When I was in school some teachers would force kids to sit where the teacher wanted them, even if the kids who were always hot sat next to the radiator and the kids who were always cold sat next to the drafty windows. That's not helping anyone learn. Most of our teachers would assign us seats until they learned our names, then would let us sit where we pleased. They did once in a while have us all pick new seats just to keep things fresh and surround us with different kids, but we got to pick the new seats too. Kids who couldn't handle sitting where they had chosen would be assigned their seats, which besides cutting down on the problem at hand was a gentle (and gently embarrassing) reminder that the teacher was in charge and we were there to learn.

Which, perhaps surprisingly, brings me to the topic of the thread. Shuffling people towards information in a mechanistic way instead of allowing discussion achieves a completely different goal. If I want a straightforward recount of the facts from a single voice, I can read a reference. If I want to learn something in a nuanced and contextually relevant way, let me discuss it with people. I always did better in classes in which the teacher discussed things with the students rather than reading their notes for us to take down. I did even better when the other students and I could bounce the ideas off one another, too (preferably without being too disruptive to the others, of course).

I think the PerlMonks system is very much like a classroom in some ways and like an community workshop in others. Sometimes it's even a support group. I already have access to books, web references, man pages, POD, mailing lists, and Usenet newsgroups for Perl. If I want answers, I can go there. If I want understanding, PerlMonks and playing with the actual code are the two best ways I've found. Letting me talk among the other students just a bit helps me learn, and people who find that too distracting have plenty of resources already.