Are there questions that are too basic? Should a newbie be required to pour over the docs for answers that we can provide in 5 seconds?

Required is hard, but gently threatened would be good I think. Evidently I've got too much self-imposed restraint, but I'd rather look something up and figure it out myself at least until I'm really stumped, rather than ask a bunch of experts before I've even composed the question in my mind, no matter how friendly they may be.

I just remember being really green, and not even knowing how to get at the docs to review them

I've been green for many years now, but I know where the docs are, and I've got the books. Perhaps when an unknown monk tries to post, the page starts with a carefully selected and annotated group of links (the docs, tutorials etc.), also the SuperSearch, and they'd have to scroll through this to get to the edit box. The main benefit to the unknown monk would be an instant answer, not to mention significantly reduced hazing.

The root of the problem is probably the same thing that stopped me from reading c.l.p several years ago: everyone that has manage to cobble together a home page then wants to get into CGI, and they leap into Perl eyes closed and holding their nose, thinking it's just fancy HTML. The kicker is the old "please e-mail the answer as I don't monitor this group". Is being "unknown" a similar thing? Should you at least be required to register and amass some XP by reading before being permitted to post? (what's the fun in -- unknown? ;-)

I don't know the answer but maybe there is some entropy-related rule that any repoistory of concentrated knowledge is doomed to be diluted by poorly-typed homework requests.