I've noticed an increase in the use of the CB as a means to get help. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I think that we're seeing a lot of IRC crossovers who are just trying to get help straight away in the CB and not even posting. If you've been in the CB with me when this has happened, doubtless you've seen me go through a little dance telling them to post in SOPW with sample code, input, desired/real ouput, errors and explanations. What I was thinking was maybe we could have the CB, root I would guess, deliver a /msg to any new user that tells them the first thing they should try in seeking help is to post in Seekers of Perl Wisdom with all the proper stuff and also provide a link to the CB help so they know how to dismiss this /msg to. That would get them going correctly right off the bat and also maybe help guide them to reading about the site before randomly spewing calls for help into the CB. Maybe something like:
Welcome! Please read [Guide to the Monastery] before
posting. Best ways to get answers: 1.[Super Search]
2.post sample code,input,output and problem in [Seekers
of Perl Wisdom]. Find out how to get rid of this message
[Chatterbox faq|here] : )
This will decrease CB noise, and also make sure that all solutions given to these issues are reusable. That way perhaps just searching would eliminate the problem : )
"A man's maturity -- consists in having found again the seriousness on
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had as a child, at play." --Nietzsch
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