Greetings fellow monks,

I must confess that I have not finished my first cup of coffee this Monday morning, so the following idea may be quite stupid. In case it's not: This morning as I was reading through some of the newest nodes, I came acrosss a newbie asking a newbie question. I was tempted to write something like an RTFM response, but I paused for a moment of meditation.

It wasn't so long ago that I would have asked the same type of question. At the time, it is true that I would have benefitted extremely by R(ing)TFM, but any suggestions to do such void of any code or specific help would have just annoyed me, turning me away from Perl and the Perl communities. Rather, if someone had posted a reply with examples, a little theory, and links to certain manuals for more information, I would have eagerly gone into "read mode."

The problem as I see it, though, is that posts to Seekers of Perl Wisdom ought to be from folks with at least some basic knowledge and who have at least thumbed through the llama. True "uber-newbies" won't have a clue.

So do you think it would be benefitial to have an "uber-newbies" section on PM? Some place where posts are expected to be from the realm of the theoretical with little or no reading or research attached? Or should the current style of "RTFMing" uber-newbies and pointing them to the docs and tutorials remain?

With the former option, I can see some strong negative impact because many posts will be from folks who don't want to put in even the most minimum effort by using the site search features. However, the latter option potentially alienates uber-newbies who don't know where to begin and really need a helping hand for the first day or two of learning.

Am I in need of more coffee?

gryphon
code('Perl') || die;

Edited: ~Wed Sep 11 23:14:01 2002 (GMT) by footpad: Moved from Meditations to PDM, per Consideration.