I have been a member of the monestary for a few months now, and have for the most part enjoyed my experience here. I arrived not knowing the first thing about perl, and now, well I can print "hello world" Before I started playing with computers, I did some work with people undergoing treatment for alcohol. These people would attend AA meetings where the idea of"principles versus personalities" was the theme for getting such a large/diverse group of people to work for their own common good. The idea behind this was for these people to put aside all of their petty conflicts and deal with the issues they need to help themselves recover. Why don't we do that here? The people at those meetings have lost almost everything, here, we as a community trying to promote perl, are here under much better terms.
I guess I am a little distraught at some of the things I have seen: personality voting, accusations and perhaps the worst thing I have seen is the post about another member's identity. We are an online community, we are supposed to be friends, we all offer as much about ourselves as we want each other to know about us (another similarity with AA). Why in the world do we create a huge discussion about the identity of a member, or any issues they may be dealing with? Is it any of our business? While I often get rubbed the wrong way by the tone in some of another member's posts, the monk in question like some other monks here, probably honestly doesn't remember what it feels like to not understand some of the simpler functions of perl, and is probably a little abrasive with replies. I am sure we all can be accused of that at some point, how many of us have gotten frustrated with a child that took 10 minutes to tie a shoe? For the child, tieing the shoe was a major accomplishment, for most of us, we don't even think about it anymore.
Perhaps we should get back to what most of us came here for, let's promote perl. If a member contributes positively, whether it is through provoking questions, or another "correct" way to do things, why don't we let them be? Why are there knowledgeable monks here, that have to defend their personalities rather than defend their knowledge?
/end sermon
"The social dynamics of the net are a direct consequence of the fact that nobody has yet developed a Remote Strangulation Protocol." -- Larry Wall