grab bag of user questions

[ysth]

(updated with some paraphrased answers, apologies for any misattributions)

Is there a way to preview an update?

Answer: editors can preview their updates, so perhaps someday but don't hold your breath (tye)

How should a wrong (or only 25% right) answer in Q&A be responded to? I see this done two ways: via reply and via a separate answer. The reply doesn't show up in the list of answers, so seems kind of pointless unless someone goes and edits the answer, and a separate answer doesn't visually tie to the error its correcting. If the error is repeated in more than one answer, it feels as if the correction is being out-voted.

Answer: two monks, three opinions

How can I see what writeups of mine have recent replies?

Answer:set user settings to notify your message inbox when a node you wrote gets a reply (davido)

I see "Perl documentation on this site is out dated". Is there any interest in updating it? Or is it a deprecated source of perl doc?

Answer: too much effort, link offsite (davido), teach them to use local docs for their particular perl version (tilly)

[davido]

First question... The Q&A section isn't really a discussion section. However, on occasion, wrong answers get posted. If you spot a wrong answer you can post a followup to that answer. But as you've mentioned, from the Q/A page, you don't see the followups. My suggestion is, once you've posted your followup, send a /msg to QandAEditors alerting them to the issue, and to your followup. The QandAEditors can rework the errant "answer", incorporating your correction, or remove the wrong answer altogether.

If you don't feel like posting a followup with a correction, you can still alert the QandAEditors via /msg. They'll take care of fixing or removing it.

And definately use your own judgement. If your response is actually "Another way to do it", that might be a "better way", it's possibly not so much a correction as simply another good answer. If that's the case, post it as an answer, not as a followup.

2nd question: You can turn on a setting in your user settings that will cause your inbox to be notified if someone replies to a node you wrote.

3rd question: I can't really comment on why the documentation is outdated (other than the fact that it's probably pretty labor intensive updating it every time a new release comes out). But for those times when you want to link to the POD, and the on-site version is substantially or significantly outdated, you can link to the POD at http://www.perldoc.com.

[tye]

No, there is no preview for updates, but you already knew that. We have preview when editors make updates, so such a feature is feasible. I don't expect schedules from volunteers so I won't say anything more about when such might become available. Certainly don't hold your breathe. (:

I think a scheme that might scale better would be to post an improved answer and let Q+A Editors remove duplicates (and do other clean-up if needed).

1. This allows all to notice the improved answer immediately (even if it takes 2 weeks for a Q+A Editor to do something about it)
2. This means all can help with improving the content instead of forcing only Q+A Editors to write improved "copy"
3. This likely reduces the amount of admin work required by editors (Q+A Editors can't delete replies to answers so they'd have to get 3 editors to help them, while they can, acting alone, delete a duplicate answer)

For trivial updates, a /msg to Q+A Editors is probably preferred.

[tilly]

My answer to the last question. I think that people should be encouraged subtly and unsubtly to rely their local documentation (accessible through perldoc). That is the only way to get documentation with any guarantee that its advice should match the version of Perl that you are using. Any version of Perl that they choose to document here will be wrong for a large fraction of users who might try to use it.