[cgiapp] Future of the wiki (was: Re: CGI::Application wiki page Examples)

[Mark Stosberg]

> Yes, MT4 is not a wiki, but do we really need a wiki for now?

I find wiki's great for collaborative editting because of their very 
low bar for contribution. 

> Classically, MT4's model is that of a blog, but because it offers
> multiple users to contribute, and offers an extensive amount of
> administrative control, it is really more like a CMS. Nevertheless,
> all that is terminology. The fact is -- it is a modern, secure, nicely
> designed, and constantly maintained publishing system that is created
> in Perl by one of the well known Perl-personalities, Ben Trott. 

And, MT is based on CGI::Application. Not directly, but it forked
CGI::Application many years ago as a foundation, and some of the internal
methods still have the same or similar names. The Open Melody project would
very much like for MT to be formally based on CGI::Application again, so there
would be perhaps some mutual benefit with the relationship. 

( If you are interested more in the technical issues there, I wrote up
notes on what could be involved in some initial refactoring:
http://wiki.movabletype.org/Proposal:QueryObjectRefactor  
You can also search the OpenMelody wiki for references to CGI::Application:
http://groups.google.com/group/openmelody/search?group=openmelody&q=application+cgi ) 

MT5 did bring some significant changes. First, it dropped support for
PostgreSQL and SQLite, so the MySQL backend is required. ( This is a downer for
me, but not a deal-breaker. ) Second, the core now has support for revisions,
an important feature of wikis.  The core does not include a "diff" feature, but
I suspect this could be provided by a plugin, and is something we may be able
to contribute ourselves.

I use MT for my personal blog. I find it attactive, pleasant to use, and fairly
easy to install. I can vouch for it being light on server resources. I run it
under CGI. The admin area is a little slow this way, but tolerable. The static
public pages are of course "fast". I also wrote a couple of plugins for it,
which was reasonably easy.

I put a lot of my own time into setting up the original CGI::Application wiki,
as well as writing and editing a fair amount of the content.  Someone else will
need to play that role the second time around.

Are there folks here that are intested in volunteering to help admin and
maintain a new wiki / web presence ? What tools would you like to do that with?

    Mark