Nice post, Ovid. What I have to say here is more WRT the actual incident involving the unnamed parties than what you had to say. Perhaps this would have gone better at the bottom of the OP but either way...

I am feeling rather upset by this whole episode. The monk in question has been rampaging about for many weeks, making silly claims and criticisms about Perl. While I acknowledge and agree that Perl is not the end-all, be-all language, this monk should have definitely considered his audience before launching a full-scale attack.

But that's just the start of my problem--you see, when the monk wasn't busy making life difficult for fine folks like Ovid, he was asking questions that could have easily been answered by A) perldoc, B) Super Search, or even C) a quick Google search. While this is an excusable behaviour for newer monks and even once and a while for venerable old timers, this level 6 monk (friar) was able to pull it off consistently. The result? Even more work for those who would rather help Seekers of Perl Wisdom in true need.

Now it turns out that the monk was deliberately trying to put us out with his public self while masquerading "behind the scenes" as an alter-ego. What mockery is this? As merlyn so aptly stated, "I don't like feeling conned." Someone deliberately taunted me until I snapped, then turns around and claims it was all a crafty experiment.

So I would like to echo Ovid in saying, "If you're just here for Perl bashing, don't bother." If you don't like the language, don't use it. If you're going to continue asking un-researched questions, ask them someplace else, like #perl on efnet. I'm sure they'll be well-received.

Irate in Illinois,

Friar 'kaboo
pardon my altruism, but...