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.

--Jon