Just curious as to why there seems to be a negative view of this post?

Hi Elijah,
I understand that you posted this with the best intentions, and that you feel annoyed at getting a negative reception, but I get offered a Gmail invite almost every day (this is not the only forum I regularly attend), and its getting old. I suspect that some monks view these posts as spam.

I'm not that annoyed with this post, because AFAIK it is the first gmail invite offered here on the monastery, but I hope this isn't going to get out of hand. We're here to discuss perl, after all. I would suggest the Chatterbox as a better place for these kind of messages.

You have to admire the success of this whole viral campaign, though.

Joost.

What I see as a negative with this type of post is the following:

• It's way off topic; has nothing to do with Perl.
• It was posted in PerlMonks Discussion, yet it's also off topic as a Monastery-oriented discussion. If it had a shread of hope of being on topic in any of the Monastery's sections, it would be the PerlNews area...but it's still off topic for that.
• It's advertising (with honest intentions, but still advertising). And not only is it advertising, but it's something entirely unrelated to Perl. What if I were to post an offer for free doggy biscuits?

The fact that you've got a few "takers" doesn't make it right. Look at spam, after all; it continues to exist because it has a small but sufficient proportion of effectiveness. Nevertheless, though spam is sometimes effective, it annoys 99% of its recipients. Unfortunately, that 1% is enough to dangle the carrot in front of spammers.

One of the things that I like about the monastery is that though we get the occasional off topic post, those occurrences are infrequent, and almost never involve advertising some service or product. One of the things I dislike about most of Usenet, email, the web in general, is that one has to sift through neck-deep rubbish to find the on-topic stuff. Please, I implore, don't bring that environment here, even if it's with sincere intent.

Oops, didnt see this request for info about my consideration until now. Basically davido is correct. While it's a nice idea, it doesn't belong here, certainly not in PMD, and in News only because its time related, but still isnt really Perl News. This sort of thing belongs in the Chatterbox. (Which is where others have been posting them lots recently, and I *still* don't want one..)

Thanks for the offer anyway, though..

C.

It's not frowned upon to offer something nice, per se, but your offer is wildly offtopic. Such things are best restricted to the chatterbox.

That is actually an awesome idea. I was unaware that sites like these were setup.

I myself served 5 years in the US Air Force and continue to work as a defense contractor so I whole heartedly support my fellow troops. I realize that some of you see these all the time but what was posted earlier was correct, the fact that no one has offered them to the PM community before. Most of the users here do not frequent other message boards and therefore are not privey to these invites. I am sorry If I made anyone waiste 20 seconds to read my post if you got annoyed but the title clearly states what the topic is and if this topic annoys you then do not read the post.

I know this topic is not perl related directly, that is why I posted it in PerlMonks Discussion. I did not know where else to put it. I did not feel that it was informing anyone anything about perl therefore did not seem fit for Perl News. These addresses however could be used by perl developers to send source back and forth especially if gui's are being worked on and large graphics are needed to be sent.

Anyway I know most feel that those who want a gmail address already have one but I have 1 post here to this thread and 3 more private messages already that state otherwise. Again I apologize if anyone is offended by my post, just trying to hook a few people up by trying to give back to this community.


www.perlskripts.com

Perhaps I'm not as well-connected or prolific as my brother and sister monks, but I have not received such an invite and wouldn't especially mind one :)

Update: This was not meant to be a slight at Joost or any other fine monk. I was merely pointing out that one should not take for granted that gmail invites are so easy to come by. Sorry if the above sounds rude.

I ended up waiting a couple months before my son finally got an extra invite and gave it to me. When I saw this post, I thought it was a nice gesture.