Sitting here thinking to myself "Wait I saw that a while back and it didn't mention PM; it was reddit or SO", and then I'm checking confirming that and about to post a correction . . .

I see what you did there. Well played.

personally I love to help here, then I know my limits and I know I'm not such a geek, so generally I tend to specificate this with sentences like: "I'm not an expert on this.." or "waiting for wiser monks answers.." et similia

I dont tend to correct others too much: I know there are here around monks and nuns with deeper and cristalline understanding of the programming art and of the IT world in general.

Sometimes I'm able to summon wiser monks just mentioning a specific Module::Name or adding something in the title of the reply.

Being more an amateur than a professional programmer I'm used to offer my solutions like personal suggestions.

I also point people to other monks answers from past posts, answers that I consider authoritative in some way.

Many times I integrate answers by others if I see some unexplored possibility. Or I offer a oneliner. If I shot in the dark (I'm lucky in this ;) I state it clearly.

How I get help for my own problems? I found PM perfect for small-to-medium questions and generally not so good for larger questions or more meditative ones: people have not too much time to spend and you must be smart proposing the question in a short but comprehensive way: runnable code, test data, desired output, links to external resources...

Here we are monks seeking monkhood, so the above mentioned trick is left to poorminded, mundane congregations.

L*

Hi jdporter

A fun post - but I don't think it's the truth. People love to help. Also/especially here at perlmonks. Maybe there are people ouside, who think that a fast response is much better than a good one (with regards to the XP-game) ... and maybe a bad answer provokes the knowlegdable monks to answer faster than they normally would (as you claim) ... but I believe in the good of our fellowship. Any monk will get a good answer without using your "tactics". And maybe the answers you would get would even be better, if you don't haste the others to correct mistakes ... that would be well worth the wait ...

Not sure if I love correcting others, but I certainly HATE seeing bullshit being spread.

Like here ...

I’m here too. If I see a question where I can say, I think I know the answer but I’ll bet someone has a better answer, I wait. I don’t necessarily want to spend an hour answering something and double-checking I’m right or setting up a test DB or webserver or whatever just to see another monk scooped me with a better answer 5 minutes before I post.

But if I see a *terrible* answer I know to be wrong, I’ll put the effort in a bit more readily. No beginner deserves to spend two weeks chasing bad advice only to give up and try Python or whatever in the end.

Well explained, and I think that reflects the majority here. :)

Proof: Nobody loved correcting sundial!

(maybe with the exception of The Great Node Collector ;-)

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery}

Best way to draw my attention is to have a Title/Subject that summarizes the content concise and correct.

Second step is to show that you actually tried to come up with a solution, in real or in pseudo-code. A story to explain clearly in case code is not possible will also tickle me.

Additionally showing that one has read the manual will aslo help.

Here is different.. you know better than me how our numbers are going down but we still have a nice, small core of amazingly competent monks and nuns (plus some rank of amateurs like me).

More: with less partecipants in respect to the golden age probably the ratio geek/visitors even raised. The overall quality of our beloved monastery is very high, but, in regard to get help here, there is an almost untold story: The Story of the Bored Hacker.

We all know the perl job market suffered a big contraction in last decades; we read here and there about companies deciding to migrate even large codebases to something else.. poor fashion victim managers.

Also we must consider that the Time flows inesorably and, sadly, many of us got fired or are unemployed for other reasons, digested and and spat by the Job Market Machine, or simply they reached the age when you can retire from the market with the hope to survive with what you spared (in way or other) during 35+ years of tears and blood.

A free minded hacker crossing Perl during their carrer generally fall in love with it because of perl sense of freedom, expressivity, power, available modules, stability, availability and a notable community of users. I dont mean it is automatic, but I saw many of them during last decades of my perl amaetur experience.

So, as the Average Retired Man waits for the next week sudoku issue, The Bored Hacker lurks here, famelic as a shark, eager of the next perl problem to train their brain in a new, fascinating, unexpected way.

Questions here are evidently decreasing and sometimes they are also very poor ones, but if it appears a nice, interesting question with or without some effort by the wisdom seeker, or even blatantly homework, then as a group of sharks with food frenzy, we love to solve it, dissect it, explore it, argue on it.

So to get help here you just need to be kind, to expose a problem with the necessary background, and cast a shining lure to The Bored Hacker ..et voilà you'll get a regex solution from the South of US (worth to study for days ;), a complete solution with tests from Terra Australis, the full specification of the problem from the center of the Old Continent, the Module Author explaining how to use, adding more tests and even thanking you, and a fistfull of different approaches from all over the world. The unaware Wisdom Seeker sometimes get astonished by the deepness of the support they received.

All win.

The Bored Hacker is happy (..til the next question)!

L*

Well, see my signature ...

Alexander

there are no sweeter words than "I told you so"

Wouldn't you rather hear:

"You told me so."

It's said by another and offers the advantage of not being asserted. For example, I'm still futzing with creating an email server but haven't installed nullmailer. I hear these words in the back of my head:

"You told me so."

I have had other occasions where I was less diligent in following your tips and have had some sacrifices at the altar of experience....

Isn't "You told me so" the default answer to a different question? Like this:

Q: Why did you <some incredibly stupid thing>
A: You told me so!