Speaking from personal experience, I'd like something like this a lot. Personally, I'd like to see more emphsasis on items specific to this site -- the "within the monastery" part -- than items related to Perl in general.

To explain the "personal experience": I created a login on Perlmonks a few weeks ago. Mostly I've been lurking since then to learn my way around. I've been an "active" member of the community only in the last few days, and I'm still not comfortable with how everything in the site works. For example, I still find having all of Guide to the monastery, Perl Monks Site FAQ and Site Howto confusing -- most of the time I check all three. I never did find out what "node depth threshold" is. ;-)

Personally, I'd rather see the general items in Nathan Torkington's note collected under a "Check these before posting" node, with a link to it in the welcome e-mail (or welcome node). Other items to include: Writeup Formatting Tips, Where to post, and of course Super Search.

Another point I think is very important: Nathan Torkington's writing style is just right for this note. It's informative and to-the-point, but very friendly, without a hint of condescension. The last thing a newbie needs is something that sounds like a put-down: "You didn't use strict or -w, did you, newbie?". I definitely agree strongly with Casey West's recent writeup on Perl.com on this point.

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