There's a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.
I can only show you the door. You must walk through it.

I don't think it is too much to show effort before posing a question. An excellent method is to post a code sample, even a bad one, and show the output. Otherwise, the responder may not wish to expend more time answering the question than the poster took trying to find the solution.

Indeed, the methodology used to find the solution to one problem tends to evolve over time and experience, becoming multifacited and applicable outside of perl. It just helps finding answers down the road (not to mention helps asking the right question).

crazyinsomniac's point, IMHO YMMV, is that let us not address the symptom (the cgi sample question in the discussion root node, for example). Let's address the source cause (learn the language and how it works via books, trial and error, classes, etc. before throwing one's hands up.).

HTH
--
idnopheq
Apply yourself to new problems without preparation, develop confidence in your ability to to meet situations as they arrise.

~ Shunryu Suzuki

The other thing we could do, and this would take a lot more work but it might help to reduce this 'noise' would be to have an intelligent agent that can pull out keywords from a question and then provide a possible list of links to not only the perl docs and modules, but to the Q&A and Tutorials here and any other reference (much how Office does it since 97). If they can see their question has been answered already, then they might avoid submitting it.

And this all comes down to the fact that we need a sort of 'waiting period' to remove those seeking the fast answer from those seeking enlightenment. New users should not be able to post for a day or so, AM root-level posts should not appear on site for a day or so [...]

At this point, AM root-level posts take a fair length of time to appear in any case, if this thread is to be believed. I disagree strongly with the notion of muzzling new users, both because it seems gratuitously obnoxious and because it is an insufficiently targeted response.

My reaction to this is colored somewhat by the fact that I finally got around to setting up this account (after lurking for a while) specifically so I could post to a specific node, which I'm guessing is not a unique situation. In my case it was a reply, so your idea (at least as originally expressed) wouldn't have made much difference, but I'm not willing to make the blanket assertion that anybody who's in a hurry to post something should be flatly refusesed, and sent back to the cloister to contemplate the nature of the Buddha for a day or two.

On the other hand, you seem to be strongly of that opinion--would you mind explaining a bit more why?




---

If God had meant us to fly, he would *never* have give us the railroads.
    --Michael Flanders

I consider myself to be an ancient based on internet time (I've had access more or less for 11 years running, certainly not from the start but predating Netscape). At my first exposure to newsgroups in the earlier 90s, a strong mantra was propigated, "Read before you post"; generally most NG FAQs (which were posted at least weekly) suggesting that new users should lurk before they post anything for at least 3 days. This drastically decreased noise, and generally most questions that were asked in such groups were beyond the FAQ. In most newsreaders at that time, this was even in the documentation for those as well. Of course, being sufficiently archic at that time, it did take time to learn how to use the newsreader itself.

Come Netscape and AOL, and the lack of distinction made for USENET and the web. Because of how the USENET interfaces are handled, users rarely saw anything that told them to lurk before posting, and people would jump right into the group without looking at FAQs or other topic headers. Many of these were FAQish questions, and thus began the rather major shift of USENET from being useful to being only mildly so. (this is about 1995, just as far back as Google has the archives at this time; you need to go back even further than that to see this). While there was a lot of noise generated by spamming newsgroups, the remaining posts still had a worse S/N ratio than before. Today, it's only gotten worse, as we now have HTML posts, and newsreaders that break standard convention with how posts are formatted.

But in terms of PM, the fact that it's easy to post any question could artificially be lowering the S/N ratio that other monks have found to be disheartening. If there was a *small* barrier to prevent those that might be posting a FAQish question, the S/N ratio would increase dramatically.

Is it neccessarily muzzling new users? IMO, no, because it only happens once (for the first time you post), and you have the ability to lurk even then. I can think of situations that you might come in as a new user and wish to post ASAP where the question is legit and an answer needed quickly and can't be handled easily in the CB, but the number of other situations where you want a fast answer as a new user (homework due, workwork due) outweight these.

There's lots of other things to put up a small barrier to the first post to prevent the noise, such as restating how to post, where to post, where the FAQs are, pointing the user to searches and other possible answers, etc etc. But these are easily ignored no matter how much visual clues you give the user, and those new users that are in the case where they need the answer fast and don't want to do the work are going to ignore such warnings moreso than other users. So some mechanism built into the site that slows down the first post seems to me to be the only way to reduce the number of FAQish questions and improve S/N.

---

Dr. Michael K. Neylon - mneylon-pm@masemware.com || "You've left the lens cap of your mind on again, Pinky" - The Brain

That way monks who want to devote themselves to educating the unwashed masses can do so, and those that don't can automatically ignore them.

-- Michael Snell
-- michael@snell.com

Then that "Holier than thou" option would allow monks to shirk their duties as a knowledgeable programer. Taking on a pass the buck attitude is not what PM is about. If you don't want to answer, then don't. That's why the option is there. If monks constantly take the stance of "Passing the buck", who will educate the new? If this is implemented, PM will certainly become something like Slashdot. Filled with experience whores instead of karma whores. A small clique of in crowd and a major group of out crowd. I would downvote an individual for giving a wrong answer (like I have been downvoted for, and was deserving of it). However if I see that an individual has admitted that he was wrong by the time I read his/her post I would either abstain from voting or ++ him for freely admitting his/her error.

BMaximus

They say that knowlege is power. It is. But giving it is twice as much power.