But out of context, I can see how this statement might be offensive.

Shoot.

I write like I talk, and I try to list emotional content to go along with it. I'm almost always smiling when I write. If you've met me in person, you know I rarely get angry, and even then, it's always at specific actions, not at people.

So what do I do? Stop writing for fear of offending someone? Or just know that people can handle themselves.

In fact, the response I got from jplindstrom seems to indicate factually that they did not think of that, and that they took no offense at my tone.

And that brings me to another point. Maybe I'm accurately reading the state of the person I'm writing, but others are coming incorrectly to their rescue because they would be offended, even though the original poster wasn't. I think that's pretty silly, and a waste of your time. That seems to have happened twice that I can recall, including this one.

Maybe I do know my audience pretty well. Maybe if I was writing one of the others that downvoted me, I would have written it differently.

I'd be curious to see if jplindstrom voted me up or down on the node. You know, that's really the only real vote that matters.

And I just reread the note. I can't help someone until I know what they've already done on their own. I was genuinely asking if they'd looked there and found it confusing. That was my curiosity, and my quick way of asking was "did you look there first?". There was absolutely no condescension intended in that statement. It was completely about needing to know more to help further.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

So what do I do? Stop writing for fear of offending someone? Or just know that people can handle themselves.

Fare forward. Know that you're helping others, and show people that you can handle yourself by accepting the occassional -- with grace.

"In fact, the response I got from jplindstrom seems to indicate factually that they did not think of that, and that they took no offense at my tone."

I didn't. Actually, I didn't even see the node until after you updated it with that list of yours. The list I found annoying more than anything else. That's not what I'm here for. I'm here to learn Perl (and occationally contribute what I can).

I appreciate your answer to my question. I don't appreciate the meta discussion it produced.

(On the other hand, meta discussion is in my experience one of the key indicators of a working online community (sorry for being so -97 :) , so maybe I should be thankful...)

"I'd be curious to see if jplindstrom voted me up or down on the node. You know, that's really the only real vote that matters."

You know, I still haven't voted on it. Sorry. Ironically, that also means I have no idea what score it has. But I'm not that curious, and you now know what I think of it; other nodes, most likely one or two of yours, deserve the ++ more.

Now, on the "personality vote" issue... I'm not even gonna go there.

/Johan Lindström