Re: [wxperl-users] wxPerl Community project...

[John R. <jr...@ce...>]

On Feb 12, 2007, at 7:57 AM, Huub Peters wrote:

> Hello list,
>
> I know many others have proposed it in the past and (maybe not so)  
> many
> initiatives have been actually executed but we really need a central
> community kind of place.
>
> The german wiki (http://www.wxperl.de) is a mess (spammed all the time
> and even a defacing at this moment).
> The wiki at http://wxperl.pvoice.org/kwiki/ is a nice effort but only
> thanks to some users (or even only one? jralls?) it is staying free of
> spam but there are no new articles posted at all. Why? Don't know.
> It's probably not  known and personaly I just don't like the Kwiki- 
> software
> but that's a matter of taste off course.
> (On a side note: Jouke (whose place this wiki is hosted on) has  
> anounced
> on his weblog on 24-09-2006 that he will be offline for an  
> undetermined
> ammount of time due to personal issues. Otherwise I would have  
> taken this
> up with him directly to begin with.)
>
> There are other spots with excelent stuff (like gigi.co.uk) but I  
> only heard
> about that on this list and it is decentralized this way.
>
> I can go on with being negative and summing up what I think is "wrong"
> and compare to "the great wxPython community" but that won't solve  
> a thing
> so here's what I came up with:
>
> * I took the liberty of registering wxperl.info.
>   A good domain name improves "findability"
> * I'm in the lucky position of having hosting facilities and a lot of
>    fast bandwidth to go with it that I can use. (the company where  
> I work
>    has no problems with me using it)
> * I started writing this mail :-)
>
> So what's next...?
> Next I need ideas and help.
>
> Here are some of my ideas:
> * We need a user friendly, nice looking wiki.
>    Something like "Mediawiki" (the heart of Wikipedia) but offcourse I
>    can't live with a perl community on a php-driven site so after some
>    searching I found Twiki: http://www.twiki.org which looks robust  
> enough
>    to me.
> * We need tutorials
> * We need Howto's.
> * We need tips and tricks.
> * Maybe write up the problems and solutions from the mailing list.
> * Maybe a forum for some nice discussions (alltough it might clash  
> with
>   the mailing list)
> * Show of your work.
>
> Bottom line: we need a central community where beginners and  
> experts can
> teach and learn about wxPerl.
> I'm trying to offer the place to start this and hope it will grow  
> to be as
> big as
> wxPerl deserves it to be.
>
> E-mail me on or off list with your thoughts/ideas/offers etcetera and
> maybe we'll have a nice community in no time.
>
> Huub Peters

The biggest problem for any wiki is spam. Before Jouke installed the  
updates to Kwiki last summer, one of which required that a user  
register before editing a page, the wxWiki was getting hit several  
times a day. Since, it has been hit exactly once.

I'm also not terribly fond of Kwiki in general, though. It's  
remarkably fragile. Jouke has not seemed ever to have much time for  
maintaining it, and several things are broken. I don't think that you  
should entertain the constraint that the underlying software must run  
on perl. It's far more important that it be robust, secure, and easy  
to edit and maintain. Mediawiki has an excellent track record on all  
counts. For your sanity, though, the software should also be easy to  
install, maintain, and administer. I have no experience in that  
regard with Mediawiki or any other wiki software, so I can't make any  
recommendations.

Regardless of that, I suspect that the biggest problem is getting  
people to sign up, and to write articles. There are only 10  
registered users on Jouke's wiki, most of whom are regulars here,  
too. (One is Manuel Renz, who says on his user-page that he's the one  
behind wsperl.de -- and who hasn't posted here since last April).  
You're on that list too, as is Mark Dootson, Herbert Bruening, and of  
course Mattia. Many other regulars aren't, but that doesn't mean that  
they didn't at some point contribute. AFAICT, no one has added  
anything useful since Jouke set it to require that one be a  
registered user to edit. One can't see the edit history beyond six  
months with the tools at hand, but I don't remember any non-spam  
content being added in at least a year.

The point of that last paragraph is that the problem with the present  
wiki isn't spam any more, it's getting people to write for it. Do you  
have a plan for that?

(The lack of entries might be partly due to the lousy software, but I  
don't think that that contributes much to the problem. It might be  
due to a not-very-intuitive layout, but that could be fixed pretty  
easily by anyone with time and a better idea.)

Bottom line: We've got a couple of places for the community to  
gather. It seems to like this one better than the wiki. Why do you  
think another wiki will change that?

Regards,
John Ralls