I have long felt that the expertise and knowledge of those that frequent PM could well have answered those questions had I been able to ask them.

Ditto! Especially of late where I've been venturing into new territory (for me) on several fronts. This last week alone I have considered posting an OT node on at least 6 occasions. On subjects ranging from "Is this the Ubuntu equivalent of a BSOD?"; to "Why does git-svn take 24 hours plus (I gave up waiting) to clone Parrot when svn checkout takes 2"33?"; to "Does gcc allow embedded assembler in 64-bit builds?"; to a bunch of questions regarding adsl profiles, DMT and router configuration.

Yes, there are other places where the questions would be on topic, but finding new ones for each type of question, and then trying to decide which of those you find is likely to give you decent answers is a frustrating and error prone process.

Especially when you know full well that there are knowledgeable and helpful monks that would both know the answers and be more than willing to supply them.

If you think a particular monk might know, you can ask them directly, but how often do we ask perlish questions here and get surprising answers from surprising quarters. In previous discussions on the possibility of an Off-topic section, the CB is often mentioned as a possibility. But besides that at any given moment probably less than 1% of regular contributors are monitoring the CB, the bigger problem is that if your question is of any complexity, it's almost impossible to ask it clearly there.

Since an OT section is both technically difficult, and unlikely to gain the approval of those that would be needed to make it happen even if it weren't, my current notion is to create an 'Off Topic' node. Just a plain ordinary node that requires no site changes, no special efforts or permissions or approval. Questions would be posted as first level responses to the top level node and answers nested below that.

Of course, the posting of such a node would probably draw the ire of the 'perl and nothing but' crowd amongst us, but I could withstand that...if there is a sufficient number who think it is a good idea?

Have at it.

Please spare (some of) us the one monster thread. I would prefer if people just prefix "OT" (or, "off topic") to the title of their posts on particular subjects.

I think BrowserUK's concern is that too many OT posts will get annoying. Though I too would prefer to see individual, well labeled posts.

Elda Taluta; Sarks Sark; Ark Arks

Doesn't seem to stop anyone from posting OT questions, so go ahead

Skimming the nodes of the regulars you get a rough idea of their expertise. If you don't dare to post an OT node, you can post your question on Gavin's scratchpad and ask for help, either via the CB or private message.