Re^4: Process for Site Improvement

[mr_mischief]

Part of the nature of a site with a long archival history is that those who remember that older content are less likely to duplicate it. The use of the site I think has ebbed somewhat, but many diehards are still around. SuperSearch is your friend, and it doesn't hurt to ask in the CB or even in a node for terms to search against.

At least part of the ebbing of PM I think has to do with the flow of time among some top Perl and perl people into Perl6 efforts. Once there's a version 1.0 of Rakudo, I expect many of those people to have some small amount of time free they don't have now. I also expect many new questions and many new users with questions will pop in once a release announcement is made for Perl6. So part of that ebb I expect to be temporary. I'm not sure what the consensus on this idea among the monks would be.

By all means, if you have something for Meditations, Cool Uses For Perl, Snippets, or some other area of the site rather than Seekers of Perl Wisdom, then by all means share it with us. It is, after all, a community effort. SoPW is the most common section because questions and answers are much more common than original and profound insights. That doesn't mean the other sections shouldn't be used. It just means that by nature they're going to be used somewhat less. Please, contribute to them what you have time to contribute.

I think of most of the site as that wizard's library. Once the shelves cover most topics with multiple volumes, only new topics or really fresh views on old ones warrant extra shelf space. One might intuitively think that since it's all just bits and disks are cheap that the virtual shelves of an online library should be filled with as many new writings on a topic as possible, but I disagree. The problem isn't a lack of shelf space. It's that you really want to find the best coverage of the topic you are researching without all the cruft.

That's one of the reasons monks are advised to do some minimal research before repeating the site. It not only takes time that could have been spent on fresh responses to a fresh topic. It also dilutes the pool of existing writings. One should think about adding to an existing topic as a chance to add value, not to return more results of the same or lesser value.

Truly new and fresh topics are fewer and farther between as the site matures, but surely there are some things that haven't been covered or haven't been covered adequately. In those cases, starting the discussion is more important than having an authoritative answer. These are the kinds of things I really hope to see every time I see there are new posts in Meditations. I love seeing someone's new module for a problem space eight other modules haven't already covered. I love seeing someone's new approach to testing, new object layer, or application of a development strategy to the tools typically used with Perl. Most of all, I love seeing someone stand up and say how they've creatively applied the strengths of Perl to great success in an application area we don't traditionally expect. The "how" and "why" of people applying Perl to their problems rather than some other language can be rather fascinating.