Greetings, I was pleased to see the makeover a few Perl websites (perl.apache.org, www.pm.org, etc) received not too long ago. I think these makeovers were long overdue. I remember another email on this list (I think it was from brian_d_foy) concerning people's preferences for other language websites, such as php.net.
I have never liked perl.com that much. There's a lot of interesting and useful information there, but all of the advertisements really turn me off. perl.org looks like an alternative for perl.com, "the official hompage". But perl.org appears to be in need of some sprucing up. So my question is: How do I get involved? Of course, I could just email the webmaster(s), but I noticed that many Perl websites appear to be one man shows (for example, perldoc and carlos ramirez). I find this observation surprising. With such a large user community, Perl should have people lining up to help work on some of its websites. But with a few notable exceptions, like Perl Monks, I don't see this happening. I'm sure plenty of people could lend a hand. I think Perl's websites play a huge role in advocacy. In general, when people want to learn about something, a programming language, a medical term, a country, whatever, they will often turn to net. When someone wants to learn about PHP, for example, they will inevitably end up at php.net. What they will find there is the latest news, language updates, mailing lists, documentation, etc -- all rolled together and nicely presented in one big package (and, for the most part, no ads!). There are many other PHP websites, but php.net is the central one. With Perl, you have a different situation. You have several large sites aimed at different aspects of the language (like documentation and news) without anything in the center, except for perl.com, which as I previously stated doesn't cut the mustard IMHO. I am hoping that perl.org or some other site could perhaps develop into that one big central website that I think Perl really needs. (PerlMonks is a great website, but I think it is more geared toward the community than anything else.) __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com
