[cgiapp] Future of the wiki

[David Kaufman]

P Kishor wrote [at the risk of being asked to do something about it]:
> The cgi-app wiki is a very valuable resource, but is an outdated and 
> old-school looking resource. Actually, such seems to be the public 
> facing problem of most of perl-based incarnations

Agree.

> perlmonks still lives in dark ages [...] the perl6 site looks goofy
> and not modern at all. I downloaded Rakudo Perl, and am blown away by
> the language. It looks be a fantastic incarnation when it arrives
> production ready. But that Camelia spokesbug and the amateurish, nay,
> un-designed rounded rectangles on the front-page with the
> center-piece being a button that can't make up its mind whether it
> wants to be rounded or square cornered, Perl6 website looks like it
> is for a totally un-serious tool.

+1

> Compare these to stuff made with RoR, or the regular rubylang site,
> or the jQuery site, or sites showcasing stuff made with jQuery. They
> all look and feel modern. Ajaxy bits, nice logos, good color schemes.
>  cgi-app.org is actually one of the better ones of the perl family. I
>  just wish it were even more modern and better.

me too [at the risk of making a me-too post]

> It would definitely behoove if cgi-app.org were running a protected 
> wiki written in cgi-app. I would rather the keys to the wiki were
> with only a few chosen ones as long as I could ask them for it in
> case I wanted to add or update a page or a how-to. Perhaps editing of
> the wiki could be allowed only by those who are members of this
> mailing list. That would be some measure of control that they are
> benevolent, or at least benign humans.

I think we definitely need to put some some anti-spam techniques to
discourage the spammers, but I am worried that real users with ideas or
corrections to contribute would not bother to ask for access.  Wikipedia
has trained us all that all we have to do is click "Edit" and then we
can edit.  People may be willing to register (if registration is
painless and offers instant gratification) and may tolerate a captcha,
but we have so little participation now, I'm afraid that limiting write
access to any group of "chosen ones" could easily prevent anything from
ever being contributed again.

> Until a wiki based on cgi-app can be made by someone, there indeed
> are other Perl-based wiki that can serve very well -- Twiki
> especially comes to mind. Oddmuse is a nice looking one, and is
> hugely simple to implement, but may not offer the security desired.

We used Twiki a few years ago and I found it tolerable if not fun to 
setup and use.  It certainly looks like its had a lot of progress and 
active development since then as well as a healthy user base.

> 1. Implement a Perl-based wiki that is still being developed and has 
> not been abandoned. This should be a stop-gap measure until a cgi-app
> based wiki is developed (if it is not developed, so be it... at
> least the cgi-app site would be running Perl).

+1

> 2. Modernize the site bringing it in line with jQuery or RoR websites
>  with modern color schemes, Ajaxy goodness, and clean URLs.

Do you know a good graphic designer?

> 3. Update and offer Mark Rajcok's turnkey web application as a 
> best-of-breed example, modernizing and improving it where needed. 
> Heck, perhaps that application itself can be used as the basis for a 
> new cgi-app presence. It is a nice, well documented, and half-decent 
> looking application. I have benefited from it, and believe others 
> would also benefit from it.

Interesting.  I hadn't looked at that -- nice.  A lot to read there. 
I'll definitely check it out further.

Thanks,

-dave