All of which is to say, yes, I appreciate the point of the post, but the people who read it and understand it and follow it aren't exactly going to be the same inexperienced posters who commit the original error, no?

If no one bothered to put effort into questions, I'd soon get frustrated at yet another awful SOWP post, and probably ditch PM after some interval. And if no one is here to answer those awful SOWPs (except perhaps for awful writers of similarly terrible SOWPs), little if anything of value would be here in the first place. Which, I suppose, would solve the awful SOWP post problem, as PM would not have a reputation for adding value, and would only have visitors lost in the ether.

So yes, OPs like this are going to be missed by newcomers. One of our jobs as members of the PM community is to gently nudge newcomers with ways to be more effective here, and thus contribute more to the PM community, and get more out of it.

But I'm not a diaper-changer kinda person. Sure, I can do the odd diaper, wipe the odd green nose. After all, that was me once upon a time, and someone was patient with me, and I'd like to do the same. But I'm not interested in a whole community of adults who can't find the toilet on their own. If one of them forgets himself, or comes from the 3 shells culture instead, for the sake of the Perl Monks Hazardous Waste and Diaper Detail, I'll point him to OPs like this. Some people just need to be told.