Re: better SEE ALSO sections

[Ofer Nave]

A. Pagaltzis wrote:
* Ofer Nave <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2005-02-28 22:55]:
 

I've been thinking for a while that it would be great to have a
CPAN wiki for things like:
[...]
I enjoyed writing the Parallel::* comparison, and I believe it
is useful, but honestly, it doesn't belong in the SEE ALSO
section of my module.  It belongs someplace neutral, someplace
that can be maintained and expanded by the whole community.
   

This is somewhat of a permathread on this list. It has been a
topic of discussion several times before in the time I've been
subscribed (I sort of kicked off one them). So far nothing
tangible and successful has really come from it. There's the
recently opened CPAN::Forum may or may not offer something
useful. There is some kind of "unofficial" CPAN wiki somewhere, I
think. The problem is that documents like your (excellent)
comparison require a lot of time and effort. They don't happen
easily or naturally. Someone has to care enough.
I openly admit I haven't invested much effort in developing an
idea and/or pursuing one; and I conclude that I'm the norm, since
not much is happening. The problem is, this is a hard problem to
solve.
Really, the format doesn't matter, be it a wiki, Perlmonks
section, perl.org subsite, regular web forum, mailing list,
namespace for review PODs on CPAN, or whichever of the myriad of
other suggestions. It simply requires a lot of volunteers willing
to do a lot of work to study modules in depth, compare them, and
write up their experiences. Where the writeups end up is
irrelevant so long as they have a coherent location they can be
referred from; the hard part is the process of getting those
writeups prepared and written.
*That*'s why we still don't have a solution. It's not a technical
problem.
Regards,
 

Valid points, but I disagree on one - I think it IS partly a technical 
problem.  Jimmy Wales tried to start a free online encyclopedia called 
Nupedia before Wikipedia was a twinkly in his eye, and it failed 
miserably after getting 24 articles total.  The problem was a technical 
one - you had to submit articles, have them reviewed and approved, etc.  
When Wikipedia was launched, it had 1000 articles within a month, 
because the form factor was right - want to change something?  The edit 
button is right at the top.  Go for it.

Making something easier makes it more likely that people will do it.  
You might have only 5 volunteers that are willing to submit reviews like 
the one I wrote as patches to existing POD.  But I bet you have 50 who 
are willing to add notes about modules they know about to existing 
reviews on a whim while reading the existing review page.  You say "It 
simply requires a lot of volunteers".  As difficulty goes down, 
volunteers appear.  They're already there, but they're below the current 
threshold.  Don't recruit - lower the threshold.

And a good domain name helps.  Like wiki.cpan.org.  It takes all of two 
minutes to install MediaWiki.  I just did it, and I'm a poor excuse for 
a sysadmin.

BTW-Part of the problem is that there is SO much already out there, and 
it's overwhelming, so some people just get turned off by not know where 
to start or what it all means.  Would be nice to see one big map with 
all major perl rescoures (in reverse domain name order):

com
   cpanforum.com
   perl.oreilly.com
   perl.com
   perldoc.com
   theperlreview.com
   tpj.com
org
   perl.apache.org
   cpan.org
      bookmarks.cpan.org
      kobesearch.cpan.org
      lists.cpan.org
      mirrors.cpan.org
      pause.cpan.org
      ratings.cpan.org
      search.cpan.org
      testers.cpan.org
   parrotcode.org
   perl.org
      apprentice.perl.org
      archive.perl.org
      books.perl.org
      bugs.perl.org
      dbi.perl.org
      dev.perl.org
      faq.perl.org
      history.perl.org
      jobs.perl.org
      lists.perl.org
      nntp.perl.org
      planet.perl.org
      use.perl.org
   perlfoundation.org
   perldoc.perldrunks.org
   perlmonks.org
   pm.org
   poniecode.org
   yapc.org
This is just me fooling around for 15 minutes trying to come up with 
everything I can find that is official or quasi-official.  I'm sure I 
missed a few lesser-known subdomains of perl.org and cpan.org.

As an intermediate perl programmer with a strong desire to learn what's 
out there, and see how I can participate in the perl community, I find 
this all very overwhelming.  I can probably write one line descriptions 
of more than half the sites listed above, but it has taken months of web 
surfing and hanging out to be able to do just that, and be able to skim 
through that list with a partial sense of understanding, instead of 
seeing it all blur into one confusing mess.

-ofer