Hi everybody -- As Casey announced the other day, I recently volunteered to take over list moderation duties. I think this list is a really important resource for the Perl community, and I think it's important that people new to Perl can start to get an understanding of how great that community can be via their interactions on this list.
I apologize for taking this long to send this message out; my volunteering was somewhat spontaneous and happened to come at a time when I've got a lot of other balls in the air -- so I've had to keep juggling those while trying to draft this email, and in the end it's taken me longer than I would have liked. One thing I will be doing in the very short term future is revising the list FAQ -- Leo Lapworth is helping me with that (thanks Leo!). I'll post a note when the final version is up on learn.perl.org. The primary changes are removing sections on topics that are now better covered on other parts of learn.perl.org, and moving Casey and others into a "valued emeritii" section. However, one of the sections I'm actually adding content to is the "No flames" section, and that seems worth mentioning now. First, the Reasonable Person Principle should be considered to be in effect on this list, just as it is on irc.perl.org. If you're not familiar with the Principle, see <http://www.irc.perl.org/reasonable_person.html> Second, I'm adding a guideline clarifying that posts should be about beginners questions and answers to those questions. When your posts start to get more into talking about other people, their behavior, and what you don't like about it ... you're crossing into off-topic territory. If somebody answers something in a way you don't care for, the very best thing you can do is to write a better answer. Failing that, just ignore the behavior you don't like. If you're absolutely unable to ignore it and just *have* to send an email about it -- email me, not the list. I'm hoping that most people won't need to remember who the List Mom is, that things will continue to run in a reasonable and friendly fashion without too much external course correction needed. I think of the additions to the FAQ as clarifying existing practice, rather than being any sort of drastic change. That said, if anybody has any questions -- let's talk. Again, I think this list is a valuable part of the Perl community, and I think everybody for their participation -- the questioners and the answerers both. I'm happy to be able to play a small part in maintaining the list. thanks, john. PS: For those of you wondering "who _is_ this guy?" -- and I don't think it will be all that many of you, which is why this is down here, where people can easily ignore it... -- here's a brief bio: I've been programming Perl for about 13 years now. I'm primarily self-taught (and would have loved this list back when I was starting out...); my formal training is in molecular biology, not computer science. After a number of years as a Linux sysadmin, I'm currently a web developer. I live outside of Washington DC, USA, and am a regular attendee of DC Perl Mongers meetings (dc.pm.org). I will be speaking at PPW this coming weekend, and if any list regulars are there, I'd be happy to buy you a $BEVERAGE and talk about ways this list could work better as well as ways in which it already works well. Thanks again and cheers. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: beginners-unsubscr...@perl.org For additional commands, e-mail: beginners-h...@perl.org http://learn.perl.org/
