Usually it comes down to understanding the intentions of the list/group/site. At PerlMonks.org, they tend to respond very directly. Don’t confuse this directness as rudeness. They’re not going to waste time making their responses fluffy. They’ll tell you where you went wrong and where to go next. They’re very good at this. If you take their responses as rudeness, it might not be where you should be asking questions.

And when one compares perl to other languages, one should compare it to the real language – like ruby – on IRC.

I am often on the ruby main IRC channel.

But I am never on the RoR IRC channel (besides one has to be registered to join there, and i refuse to participate in any channels which force me to register just for the sake of _me_ being able to join it. The ruby channel btw does not force anyone to register, and I think this is great. Python IRC channel requires one to register btw. Perl IRC channel does not force one to register before you can join it)

Really – I’ve seen a few accusations made about perl people ripping into people and so far none have been backed up by the mailing list archives.

I’ve never seen anybody “ripped a new one” for asking a question on a list – but I have seen people lose patience with idiots who take the p*ss – the usual “do my coursework for me” requests, and the “I refuse to provide the information you need to help me because I know the problem better than you, stop asking difficult questions or suggesting a different way” muppets, who still get help, and only get negative responses after a long thread of them insulting, sulking and generally being anti-social on list.

In summary, noobs are tolerated, idiot’s aren’t – most noobs aren’t idiot’s and most idiots are beyond reasoning with.

I think you’re misunderstanding. This wasn’t a full detailed comparison of different programming communities. It was a statement of one person’s experiences dealing with multiple programming communities. It’s not a generalization, it’s an anecdote.

Is it possible that things could have gone differently, if different community people were involved? Of course. But it didn’t. The guys queried about Perl were polite and helpful. The guys queried about a different language were not. It happens.

(Personally, I’ve had better experiences with questions on my local Perl user group list than just about any other mailing list I’m on. Not a generalization, just my experience.)

You will get ripped a new one for asking the wrong question on a Perl list, I know first hand.

Then I yell at the idiot very, very, very loudly until he understands that ignoring advice to the point where the nice, friendly, patient people are starting to want to burst into tears is simply not acceptable.

Or until he leaves. I’ll happily lose one idiot in ten if it means that the people who help the other nine don’t suffer support burnout – and this approach seems to work pretty well, the helpers-of-idiots in the catalyst and DBIC communities seem to be a lot longer lasting than most other places.

(and funnily enough, I also op on freenode #perl which has, IMO, improved a huge amount over the past few months thanks to the tireless efforts of a bunch of the other ops and regulars and the occasional tired, sucky attempt at effort from me ;)