Dear Haskell folk, A month or so ago I sent a message inviting suggestions about how to make Haskell more open, and in particular how to make it easier for Haskell users to contribute. There was quite a bit of traffic for a while, which has died down now. Here's a quick summary of what I learned.
* Gour suggested using a Content Management System (e.g. Drupal http://drupal.org/) for haskell.org's front page. To me this sounds like a good plan. (e.g. "Drupal is software that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a great variety of content on a website." That sounds like what we are trying to do.) A CMS may offer more than we need, but it'd be more open and dynamic than the current setup. * There were suggestions of newsgroups and web forums. Different people seem to like different things. That's ok -- maybe a good content management system would support a lot of things, and people could choose. * Some people suggested using MediaWiki instead of MoinMoin for Hawiki. I have no idea about the issues here. Maybe it's just a matter of taste. * We don't have a plausible way of annotating GHC's user manual. One suggestion is a tree of Wiki pages, each linked from the corresponding section of the manual. We'd need an automated way to generate such a tree, and it's not clear what to do when moving from one release of GHC to the next. * #haskell has way more simultaneous logins than I realised. Good stuff! My sense is that the main action item is how to make haskell.org a better web site (This is with no disrespect to John and Olaf, who have done a great job. But I know they would be only too happy to share the load.) I'm no expert, but it sounds to me as if some content management system might well be just the thing. However, the thread didn't have many concrete offers of help. I'm hoping that is perhaps because you're all too shy to put yourselves forward! So: - is a CMS a plausible way forward? - which one? - is anyone, or small group, willing to set one up and look after it? Maybe not, in which case things are not at all terrible. But I thought it was worth asking. Simon PS: GHC is now using Trac as its bug tracker, and has its own Wiki as well. Please improve it! (Anyone can edit.) http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc _______________________________________________ Haskell mailing list Haskell@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell