanta, circa 1976, a lawyer told me of his client – up on drug and weapons charges. Being told that he'd been found 'Not Guilty' on the drug charges (but with the weapons charges still pending) he asked, in open court,

Does that mean I can have my pot back now?

Now tell me that there aren't any stupid questions.

throop

Depends, did he get it back?

I'm glad you benefit as a side effect of stupid questions but this is undocumented behavior and should not be relied upon.

Seriously though, I believe that side effect is the magic of PerlMonks. I primarily read the threads about stuff I already know because that's what I want to learn about.

Sorry, sometimes I have a hard time articulating my thoughts but that's really correct. I want to learn about the stuff I already know. See, there's more than one way to do it and it's like being a fighter, no matter how tough you are, there's still somebody out there that can school ya.

When I read a thread I know about, I vote up correct answers, and chime in when I think something's been overlooked or is just plain wrong. I also get to learn when people suggest better solutions than I'd thought of. The OP benefits from my experience and I benefit from the occasional outstanding answer.

It reminds me of the college years I spent tutoring math, I learned far more by tutoring than studying because you have to understand something better to explain it than you do to simply use it.

As a rule, I give what I get. Ask an intelligent question with actual code and I may just spend the afternoon trying to help. Ask a lame question and you get RTFM. Hell, ask a good question and you'll probably get RTFM anyhow. All we really have is that f'n manual and after 30 years of reading it, I still read it almost every day.

I would post more actual answers on the boards but I (obviously) have a hard time constructing coherent posts. Even this mess of a post has taken me about 2 hours so I'm just going to stop now.

I also learn an awful lot from most of the answers on this site, regardless of the question. What prompted me to answer as I did was that the OP didn't try (or at least, didn't post) a single solution .

Had he said "I tried this and that, but there has to be a better way", I'd have been happy to give him an explicit answer or two. If he'd asked to be pointed to where he could learn more about manipulating hashes, I'd have pointed him and possibly given him hints towards the answer he needed.

But to show up and just say "How do I do foo?"... well, telling the OP without explaining guarantees he'll be back with another request for code without Googling, looking at the Turotials or the Q&A, or ...

(Mark Twain once said "It's better to be silent and thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt." I keep telling myself I should practice this.)

You make some great points but I think your example undermines them because while we should be helping people new to Perl the exception to that is we should not be blindly handing almost complete solutions to homework.

Granted, it can be hard to tell the difference at times but in your example the OP offers so little while asking for so much that imo the obvious response would be to ignore him.