My personal take is this.

If the person makes a sincere (even if misguided) effort I am inclined to help if I can. (Except when you explain it in nice, simple terms and then they proceed to tell you their misguided understanding of Perl/technology/Life is absolutely correct and talk to you like you don't know what your doing.)

If it's a buggy, obscure problem that I've slammed into before, I'll share my experience.

If a user has helped my in the past. I'll return the favor if I can.

If a quick scan of the persons previous postings look somewhat intelligent or they have been helpful to others I'll try and help.

If a person doesn't know anything about perl but wants to make a script that does x, y and z so they can sell it, I laugh. :P

I also won't write a program to do X, I'll give a snippet. When Prometheus was given fire, it wasn't in the form of a Zippo. I think others newbies learn a lot more if they have to work out at least some of the issues.

My two cents anyway,

-Lee

"To be civilized is to deny one's nature."