Re: Writing answers for newbie questions

[Abigail]

For instance you offer an example of a substitution which most Perl programmers should be able to understand. But if someone does not, then they problably do not know about perldoc, do not know what a regular expression is, and will have no way to find perlre

Neato. So, I guess we should now cut and paste documentation of everything you use in answering a question? After all, of anything you use to answer a question, the person asking might not know about. And since there's no way to tell, (because I don't think anyone here would suggest the person asking needs to do anything more than the minimum, so just telling what said person knows or does not know is out of the question), all you can do is assume the person asking has zero knowledge.

Is it ok to cut and paste the entire OED in each posting? A person might not know a certain word you use, and it might entirely be possible the person asking doesn't own a dictionary. Hmmm, perhaps the OED isn't enough, and we should also translate the OED to all possible languages - just in the off change the person asking isn't a native English speaker. Oh, and of course we should include pictures as well, perhaps the person can't read either!

-- Abigail, thinking questions about consulting documentation should be seen as separate questions - which, once answered, could be linked to from for instance the front page.