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RFC: Preaching section on PM

by tomazos (Deacon)
on Sep 27, 2005 at 14:48 UTC ( [id://495395]=monkdiscuss: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??

I would like to request comment regarding the following unauthorized proposal:

A new section on PerlMonks called "Preaching" for discussion, information, recommendations and ideas related to:

  • advocating the use of Perl
  • impressive facts about Perl
  • the Perl community party line
  • defenses of Perl in comparisons with competing languages/platforms
  • current events requiring representation of the interests of the Perl community and Perl programmers
  • pointers to comment sections of newly posted offsite articles about Perl, or involving Perl
  • Perl PR material
  • Perl branding, marketing and image

Please communicate your thoughts with replies and not downvotes. :)

-Andrew.


Andrew Tomazos  |  andrew@tomazos.com  |  www.tomazos.com

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: RFC: Preaching section on PM
by xdg (Monsignor) on Sep 27, 2005 at 16:19 UTC

    A lot of this right now seems to wind up in Meditations (or sometimes Cool Uses for Perl and Announcements). There might be a benefit to differentiating between insights about Perl programming ("this is an interesting technique I discovered") and insights about Perl ("Perl is really cool, helps me code quickly, and I love it"). That said, as responses to my post New section for Regex Q's? suggest, there's a lot of legitimate concern about too much fragmentation. The volume of advocacy posts is sufficiently low that I don't know that it's really a problem right now. (Maybe the lack of advocacy is a problem, but that's a whole separate story.)

    -xdg

    Code written by xdg and posted on PerlMonks is public domain. It is provided as is with no warranties, express or implied, of any kind. Posted code may not have been tested. Use of posted code is at your own risk.

      I suppose one of the motivations behind the RFC is that such a section would encourage more posting surrounding such subject matter.

      I think the section would be a superset of just advocacy (see list), and think it is a broad enough and important enough topic to warrant more thinking about.

      -Andrew.


      Andrew Tomazos  |  andrew@tomazos.com  |  www.tomazos.com
Re: RFC: Preaching section on PM
by rinceWind (Monsignor) on Sep 27, 2005 at 16:26 UTC

    Maybe a better name for it would be The Pulpit

    --

    Oh Lord, won’t you burn me a Knoppix CD ?
    My friends all rate Windows, I must disagree.
    Your powers of persuasion will set them all free,
    So oh Lord, won’t you burn me a Knoppix CD ?
    (Missquoting Janis Joplin)

      I had to look up pulpit (not a church-goer myself) - and I like the definition. If enough people know what it means than that is a good suggestion.

      -Andrew.


      Andrew Tomazos  |  andrew@tomazos.com  |  www.tomazos.com
Re: RFC: Preaching section on PM
by merlyn (Sage) on Sep 27, 2005 at 16:39 UTC
Re: RFC: Preaching section on PM
by sauoq (Abbot) on Sep 27, 2005 at 20:52 UTC

    In a word: unnecessary.

    Preaching here would mostly be "preaching to the choir."

    Besides, I can easily see it degrading into the "holy war" section and attracting <fill in a non-Perl language> zealots who don't necessarily agree with our point of view.

    -sauoq
    "My two cents aren't worth a dime.";
    

      I think you've raised a good point. Such a section would be a lightning rod for endless (and useless) flames about "mine's better than yours". I could easily see it degenerating into a few Perl advocates, and a pack of Anonymous Monks trying to annoy everyone by writing inflammatory remarks.

      Still, it would be helpful sometimes if I had reasons to advocate Perl, beyond things like, "well it's so darn much fun!"

      Agreed. The whole point of evangelising is to do it in the community where you will find people who are not yet "singing in the choir" to extend your analogy.
Re: RFC: Preaching section on PM
by blazar (Canon) on Sep 27, 2005 at 15:26 UTC
    It seems to me that some of these functionalities are already available elsewhere. OTOH I don't buy many of the arguments some people gives against Perl advocacy and I am a big Perl fun myself (why would I be here, else?) but I don't see any reason to be so fanatic about it either. Also I doubt it would be of much use here: we are all supposed to be to some extent Perl aficionados, aren't we?!?
      Thanks for your comments blazar.

      To be clearer, the section would not be for advocating Perl use to PerlMonks.

      It would be for giving people tools, ideas and material they could use to educate people, outside the "monastry walls", about the merits of Perl. (Maybe even in realtime in the case of new offsite articles posted about Perl)

      Also, for the other things mentioned on the list - like Perl's image and brand identity. These things usually suffer in a rag-tag volunteer-run project like Perl, and it would be great if PerlMonks gave the Perl community some support in this area.

      -Andrew.


      Andrew Tomazos  |  andrew@tomazos.com  |  www.tomazos.com
        I underst{oo,an}d that. Still, it would be nodes and threads, and you know that when it comes to advocacy even many Perl hackers express negative opinions, so that chances are it would still yield a whole lot of confusion and all in all do a poor job wrt advocacy itself.

        Also what is a point of favour of Perl for someone, may not be for someone else. And all in all the whole matter may a little bit blurred if not confused at all. For example Perl's suitability for "web development" (loosely speaking) made Perl popular, but it spreaded cargo cult techniques and bad habits and gave Perl a bad name in many circles...

Re: RFC: Preaching section on PM
by chester (Hermit) on Sep 27, 2005 at 16:42 UTC
    Is the word you're looking for "proselytizing"? Preaching is what you do to people who've already been converted. Proselytization is the process of converting someone.

    I could always go for some nifty camel .pngs.

Re: RFC: Preaching section on PM
by halley (Prior) on Sep 28, 2005 at 17:50 UTC
    Downvoted: yet another attempt to canonize some vague pet concept into a whole new section. Pour that creativity into a channel with more traction.

    --
    [ e d @ h a l l e y . c c ]

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