Just an idea: it seems Dominus is restarting his quiz of the week, with volunteer help. I thought it would be convenient for many to have it mirrored here (at least the perl-qotw traffic, not necessarily perl-qotw-discuss) in a special Quiz section, with replies allowed (though respecting the spoiler timeout). Any pmdev's interested in exploring the feasibility of this?

Update: by "respecting the spoiler timeout" I meant in terms of policy, not in any automated way.

Pros: ability to search/easily link to quizes and discussion thereof from perlmonks; wider exposure for the quizes; ability to "download code" to extract answers.

Cons: splitting discussion of the quizes between the mailing list and here.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Mirror [dominus]'s QOTW here?
by Ovid (Cardinal) on Apr 29, 2004 at 18:29 UTC

    Sounds nice, but I have two issues. One, you'll want to get Dominus' permission. He may have valid concerns about the split discussion.

    Two, the list died after a while. For whatever reason Dominus didn't have the time to maintain the list, so building a new PM section for a possible "here today, gone tomorrow" list doesn't seem practical.

    Cheers,
    Ovid

    New address of my CGI Course.

      Sounds nice, but I have two issues. One, you'll want to get Dominus' permission. He may have valid concerns about the split discussion
      I took the need for permission as a given. I just thought the greater barrier was implementation on the PM side so presented it here first.
      Two, the list died after a while. For whatever reason Dominus didn't have the time to maintain the list, so building a new PM section for a possible "here today, gone tomorrow" list doesn't seem practical.
      Read the discussion on -discuss (or wait till he posts an announcement on the main list); he's accepted that he doesn't have time to post and summarize the quizes and will be relying on volunteers. I don't think there will be a problem with continuity.
Re: Mirror [dominus]'s QOTW here?
by Abigail-II (Bishop) on Apr 29, 2004 at 21:22 UTC
    I don't see much gain in mirroring a mailing list on this website. It's a lot of work, you have to direct the traffic from the mailing list to this site, format it, thread it, and you have to ferry the replies back to the list. The people on the list, used to seeing replies with relevant quoting won't be too pleased with the tendency of the people on this site to not quote.

    It's much easier if people who want to participate just join the mailing list.

    Abigail

      The perl-qotw list (as opposed to perl-qotw-discuss) only gets the quizzes and summaries; there would be no need to forward perlmonks postings to the list. Having the discussions here and on the -discuss list be completely separate is, I think, a necessary drawback for the reasons you list.
        If the discussion is completely separate, then, unless the person running the current quiz happens to frequent perlmonks as well, the summaries would not discuss anything that was discussed here.

        Abigail

Re: Mirror [dominus]'s QOTW here?
by hossman (Prior) on Apr 29, 2004 at 22:10 UTC

    It would seem more fitting to me for some interested party to just write a cron that would detect when a new quiz comes out, and auto-post it to PM in the Perl News section as an announcement of the quick, with a link to the primary mailing list archive for peopel to read the specifics of the quiz, follow along with the discussion, and subscribe if interested.

      I don't think News replies is a good place to have discussion of quizzes; that's why I suggested a new section here (though there is the dormant Quests...), and I'd like to see the community here discuss them.

        Hmm, well ... part of my point is that people shouldn't discuss it here, but if you want to post regular announcements about something with a link to where there is allready an active discussion, fine.

        I would post the same response if someone suggested having a special section on perlmonks for continously tracking anything that allready had it's own inherient forum for discussion, be it perl6 digests, slashdot perl stories, or the QOTW.

Re: Mirror [dominus]'s QOTW here?
by gjb (Vicar) on Apr 30, 2004 at 08:55 UTC

    Maybe this is a silly idea, but why not host the quiz on Perlmonks? Maybe Dominus would be happy to do so and it would give him some extra help if needed.

    Just my 2 cents, -gjb-

      I don't think there's any question of the mailing list going away; it has more than a thousand subscribers (though less than half of those subscribe to the discussion lists).

      If the quizzes are also posted and discussed here, how is that different from "host"ing the quiz?