Be honest and answer whether you will start learning Perl if your first page in the internet about the language looks like this?
The use.perl.org is sometimes really driving me crazy. I was logged out 4x before I finished my last blog post
Re:Will you use use.perl.org?
Lecar_red on 2008-12-04T21:33:53
Also, it seems that the Recent Journals section went missing from the front page.
I don't send people to use.perl because it is the "superflash" of the Perl community. It is a more utilitarian site.
I do wish the problems would get ironed out. I, too, have hit the password thing over and over and over.
Re:yes
andy.sh on 2008-12-02T13:47:57
Yes, content, useless repeted links, empty page, ancient design, large javascript, slow site -- all that makes the impression on a newcomer.
I'm here because there's no credible alternative. use.perl is an anachronistic embarrassment for Perl, but until we get a serious alternative, we're stuck with it. And you're right, it hurts our image.
Re:Oops
sigzero on 2008-12-02T18:22:18
What would a "serious alternative" look like?
Re:Oops
Ovid on 2008-12-02T22:07:40
Multiple blogs, better control of friends, allow anonymous responses, filtering responses, trackbacks, news aggregation, tagging, probably multimedia embedding (I know many would argue that point), source code coloring, richer HTML or other markup, etc. Plus full individual customization to turn off annoying features we don't want (such as tons of useless JavaScript).
Basically, a site which looked like it's been invented some time in the past few years would be nice. Oh, and users to actually use it. That's probably the sticking point
:) Re:Oops
rjbs on 2008-12-03T12:41:41
That's all provided by MT, WP, LJ, Vox, and other blogging sites. Planet Perl aggregates feeds from those, if you want a place to find just Perl feeds.
What purpose does a (in your words) "toy" blog site serve over and above those?
Re:Oops
hex on 2008-12-04T04:52:29
<plug>Perlsphere also aggregates Perl blogs.:)</plug> Re:Oops
Lecar_red on 2008-12-04T21:34:26
I think aggregators feel very disjointed, they don't feel very official. I think having a whole bunch of smart Perl folks blog (like You, Ovid, Dave, chromatic,etc..) in one official-sque location makes a statement about the Perl community. Even if it seems silly.
Plus the ability to network would be great, esp. post conference/workshops. I would love to be able to setup a linked in-ish profile here and then link to my Perl workshop profile/account. Also make those profiles accessible to job posters on the jobs.perl.org site. (yet another amazing resource).... Sorry a million wants and very little time.
Re:Oops
chromatic on 2008-12-03T11:23:11
What would a "serious alternative" look like?
Until someone gets off his or her backside and actually does anything, nothing.
I've heard a lot of complaints about how pretty perl.org sites aren't over the years. I haven't seen many people volunteer to do the work to make them prettier. I put very little energy into caring about what should happen, at least according to people who don't make it happen.
Re:Oops
educated_foo on 2008-12-09T00:06:16
Okay, http://perlpeople.blogspot.com/. Username: perl@mailinator2.com. Password: perl1234. Please sign your posts, and don't change the password. Seriously, almost anything is an improvement over use.perl. Those bitching about "blah blah blah do the work" should point out where those willing to "do the work" of a default wordpress install should send their requests.
Re:Oops
drhyde on 2008-12-04T11:40:56
If you think it's an "anachronistic embarrassment", I suggest that it's your job to work with the people who run it and fix it. Or you could start yet another perl blog site that won't get used, like perlbuzz, but will at least be shiny.Re:Oops
pudge on 2008-12-05T01:27:13
Yawn.
Re:lets do it
andy.sh on 2008-12-02T21:36:05
Make require.perl?
:) Re:lets do it
andy.sh on 2008-12-02T21:37:36
If serious, I'd like to make something more modern, just decide what: blogs or what?
Re:lets do it
sir_lichtkind on 2008-12-02T22:57:17
not just, since the url says use it could also be about big perl projects, state of the art cpan modules, something to help to use perl. random blogging is giid, do it by myself, but this could give some pointers to trac interesting developements. maybe we should make poll or something, thats also good to atract more helpers. i think will brainsorm a bit and also foreward this issue to our german people.
Re:Who cares?
andy.sh on 2008-12-03T09:44:56
This is not only the design we talk about. If the website is slow and sometimes behaves unpredictably, that's bad.
Re:Who cares?
hex on 2008-12-04T04:53:35
If use.perl had voting, I'd upvote your comment.Re:Who cares?
Ovid on 2008-12-04T09:42:50
It used to, as I recall. You'd have to ask Pudge why it was disabled.
Re:Who cares?
pudge on 2008-12-05T01:27:36
It never was disabled.
Re:Who cares?
Ovid on 2008-12-03T10:10:22
Those who ignore marketing are doomed to repeat it.
No offence, but marketing is not evil and ignoring it doesn't help. And citing Haskell and Common Lisp as examples of languages which don't need pretty Web sites is, well, you know
:) Re:Who cares?
sir_lichtkind on 2008-12-03T13:38:47
Marketing is evil and like Bill Hicks said to PR-guys: kill yourself. you satans little helper and there is no rational behind what you are doing.
but on the othe hand, its no marketing, to have a nice looking and usefull site with fresh content. while I understand jrockaway attitude, there lies no problem because such a site would not scare him away from perl, but he would appreciate it, when wie achieve something good. But perl noobs could be scared away, which raises the question what is it we have a site like use.perl for?
perl.org is our directory, perlmonks the forum and knowledge base. I think it should be something in between some destilled know how from forums, where the state of the art perl is today and some possibilities to trakc recent delopements, so we also don't need to pollute perlmonks with so much release announcements.
So back to action. i forewarded this question but so far no feedback from german folks. will push this issue a bit further.Re:Who cares?
andy.sh on 2008-12-03T14:49:19
Would you please join rfc@sayperl.org mailing list by sending the addresses to join to mail@sayperl.org? It's better to disscuss something together
:-) Re:Who cares?
barbie on 2008-12-03T18:08:59
I reiterate Ovid's statement, marketing is not evil. There is good marketing and bad marketing, but dismissing it as evil is to miss the point entirely.
use.perl was an active and very current site when I joined, it's only real problem is that it doesn't have a dedicated active development team, in the way that PerlMonks has. The code is based on SlashCode and as far as I'm aware that's still the case. The data might not be available, but the code is there. Unfortunately no-one has felt moved to work on improving it and keeping up with the latest trends and features, at least not to the degree that everyone seems to be wanting these days.
Many other blog sites have come into being since and have embraced the world of AJAX, customisation, etc, because they've been designed that way from the beginning. Unfortunately use.perl was designed before all the new trends came along. Making it fashionable and evolving it requires a team of enthusiastic developers.
However, coming back to marketing, whether you like it or not a website is part of marketing. use.perl is part of the promotion of the Perl developer community. Currently everyone posting to use.perl is part of that community already, but they are a small part of the Perl user community as a whole. Now while the whole of the user community are unlikely to want to join use.perl and post to it, there are other things that can (and often do) feature on use.perl that would interest them as a reader. Presenting a website that doesn't provide them with a clear front page, or has a confusing navigation, is likely to put them off coming back and using the site as a valuable resource.
The collective wisdom on use.perl is a valuable resource that is largely hidden when you first view the site. It's only once you get involved that you become more aware of the discussions, ideas, thoughts, projects among many other things that reside here. Maybe use.perl only needs to reorganise the way it promotes it's content, possibly add some features that aid usability, but it also needs someone to do it
:) Re:Who cares?
jdavidb on 2008-12-03T22:02:01
We don't have a site like use.perl.org. Pudge has a site like use.perl.org. It's his testbed for Slashcode. That's it's main purpose. It's not yours. It's not ours. It doesn't "represent" anybody.
If you (or a "we" that you are part of) want to have a site, then start a site.
Re:Who cares?
essuu on 2008-12-04T12:30:34
If that's true, and I'm not convinced it is any more, use.perl.org is the defacto perl news site. There are others, such as Perl Buzz but this place is "blessed" by www.perl.org.
The question is - would pudge be open to collaborations to improve this site? - if not, any discussion about improving it is wasted.Re:Who cares?
petdance on 2008-12-04T22:28:06
What does "blessed by www.perl.org" mean?Re:Who cares?
essuu on 2008-12-04T22:44:57
It's the only news site listed on the home page of www.perl.org, i.e. the people who run that site deem it the worthy of putting up there as a valuable resource (which it is, don't get me wrong).
I see that stories from perl buzz are listed under the news feed but the site is not separately listed.
Re:Who cares?
petdance on 2008-12-04T22:50:23
Yes, it's not listed under "Community", it's in the news feed.
Part of this whole perception issue that is so baffling to me is that people, including you, seem to think that a listing on a perl.org site somehow makes the site more valuable. We need to get away from this image of the Ivory Tower of perl.org.
Let's let 1,000 flowers bloom! Let's have so many Perl sites that perl.org can't possibly keep track of them all!
See also "Perl needs to decentralize, diversify and colonize." http://perlbuzz.com/2008/05/perl-decentralize-diversify-colonize.htmlRe:Who cares?
essuu on 2008-12-05T10:54:08
I completely agree that diversity is good but every project/product/language needs a focal point. It helps beginners find their way into the language and the commmunity that surrounds it. I don't think it would be a stretch to suggest that the languages with the best buzz have the best focal points.
http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/
http://www.php.net/
http://www.python.org/
http://www.perl.org/Which one would you find most appealing as a newcomer ?
For that reason, the resources that are listed on the "official" language page are very important.
I don't believe that further fragmentation will help promote perl any better. Improving what we have is more important and I am willing to put some resources into that but as they're not my sites to improve I need the support of those that do own them.
Re:Who cares?
petdance on 2008-12-05T15:12:18
I don't disagree that perl.org could look better. So who's going to take action to improve it?Re:Who cares?
essuu on 2008-12-05T15:25:16
Who "owns" perl.org - they need to be in on and supportive of any plan to improve it ?
Re:Who cares?
petdance on 2008-12-05T15:34:14
Ask and Robert. They will certainly be open to the help. However, I'd strongly suggest that you come up with actual prototypes of what you want to change to BEFORE contacting them. Lord knows they've had enough people bluster in and say "I want to change perl.org's front page!" with no results.Re:Who cares?
essuu on 2008-12-05T15:42:14
I hear that. This topic certainly seems to stir people up
:-) Re:Who cares?
abw on 2008-12-05T18:57:59
OK, I'll put the first stick in the ground.
I've put a few ideas together for a *.perl.org facelift. I chose use.perl.org as a starting because that was the original subject of discussion.
http://wardley.org/use.perl.org/test.html
Re:Who cares?
petdance on 2008-12-05T19:06:21
Wow, that's highly beautiful. If pudge isn't interested, I might want to use it for Perlbuzz.:-)
Also, thumbs up for "None, none more comments."Re:Who cares?
petdance on 2008-12-04T22:53:14
As much as I love Bill Hicks' work, that bit is not relevant to this discussion. (Plus he's really talking about advertising, not marketing)Everyone is in marketing. Everyone sells to everyone else. "Hey, wanna go to lunch? There's this cool Mexican place I heard about."
Similarly, if we say "Hey, look how cool Perl is and all the cool things you can do with it," that's also marketing.
I know it's hip to be all anti-marketing and anti-establishment, but if you want people to join our little group, you'll need to get past it.
Re:Who cares?
Lecar_red on 2008-12-04T21:41:47
Pretty is important. Just think about how you feel around ugly code?
By accident (due to one of those notorious automatic logouts -- does Slashdot have the same problem?) I happened to see the use.perl.org frontpage that unsuspecting visitors see. It's damn ugly: mostly links to "what's new on CPAN" for every single day for the last, what, 8 days? And then just one tiny framed text.
I do like the looks of the site when I am logged in. Then I do get several of those framed articles, an no link to CPAN. I think the site is not ugly for guests on purpose, but by negligence.
Granted, the Javascript is, well, too much, and the associated CSS is below amateurish. But that is just nitpicks.
The thing is: use.perl.org isn't a site for first time Perl users. It is the place for old Perl farts. New people should go to perl.org, learn.perl.org, perlmonks.org... Or even perl.com.
Now perl.com is a bit of a sour point. One new article every 2 months...? You can't be serious.
But besides the commercial and community driven websites, there's still plenty more personal and small group volunteer Perl websites: perlbuzz.com, perladvent.org, perltraining.com.au, perlmonk.org...
There's not one single site for Perl. There are numerous ones.
Re:use.perl.org front page for guests
pnu on 2008-12-04T17:04:07
No matter what we here "suggest", most of the first time Perl users go the the page that comes up first when searching perl in google. That page is www.perl.org
.. as it should be. However, the problem is that perl.org is almost as ugly as this site.
I really would like help with that situation, but as with most of the current Perl community, good interface-, visual- and/or content-design is not my strength. Perl Foundation should put a bigger effort in to this.
As I've said in another posting, Perl has more than enough everything else, except good marketing. Making it even better is necessary and exiting but the marketing requires a serious priority now!
perl.org is what counts
Eric Wilhelm on 2008-12-05T20:00:06
And no, it's not much better than use.perl.org.
As far as Perl Foundation doing something about this: Which of the volunteers on this page are you suggesting should do this something?
Re:perl.org is what counts
pnu on 2008-12-06T19:34:44
Which of the volunteers on this page are you suggesting should do this something?
I will volunteer my self, but my first task is to understand how TPF makes this kind of decisions and what kind of commitment it is possible to get. What do you suggest?
I will also donate some money to TPF, if there is a way to earmark it for this purpose. And it really can not be "just a facelift" for perl.org -- there's also a lot of content work (writing) to be done, where every perl blogger, book author and other pro writers could participate.
This site, as the semi-official (?) discussion platform of the community should be part of the scope also. If this (the status of this and other sites) is unclear, such issues must be solved.
Re:perl.org is what counts
Eric Wilhelm on 2008-12-06T23:31:17
This is the difficulty with the JFDI culture. The people who have done the work are not required to continue doing it or to maintain the sites. This means many of us have no idea who is in charge of any given site or what it would take to make some changes to it (do you need to hack on slash, combust, etc. Can you get svn access or is it git now, and how much effort does it take to get one change onto the site?) For any small change, the effort of figuring out who to send it to and getting it to happen is going to be far bigger than the actual change.
This also makes it difficult to put monetary donations to work, and in general we need a widespread amount of frequent, small changes (the sort of thing where it is efficient to have one person able to do+manage it all, which becomes a full time position.) Currently, the Perl Foundation doesn't have any paid positions, but perhaps it should.
Re:perl.org is what counts
pnu on 2008-12-08T07:48:41
This means many of us have no idea who is in charge of any given site or what it would take to make some changes to it (do you need to hack on slash, combust, etc.
Yes. I think JFDI can not apply here. I (or preferably anybody else from the community with some visual design talent) could easily prepare a new layout for this site, for example (yes, there is one proposal in this discussion thread also), but I don't see it's possible to just prepare a complete new marketing strategy for *.perl.org and send it to a webmaster (or volunteer him/her self to make the changes).
This also makes it difficult to put monetary donations to work, and in general we need a widespread amount of frequent, small changes (the sort of thing where it is efficient to have one person able to do+manage it all, which becomes a full time position.) Currently, the Perl Foundation doesn't have any paid positions, but perhaps it should.
What I'm thinking about is a complete "rewrite" of the public appearance of TPF and the community as a whole. Most visible part is to modernize the *.perl.org sites, starting from the visual appearance but also content and everything has to be organized better. I think this is preparing for the Perl 6, since we need the audience and should start building the premises for that. Looking from this perspective, couldn't some part of the Ian Hague grants used for this purpose?
I'm also starting to realize that discussing this on the comments of some journal entries is not the best way. Discussion gets very easily distracted and it's very hard to follow it. Is there a mailinglist or another forum that should be used? I see that there's a lot a interest for this makeover to happen, but people get very easily lost..
