You make so many good points I don't know where to begin answering. I have received your -- for a discussion vote and don't mind in the slightest - you made a good point in our conversation about it.

I know the site is called perlmonks, it's about perl, we have perl code and questions about perl, but what we are really here for is to become good coders. And I claim that any coder who only knows one computer programming language isn't much good. The best coders seem to have a broad range of skills including maths, philosophy, meditation, ... look through the past discussions for the full list. Nobody here is just perl, even our best of the best has been seen recommending that people learn smalltalk and defending java(although not too hard :)

I confess to 'hanging out' for the next discussion node - or even better - a meditation node and I've upvoted almost every one of those. But I don't see this as a bad thing(tm).

The nodes have involved things like the best environment for coding, the best music to get you in the mood (for coding!), how to manage your boss and a bunch of stuff distantly related to perl. But they certainly are about subjects that improve Perl coding. It's a sign of maturity that we are talking about things that are not completely perl. There are only so many things to say about something created by human beings. The alternative is horrible - endless battles about irrelevant details: 'goto sucks man', 'no it doesn't, you beeyatch', 'yes it does, and i'll get you and your little dog too, you goto pervert!'.

If you are really worried about the fact that code isn't getting voted up as much as some less tasteful nodes or even some excellent but non-perl nodes we can always fix the voting system so that people receive a higher chance for receiving XP for votes on code posted. And if you still don't like it, just don't read it

Your statistics are a bit dodgy and if you had picked a different monk at a different time, you may have discovered that the ratio for discussions was -2*(code_value).

As a final note, keep in mind that I recently posted a node involving (mild) criticism of vi and nobody started a flame war. That's a mature community.

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Jeremy
I didn't believe in evil until I dated it.