Distributed development is doable. Yes, having a large development team can be a problem. Keep it simple. Only have a few. One primary (vroom, obviously), and a few others that know Everything well enough to help out with the site without destroying it or causing unecessary down time.

Resynchronizing with Everything would probably be impossible with the ammount of changes it took to develop the current PerlMonks environment. I recall hearing that vroom hacked it quite a bit. The nodelets and such things all depend on various parsers and functions, and each section and individual node has moderation and voting glued to it. I'm sure there are many other pieces behind the scenes in Everything I haven't even glimpsed yet.

The offering plate is not a solution. It would be wonderful to hire vroom full time to run the site, but unless a better payment system is put in place, he will never be afforded. Perhaps if users are able to put themselves down for a monthly credit-card contribution (or however-long) they would be more "generous" with their money. Something like this would enable a monk to give the gift that keeps on giving, without having to remember to keep giving. However, even this is likely not to work. Many people, however sad this may be, feel that just being in a community is enough of a contribution. Giving money would be "excessive." If there's another solution around, I'd sure love to hear it. I'm sure vroom would, also.

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Love is random; fear is inevitable. -- Orson Scott Card
PerlMonks is good for Perl, but JavaJunkies is good for Java

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