On Wed, 2008-12-10 at 14:36 +0000, Jonathan Stowe wrote: > Most of the crap that we get in this list is completely down to people not > being > polite.
Which takes us neatly back to where we were before this tangent... the suggestion that the Perl community could be considerably less hostile to newcomers, even if they are a bit clueless when they start out. It's not a problem that gets fixed by saying that we should fix it, but nor is it one that will ever get fixed if people don't repeatedly point out that it is a problem. Sniping at newcomers just because it's easy (they frequently set themselves up, and everybody knows the punchlines) doesn't make us a welcoming community. It makes us a clique, and an unpleasant one at that. I've noticed a couple of well-known people on this list making spectacular efforts to turn around this ingrained cultural attitude problem over the last year or two, but they do tend to stand out as exceptions to the rule. IMHO, YMMV, HAND. Denny