http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=798456

Dear Senior Monks of PM,

Re: suggestions for placement of new user experience/feedback

I've placed some notes and things I didn't find in the tutorials in my home node. Some of which might be worth mining or - if not adding to a proper non-editable/non-commentable FAQ - adding to a PM-newbie thread as a comment:

Is there such a preferred node to add comments to - and I missed it - or is this indeed material for a full RFP medition as ww suggested via cb?

thanx, Peter

Update: Actually I think that there are too many nodes adding some details to say the 2 major introduction texts. And now I added one more by using my home node to collect IMHO hard-to-find meta-information under the heading of Perlmonks - the missing Memes.

Concentrating such information say as footnotes in or RFC thread(s) for the main intros would have helped me a bit - it doesn't need to be fully integrated in the FAQs.

The main time-sinks examples in my case were:

If a reader of this finds the official thread for such comments, please /msg me about it -
I'd love to clean up my home node's meme section and move most of it to a well-linked official thread.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: q: is there a new user thread to add comments to?
by Corion (Patriarch) on Oct 01, 2009 at 07:02 UTC

    Your experiences as a new user are likely best posted as a Perl Monks Discussion. If you want to tell more about your choice of nickname than you do on your home node, there is the "Thread That Should Not Be Named". You can find it by searching the site for "Name Space", but as it (used to) put quite some load on the database, I won't link it directly.

      Maybe that thread can be made into a special case? If you visit you're redirected to a regular gzipped html page?
Re: q: is there a new user thread to add comments to?
by jakobi (Pilgrim) on Oct 01, 2009 at 09:38 UTC

    Note that I'm thinking less of 'subjective experience of PM' and more of 'why doesn't the FAQ contain a hint about this'.

    Example for a comment/addition:

    From the days of yore, I don't really mind <pre>. And I did mind having to suffer using a line-breaking <code> for stuff bound to never be downloaded. Consider a mix or black and red plus-signs plus line breaks in a diff -u sample, of which you want to copy/paste a small but interesting section of 5 lines into a text file. Unnecessary needless extra work. Selecting the plus character as linebreak sigil and its placement at start of line truly must be the crowning piece of art from a master in the art of sadism!

    Until I finally stumbled on the no code wrapping display setting: A no pain button!? Yeah! But I still harm others not having set it. Oh my. Sigh. evil_grin(TM).

    So for me personally, the PM-newbie experience pains would have been reduced if just a quick hint were to be added to the PM-FAQ and also to the Allowed HTML Markup page.

    Example for dealing with such comments/additions:

    One approach might be a well-known thread to add such observations to, immediately visible to other newcomers, and maybe given a once-a-year mining by sitedocclan(sp?) incorporating the most interesting tidbits into non-commentable faqs and documents.

    One way to tame the thread size and load times: After mining, maybe 'archive' the thread as newbie-tutorial-comments-from-2008, creating the new thread, relinking the tutortials to that. Add an index to threads past at the beginning of the new thread.

    Maybe also offer a gzipped variant containing both current and archived newbie threads, as already suggested by Brother Anonymous. Maybe include the tutorial/faq in the archive as well.