Re^5: Perl Monks monastery vs the Vatican

[Your Mother]

Why is it that persons who are not volunteering are always so sure someone else should be?

I looked into hacking on the site years ago. The code base for the Everything Engine and the fork that this site runs on is difficult to adapt and unpleasant to look at. There aren’t a lot of hackers with that kind of skill, time, and interest and those who have those things tend to see the site for what it is: a pretty basic though nicely threaded forum which does what it does perfectly well as is.

While I would also enjoy a facelift, it would not alter my participation here because it has nothing to do why I come here and I don’t think it’s that bad looking. StackOverflow looks and functions better but I find the unthreaded, no downvote comments, sterile-as-possible-by-policy, freeze this crap, block that content, wiki ethos there a bit toxic. Pretty and snappy as it is, I’m always driven back here when I try to spend time over there.

Anyway, I would participate in a rewrite and facelift—not a redesign of the community or voting policies or anything but cosmetic, UX, and performance based changes—of the site if done with modern idioms with best web-practices and an open license. I think it’s a fairly easy six month part time project for 2 or 3 devs; and one good project manager to write a spec, API outline, and some TDD/regression tests and keep things on point (this would probably be tye, Corion, or jdporter, or maybe all of them). Porting the content would be difficult though and require a time commitment from someone who knows the current codebase and its pitfalls well.

[trippledubs]

Never heard of Everything before now. It is interesting the 'Best of the Week' top node is one discussing the urgent need to modernize the look of the web site or risk irrelevancy.

Marketing and encouraging the use of Perl is a worthy goal. Monks mentor here all day 24/7 and I think it is great. There have been many calls to improve the site. Would it actually appease anyone or gain new members? I'm not exactly sure. I'm not a professional programmer, usually. But if I do decide to get a full time job using Perl, or strike out on my own using Perl creating value for others, I would like a job to be there, or for any potential client to not cringe if I said the word.

In short, The Church of Perl should glorify Perl to the highest power, amen. I also would volunteer time, talent, and/or money to the project to see specific goals being carried out.