All your points about the site design and anachronisms were accurate. Close to every single user here, long term or new, already had the view and agrees with you. There is no need for or appreciation of redundancy on the topic. You said something everyone here knows and you did it as a brand new user who hasn’t taken in any of the culture or contributed to the site. So basically you crashed a party and ordered everyone to change the music and start cleaning up. You got a bad reception. Quelle surprise. It wasn’t personal. How could it be? No one here knows you yet.

What there is a need for is volunteer developers who might do something about the situation. The problem there is the code base is difficult. Probably so difficult that a complete rewrite is all that makes sense; my view. I’ve volunteered a couple of times to participate if it’s done with a modern framework. It’s not going to happen. Too much work versus too few resources. And there is a fundamental conflict of views among some users. Some think in purely utilitarian terms and don’t care about the appearance at all since it’s just about Perl.

What you might be interested in is some of the customization that is possible currently; Re: Pretify the site with CSS? is a start. I’m not sure it represents the current state of the art. I use it, or some version of it. Makes the site look much better (to me).

You keep saying the code base is difficult but it isnt and has never been the bottleneck against change.

Then jump in and change it. Show us how some easy code edits of this customized Everything Engine will make it work like a Stack Exchange site. But don’t suggest someone else should be doing something you call easy if you won’t step up. From my seat you sound like you’re about to launch into Classic Anonymous Monk conspiracy theory about how the porters and p6 and M$FT and Big Web conspire to keep the site at v1 and kill the One True Perl. And the claim of something being easy without anything to back it up is pure Sundial.

What there is a need for is volunteer developers who might do something about the situation. The problem there is the code base is difficult.

I know many very old Web Projects that managed to keep running and not getting stuck. I personally know the Wordpress very well since more than 10 years ago.
They managed progressively updating their Engine Base Code to modern standards and still keep running.
That is the way you deal with updating / remaking big projects. You do it progressively. With some bigger and some smaller efforts.

One step to invite new volunteers would open up the Source Code on a GitHub repository.
As it is a common Praxis to many CPAN developments.
That way you can manage the project which an Issue Tracker and accept little code contributions from a broader audience.
- or Template::Toolkit https://github.com/abw/Template2
- or Mojolicious https://github.com/mojolicious


An attitude like I found at
https://perlmonks.org/?node_id=1223201
> But I can't find any answer to my concrete Question
> You dont need to know :)
Doesn't really make you a favor.
(Who are those who think nobody needs to know and this site does not need any help ?)

To be clear: you are right, the site could really use updates on several levels. That’s given. No one disputes it provided the core functionality does not change. That said–

You’re still a party crasher who knows nothing about the community or the site or its history and you’re accidentally off-putting because of it. It’s been awhile but the last time I looked at WordPress it was a code midden. A study in worst practices with serious security issues on and off and on again. It succeeds in spite of the mess and the lack of separation of concerns because it has a massive install base, there are hundreds and hundreds of developers, and it has a financial model. Perlmonks has two regular, very part-time devs, with a few more sometimes devs and few more fly-by devs who have commit bits but don’t contribute, like me, and no money. WordPress is also a poor example because—again, my opinion—the PerlMonks code base is not salvageable. Grafting progressive, modernizing changes onto certain kinds of projects only increases complexity and instability; and burns out volunteers.

I wrote a CMS/blog platform in Perl that covers most of the core functionality of WordPress. I did it in one month, alone. It’s been running a couple of sites for about 10 years. I’m a CPAN author. And I am a mediocre JAPH on the PerlMonks totem pole. tobyink has 250 packages on the CPAN alone.

So, you’re trying to school those who know Perl and programming extremely well; a high number of users are professional programmers; some are core contributors; inactive members represent just about all of the Perlsphere’s essential hackers; past and present. You’re talking down to everyone as if this were some kind of script kiddie pool: gIthub and issue tracking and TT2… I have patches in Template::Toolkit and CGI.pm among others and I didn’t dictate them. There is hardly a monk here who isn’t adept at github, perforce, mercurial, CVS, or SVN.

(Who are those who think nobody needs to know and this site does not need any help ?)

Me. Quite a few others. Need != want. I want updates. I want instant voting, WYSIWYG editing preview, some kind of tagging, reverse indexed fast search, more auto-listings, more auto-linking, etc. It’s desire, not need. I come here for Perl discussion and to answer Perl questions, not to bask in HTML5.

(Who are those who think nobody needs to know and this site does not need any help ?)

It was Anonymous Monk that said "You don't need to know" and you need to exercise judgement when evaluating responses from Anonymous Monk.
Sometimes he provides remarkable insights and, at the other extreme, he sometimes provides complete and utter garbage.
Often he provides something that is neither a "remarkable insight" nor "complete and utter garbage".
I think that, in the instance you've linked to, he was providing something between garbage and a joke. (There was a smiley, after all.)

The question of whether this site needs help or not is a curly one.
For me, after 12 years I've learnt to find my way around it pretty well - I therefore personally don't see a need for anything to change.

I always assumed that the drop-off in attendance here was due to the declining interest in perl, but if there's something about the layout or culture of the site that's deterring people from joining up then I'm all for fixing it if such is possible.
It's new attendees like you that would be most aware of these sorts of shortcomings. Old regular farts like me can only see that it's pretty much the same as always - which is something that we probably also take comfort in.
What, specifically, do you want to change ?

Cheers,
Rob

> An attitude like I found at https://perlmonks.org/?node_id=1223201

Look... You don't even know how to link properly, but are giving us advice about the code base?

My advice, gain an overview about the functionalities here before talking about how to replace them.

TIP: Perlmonks has configurable CSS themes.

Showing us an improved "modern" theme might convince us that you are more than an over motivated "big mouth" who stirs problems starts ambitious projects and disappears after some weeks.

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery FootballPerl is like chess, only without the dice}

youre not wrong, you just need to do more research before you post

Can I get the PerlMonks source code?

Why did I get downvoted?

I posted this a while back, and I think it applies to your attitude.

I'm coming up to 17 years on this site -- it's helped me learn tons of stuff, and helped me out immensely on a professional level. And I hope I've helped a couple of people learn as well.

Instead of immediately calling for a complete site overhaul, take the time to learn about this site, and see what you can do to help. Yes, it might be possible to do a complete rewrite of this site using modern technologies -- but do you have the resources and knowledge to support such a task? I haven't seen proof of either. I'm not saying "Don't do it!" -- go right ahead. We'll continue to watch your progress with interest. :)