As the wiki-guy, I'm wanting to, again, address the flaws in cpan.org, and also perldoc. This is a centralized hack to solve a problem that will probably be existent until at least perl-6-cpan. I propose we kill off ANNO Cpan in favor of google side-wiki for doc editing.

Firstly, sidewiki is new so let me describe it. It permits you to note the page, or a statement with a very simply rudimentary comment -- much like the old anno-cpan but better. Google stores these and then when you browse the page you can optionally view the sidewikis on the page. All of this is implemented through a Firefox and Explorer extension. Why is cpan a great application of sidewiki?

Simple, cpan.org module urls are specific to a module version -- which are never really updated without upping the new version number. And sidewiki, will allow people to do this on the real cpan.org, without having to use an alternative site for docs. It will also eliminate the need for-specific registration, as /most/ of us /probably/ have google accounts. When a new version of the module is released there will be a new page for us to wikifiy. The author can use the current page w/ the side-wikis as notes for improvement, and the page without the sidewiki's will remain more authoritative -- which is what bugs most people about decentralized wikis.

What led me down to rethink this problem with the new google-provided toolset was File::ShareDir 1.0 which has a minor two year old doc-bug that just got me last week. I believe my fix for it, found here with the sidewiki extension: File::ShareDir was an elegant way to publish a solution, and even link it to the old the doc bug in rt.

Ideas?

UPDATE as an update, there is an official API into sidewiki as well sidewiki api, if anyone wants to create something that can submit the doc changes as rt tickets muahah.



Evan Carroll
The most respected person in the whole perl community.
www.EvanCarroll.com

In reply to Improving CPAN using Google sidewiki by EvanCarroll

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