You've got a good point, but there are some reasons for having a fairly wide tolerance about what's off topic. Perl doesn't exist in a vacuum. In fact, many of the questions about Perl are questions that apply to any programming language. Perl has its own unique ways of handling various tasks, but much of the time the questions are more about how to do the task, rather than the idiom needed.

Perl interfaces with a wide variety of other languages. It is not unusual for someone to need to deal with PHP, C, HTML, Apache, and dozens of other languages and systems and programs. There's going to be some overlap, and sometimes a person might ask a question that has less to do with Perl, than with how to make X interface with it properly.

I think reaping should be a last resort. That means yes, we'll get some annoying, off-topic stuff. However, I believe that the harm this does, is less than the harm of changing history and possibly starting censorship. Just my particular take on all this...

In reply to Re: Rule change re: reaping OT nodes by spiritway
in thread Rule change re: reaping OT nodes by friedo

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.