in reply to Re^5: Ideas for PerlMonks 2.0
in thread Ideas for PerlMonks 2.0

The new system should start empty of content.

I disagree with you on that one. Sorry.

I really like the idea that PM is a continuous thing for over two decades. I'd rather spend the time to find a way to convert existing nodes as well as possible to the new markup.

This would also help with search functions and linking to old posts. Having the whole history of PM posts, with all functionality is one of the things that makes PM a great resource.

Also, the exact type of markup shouldn't be a big issue either way for most users, my focus would be on supporting a WYSIWYG editor by default.

Same goes with the existing user accounts, we should import them as is, possibly deactivating older, unused accounts, e.g. disable login but have a simple way of re-enabling on demand. This way, the usernames stay reserved for the people who come back to PM after a few years. It also preserves the history of the site. This includes monks (and their posts) who have passed away - i can't, in good conscience, just drop all that stuff and relegate it to some hard-to-find archive when we have a relatively easy way to preserve that stuff in the live system.

Do you mean a link in PM2 node source like Markup in the Monastery would make an external link from there to here?

No, i mean links from external sites to PerlMonks. Cool URIs don't change

I think this is something that is easily achieveable in my framework with a few hours of work, especially if we do import all the old posts.

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Re^7: Ideas for PerlMonks 2.0
by jdporter (Paladin) on Dec 10, 2024 at 15:16 UTC
    This would also help with search functions and linking to old posts. Having the whole history of PM posts, with all functionality is one of the things that makes PM a great resource.

    I believe it should be possible — and in fact far easier — to achieve the desired functionality without copying the nodes to the new system. I.e. we can make nodes on the old system (here) appear in the new system. We can support replying to them, and all that.

    We can create the APIs here necessary to support such integration. We can make the two systems work together as seamlessly as we want.

    Trying to copy the nodebase — any subset of it — would essentially infect the new system with bad design decisions baked into this system.

[reply]
      I agree with cavac's reasoning for preserving continuity with PM, and I thought about this a lot many years ago while contemplating a rewrite of PM. My plan was to copy all (or most) visible content to a new site, but not to copy the node base.

      So, for example, there'd be dedicated (separate tables) for posts and users. For the posts, we'd copy the doctext from PM, plus some metadata like author ID's and node ID's for continuity.

      (I was also thinking about using the ltree feature of PostgreSQL, which would allow loading a thread with just one query.)

[reply]

      I have to think about that. That would essentially mean we'd have to run the two systems in parallel for the forseeable future? Or am i misunderstanding something here?

      Edit: If we forgo most specialized markups and go with proper HTML, the ckeditor4 fork i'm currently using in my projects should be able to handle editing most existing (rendered) markups of the monastery. Plus, it's plain HTML, which i find way easier to use than all that Wiki markup stuff.

      PerlMonks XP is useless? Not anymore: XPD - Do more with your PerlMonks XP
      Also check out my sisters artwork and my weekly webcomics
[reply]
        we'd have to run the two systems in parallel for the forseeable future

        Yep. We wouldn't want to put this system in to 'archive' status (accept no new content) until the new system has been fully checked out and passed user acceptance testing, at the absolute earliest. Then we can push everybody over there. It may be that there are some users who simply refuse to use the replacement system. Not sure what to do about them. Leave the current system running forever?

[reply]

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