On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 08:46, ANJAN PURKAYASTHA <anjan.purkayas...@gmail.com> wrote: > I've been reading these posts with a great deal of interest. > I don't know what much of the fuss is about (having joined this forum about > 2 years back), but I will say that I have had some VERY helpful responses > from experts and beginners alike. > For the most part this list does a great job in helping newbies. It would be > a shame to change things. > JMTC, > Anjan snip
There is a continuum of help from "here, I did your homework for you" to "RTFM". In the past, Perl mailing lists and irc tended toward "RTFM". To combat this perceived unfriendliness, this list was created. Its charter is to be [closer to "here, I did your homework for you"][1] than "RTFM" in the hopes that this will cause timid newbies to stick around and join the larger community. This causes a predictable backlash from people who believe that giving a man a fish instead of teaching him to fish is wrong. There is also backlash from people who become frustrated or get their buttons pushed (such as the whole legal boilerplate at the bottom of emails thread that started recently). The backlash causes another predictable backlash from the people who want to keep the list clear of the earlier backlash and people who, ironically enough, oppose backlash at all. And so on. Here are the rules I try to live by on this list (note, I don't always succeed): 1. A starving man or woman can't pay attention to the lesson you are giving him or her. Give him or her a fish and teach him or her. 2. If someone keeps asking for fish and never pays attention to the lesson, let him or her starve. 3. It is better to not post than to post angry. 4. Bad advice and answers must be corrected, but try to do it nicely. 5. Ask questions, don't make assumptions (I am really bad at this one). 6. Answer the [real question][2], but beware of number 5. [1] : without devolving into "here, I did your homework for you" [2] : this one is tricky, if some one asks how to write mergesort in Perl, they probably want the builtin sort function instead, but it might be that they need to sort something that won't fit in memory. -- Chas. Owens wonkden.net The most important skill a programmer can have is the ability to read. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: beginners-unsubscr...@perl.org For additional commands, e-mail: beginners-h...@perl.org http://learn.perl.org/
