My impression is that most of the OT nodes here are actually very restrained. To me there are two types of OT:

1. Topics that are high than Perl, but related to Perl, sort of meta-questions. For examples, what are the best platforms for web development; How to do version control; Principles concerning OO programming in general, etc. It is fine to mark them OT, but I would like to see those topics being discussed here, and I welcome them.
2. People might come to ask a question about HTML tag, or even JavaScript, or Java. For this kind of OT, this is really the wrong place.

Personally, I feel it is not fun and not wise, if we ban the first type of OT. Have an OT section does not really change anything, probably people will start to ask questions about COBOL in OT section ;-)

My impression is that most of the OT nodes here are actually very restrained.

Mine too.

I don't quite understand why people seem to get so hot and bothered about "prevalent" OT nodes. If off-topic nodes were particularly common, or if many of them were blatantly spammy, then I'd be more symptathetic -- hell, I'd probably be in the vanguard of the charge to curtail them. But as it stands, we don't get very many OT nodes at all (as a SWAG, I think maybe two to five "OT-delete" considerations a week), and most of them are at least glancingly related (Javascript questions, for instance, as opposed to job postings or foobar-enlargement-pill adverts). I just don't think the "problem" is worth the effort it would take to "solve" it without causing more harm than good.

That said, I haven't really done a lot of research for this reply; I'm just going by my perceptions. Don't take my word for it! :-)

--
F o x t r o t U n i f o r m
Found a typo in this node? /msg me
% man 3 strfry

My knee-jerk reaction is that you're right on the money. While it might make sense to allow people to check a box in user settings so that they can "ignore" all OT-marked nodes, I think that any additional administrative treatment of topic policing beyond what's done now is likely to fail to have the desired effect. Signal:Noise ratio (in this case, on-topic:off-topic) is very high here at PerlMonks — higher than almost any other specialized online community I've seen. Attempts at stricter controls run the risk of either producing a paradoxical reaction or reducing that "community" aspect (if not both).

Take all of this rambling of mine with a grain of salt. I have no scientific evidence to back this up. I'm mostly going by gut instinct, here.

- apotheon
CopyWrite Chad Perrin

Type 1 are (welcome) not offtopic , they just belong in meditations.

MJD says "you can't just make shit up and expect the computer to know what you mean, retardo!"

I run a Win32 PPM repository for perl 5.6.x and 5.8.x -- I take requests (README).

** The third rule of perl club is a statement of fact: pod is sexy.

I still have the qualms that I expressed before.

Indeed and I fully support and understand your qualms.

But I do not suggest to make a new Section "OT" for people to post into.

Just some kind of "quarantine" zone to put all the OT-posts in, so they do not "pollute the namespace" so to say.

Gods willing, they could probably even make it a "closed" section so you could not reply to the nodes in it.

CountZero

"If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass compiler." - Conway's Law

I have previously suggested that a new non-posting section be set up to accommodate OT posts. My name suggestion: "The Commode".

On one hand, I would be really against an "OT" section, just because it would probably encourage OT nodes. However, I would *love* an OT quarantine/filter feature, where any topic with OT in its title would be hidden from view.

I don't know if an OT is something that would improve things in the end but it would help me make up my mind to ask certain questions that I'm worried I'll get dinged for sometimes. Eg, I was considering posting a question to see if anyone has developed a tt2-mode (alla c?perl-mode) for emacs for template toolkit files. Is it a perl question? Not really. It's an emacs question but only a perl hacker might have solved it. An OT would give a safe haven to avoid long threads about "post this" vs "don't post this."

Of course I wouldn't have posted this particular question b/c the lovely and talented davorg has made his "tt-mode.el" available and it's easily found from Google: http://dave.org.uk/emacs/.

<mantra>

</mantra>

See:

• Off topic section?
• RFC: Off-Topic Links
• Off Topic section
• "Off Topic" Section?
• OT: Does this site need an Off-Topic area?

All these other nodes are more than a year old and my suggestion is closest to what castaway (seconded by tye) suggested, but the discussion somehow fizzled out and was not followed-up, so I think I had a valid reason to bring it back up again, phrased slightly different.

CountZero

"If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass compiler." - Conway's Law

a fair point. on the other hand, mentioning that you performed some research on the topic, and including related resources in your original post helps make people aware that your new take on this old issue is warranted.

~Particle *accelerates*

I wish there was somewhere we could put all these responses. I mean really, these occasional blue marbles are seriously interferring with my repeated counting of the red marbles.

;)
Matt

This thread is in the Perl Monks Discussion section, which is for discussion of ... (drum roll) ... perlmonks, not perl, so it is completely on topic. But please don't take your marbles and go play elsewhere.

No. The nodetype of "Off Topic" nodes is "monkdiscuss" meaning this is a PerlMonks Discussion.

If there is one thing we learned from the above discussion, it is that there is no way to say beforehand whether a post is Off-topic or not. Some perfectly valid Perl-related questions "degenerate" into off-topic musings and sometimes things which seem off-topic at first, finally are found to contain at their core a beautiful Pe(a)rl.

Hence my suggestion to tie this into the consideration system and a special section.

CountZero

"If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass compiler." - Conway's Law