The Web is full of outdated and/or ill-informed references to PLT and
Racket. People see these, and the bad information propagates
memetically -- perpetuating and increasing.
One thing Racket people could do is a one-time blitz of existing bad
info all over the Web, to correct as many of these as possible, and
promote the message of how Racket is positioned. This can include
updating various wikis, posting corrections or updates in otherwise
stale Web forum threads, emailing maintainers of non-wiki sites
suggested updates to their pages, emailing blog authors who do not have
comments, etc. This is a one-time thing, to update the static parts of
the Web, distinct from the ongoing activities of participating in
dialogs as they happen.
Before doing the blitz, an internal refresher course on the message
wouldn't hurt, so that the blitzing by multiple people is fairly
consistent. Example of something to decide: Under what circumstances
should Scheme ever be mentioned, and how should Racket's relationship to
Scheme be characterized when it is mentioned?
I can tell you that the word "Scheme" is often useful when a prospective
Racketeer starts out wanting "Scheme", and then they get pointed to
Racket. And I think "Scheme" might *sometimes* be useful when someone
academically-inclined is asking about interesting programming languages
and we can tout Scheme as part of our heritage (or, alternatively, just
point to the PL research). "Scheme" is usually a liability when someone
used it in school years ago (other than with HtDP). "Scheme" is also a
liability when someone is almost in the Racket fold, but then goes
Googling around for information on "Scheme" and gets all confused,
time-wasted, and turned off.
--
http://www.neilvandyke.org/
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