Re^2: Open sourcing perlmonks

The Perl community is infamous for having poor websites. Some of these poor sites have been recently updated. Take for example, www.pm.org. And I could single out the personal websites of many Perl programmers, including one famous one in particular, but I won't do that.

~~Of course you won't.~~ It's much easier to throw out vague complaints without actually doing anything about them.

This is their baby and they have already demonstrated that they have a nasty case of separation anxiety.

You're welcome to think that, but you're wrong. I've seen lots of patches applied to add CSS support, improve XML support, and put id attributes on all sorts of tags, making the resulting HTML more semantically useful.

That doesn't mean things are perfect, but the system works and, as I said earlier, I haven't seen a flood of people knocking down the doors submitting patches to improve things. Thus, the imperfect system stays in place, a few people here and there jump up and down and say "Oooh, Ooh, I want to help!" and disappear a week later, and, every few months, someone complains that there's no legion of highly-paid volunteers working on the site full time to implement the shiny new feature he or she just invented.

Take my personal web site, for example. It's not very attractive, but every day someone reads one of my talks or downloads some of my software. Mission accomplished.

Update: Struck out a phrase I wish I hadn't used.

Comment on Re^2: Open sourcing perlmonks

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^3: Open sourcing perlmonks by brian_d_foy (Abbot) on May 29, 2005 at 04:21 UTC
It's not only what chromatic says, but that of all the major Perl websites out there, there are actually very few people involved with the design. The same people seem to do all of the work, and as chromatic says, there are plenty of volunteers whom we never hear from twice. People can blame me it they like, because www.pm.org, www.perl.org, and your "one famous person" website were or are my fault. It has nothing to do with Perl programming though: non-designers tend to suck at design no matter what they do. -- brian d foy <brian@stonehenge.com>	[reply]
Re^4: Open sourcing perlmonks by jacques (Priest) on May 29, 2005 at 05:17 UTC
there are actually very few people involved with the design Do you remember the fellow who gave a presentation at a Perl conference about improving search.cpan.org? I remember it. People started interrupting him. Sometimes I have thought of submitting a suggestion in the suggestion form, but then I keep remembering that poor guy. Please see my comment at alpha-geek, Jeremy Smith's journal, about this very subject. My opinion there remains unchanged.	[reply]
Re^5: Open sourcing perlmonks by brian_d_foy (Abbot) on May 29, 2005 at 05:55 UTC
If you want to get things done, you don't give a talk about it at a conference. You make the right friends, find out who's involved with it, and then make the improvements. It's just like anything else, and it has nothing to do with programming, programmers, or any other technology. Which major Perl site have you run, by the way? It's really easy to snipe from the sidelines, but when you actually do it you'll find out things aren't so easy. If you are using something like Pair.com, for instance, you can't just do whatever you want with the server. Other people have responsibilities beyond the free services they are giving you. A lot of these people are doing a lot more in the Perl world, and you'll have to choose between them working on perl, or making some website have a spiffy feature or a different color. So, it comes down to this: you can start your own site and do things anyway that you like. Stop complaining about what other people aren't doing and get to work. Join the club of people who do things. If you're afraid to even have a suggetion shot down, you don't have the stomach for what you'll have to endure once people get to talk about what you're trying to do rather than the other way around. -- brian d foy <brian@stonehenge.com>	[reply]
Re^6: Open sourcing perlmonks by jacques (Priest) on May 29, 2005 at 06:39 UTC
Re^7: Open sourcing perlmonks by adrianh (Chancellor) on May 29, 2005 at 09:31 UTC
Re^5: Open sourcing perlmonks by Anonymous Monk on May 29, 2005 at 22:38 UTC
Well that's a stupid comment if I ever saw one. amazon.com/perl doesn't take you to a search of perl books. google.com/perl doesn't take you to a search about perl. AnyRandomWebsiteDoesntNeedToMeet.com/YourStupidExpectations Constructive criticism doesn't begin and end with sucks!	[reply]
Re^3: Open sourcing perlmonks by jacques (Priest) on May 29, 2005 at 04:16 UTC
Of course you won't. It's much easier to throw out vague complaints without actually doing anything about them. No, I don't mention personal websites, because that would be silly. I probably shouldn't have brought them up in my OP. I haven't seen a flood of people knocking down the doors submitting patches to improve things. I see that as a failure in the system. Since this site is very popular, why isn't there that flood? and disappear a week later See above.	[reply]
Re^4: Open sourcing perlmonks by chromatic (Archbishop) on May 29, 2005 at 04:27 UTC
Since this site is very popular, why isn't there that flood? I posted a link to my "Myths Open Source Developers Tell Ourselves" article earlier in this discussion.My thesis is that's not how open source works. There are over 75 members of pmdev. How many patches do you expect in a a week? How many people use Perl 5? Do you know how many people submit patches to that in a week? How about to Parrot? How about to Pugs? The answer is "Fewer than you might believe." Sure, having the source open makes this possible and easier, but I don't know that I necessarily trust a patch from someone unwilling to stick around long enough to earn a decent reputation and then ask for access to the code. Maybe that policy has prevented a couple of really great potential contributors from doing good things -- I don't know. I do think it's positive in enforcing at least a minimum level of responsibility and accountability, though, and I don't believe there has ever been a huge desire for people to do more work themselves.	[reply]
Re^5: Open sourcing perlmonks by jacques (Priest) on May 29, 2005 at 05:01 UTC
Do you know how many people submit patches to that in a week? How about to Parrot? How about to Pugs? I think that's a poor comparison. I would expect more people to lend a hand in web development than let's say in Parrot or Pugs.	[reply]