Re: (Toward a better PerlMonks) Who do we serve, and why, and how can we do it better?

[lee_crites]

Yahoo / PerlMonks

What an interesting thread -- I am going to reply, anyway.

I don't log into perlmonks daily and check things out. When I have questions, I normally hit Yahoo! up for answers, and scan through the list of links it returned.

If I see an link to perlmonks, I normally go there (here) first. Why? For virtually all of the reasons listed by sundialsvc4. From time to time I start here, but most of the time not.

I could pick on the user interface and the quirks in the search (I mean, really, WHY does Yahoo and Google do a better job of searching perlmonks than perlmonks does????), but by and large, it is what it is, and I find it's usefulness enough to keep me coming back.

I am by no means a N0081E, but sometimes asking a question really IS the fastest and best way to get a real answer. Mindless replies like RTFM waste everyone's time and resources -- and thankfully, it has been a LONG time since that has happened to me here.

Good post; good comments. I second the thoughts and feelings!

[talexb]

(I mean, really, WHY does Yahoo and Google do a better job of searching perlmonks than perlmonks does????)

I don't know about Yahoo, but search is what Google does. So don't be surprised if a Google search of the site is faster/better than the local search. Also think about how much hardware is being directed to a local search, and compare that against the Google behemoth.

So, short answer, if you really want to search Perlmonks for something, I highly recommend using Google instead of the local search .. unless you know in exactly which section the post you're after is located.