On the occasion of the start of my second year participating in Perlmonks, a meditation on what (and who) makes a site like Perlmonks work.

Thanks to tye for ascii-art and to the assembled and disassembled monks for a fun and informative year.

When partners feed the community,
software supports the transformation of the audience,
content is at the root of the software,
and purpose is at the root of the content,
a tree grows in codeland.


                                                      (   (   )
                                                     (      )  )
                                                    (___(_______)
                                                     | |\ V /| |
                                                     @ @ \ / @ @
                                                         | |
                                                         | |
                                                      +-------+
                                      +-----------+   |Partner|
                           +-------+  |  Active   |   +-------+
              +-------+    |Regular|  |participant|       |
              |Visitor|    | user  |  +-----------+  Collaboration
+---------+   +-------+    +-------+        |           tools
|potential|       |            |       Communication      |
|audience | Accessibility  Usability      tools           |
+---------+    design       design          |             |
     |            |            |            |             |
+----------------------------------------------------------------+
|                        Community portal                        |
+----------------------------------------------------------------+
     |                   |                  |              |
   Content             Portal            Portal        Security &
  management         management        plug-in SW     connectivity
    tools               tools         design tools       tools
     |                       \       /                     |
 +---------+               +----------+                 +------+
 | Content |_Collaboration_|  Portal  |__Collaboration__| Site |
 |providers|    tools      |management|       tools     |admins|
 +---------+               |   team   |                 +------+
                           +----------+
                             /      \
                       Data        Collaboration
                    management         tools
                      tools               \
                       /                +----------+
                  +-------+             |  Portal  |
                  |Content|             | software |
                  +-------+             |developers|
                                        +----------+