The key thing that I've seen in the last year (I'm relatively new) is: whether or not you are working? Folks who are working and can present questions based upon the code that they have written so far get a LOT more help than those who aren't working.

I was working on an LWP program a couple days ago and got stuck. I posted the code that I had so far on my scratchpad (after some hours of work) and asked for help in the Chatterbox. I got enough help to "unstick my brain" and was able to complete the project. I had posted code on my sctachpad before to help others, but that was the first time I asked others to help me. And it worked!

james2vegas helped me out and provided very key info regarding a POST query question. I worked over the next 5 hours to finish the code. The whole project was more complex than my question, but the answer to my question allowed me to move forward and get the job done. PerlMonks is a good way to learn about new approaches and ideas that you need to spend more time thinking about.

In general, the more clear your question, the better the quality of the response will be.