Re: [perl] tag is a cruel joke, and user-defined tags don't do jack , squat. HELP! How do I use Perl!?

[John Armstrong <siberian@siberian.org>]

Ok everyone, chill out on the flamefest. I am totally not interested 
in your various political views and other such nonsense. You like 
poverty? Fine. You like wealth? Fine. You want little kids in 
Indonesia to write your code for $.05 a day, fine. Just keep it to 
yourself. Take these lame diatribes offline, they are boring to those 
of us in the business of using minivend on a daily basis.

That said, people have a great point. The documentation does suck for 
the novice user. I remember when I first started with minivend and I 
banged my head into the wall constantly. Now, I have gleaned enough 
experience that I understand what minivend wants and how it works. 
Once that is achieved, the documentation is awesome and really gives 
you what you need to know, you just have to have enough experience to 
know what to look for, its a sort of Chicken and Egg thing.

If the documentation sucks we need to make it better. I think its 
perfect for the intermediate user right now. The beginner needs to 
invest a lot of time to become intermediate in order to find it 
useful. Power users may often find it lacking in key areas. I keep an 
archive of all the emails through the list that interest me and apply 
to certain problems or 'AHA!' moments and refer to it on a regular 
basis. I am willing to bet that everyone else on the list does this 
as well.

If everyone were to compile these emails and snippets of info that 
they found useful I bet we could have the fine makings of a 'useful 
FAQ' in it. Yes, they are archived but if we can take the snippets 
people find useful and cull them into an FAQ format with concepts and 
code samples it may be much easier to deal with.  By compiling 
everyone's archived knowledge bases we could really build something 
easy and useful to work with.

So, I am willing to act as a central repository of such information. 
Maybe anytime someone has an 'AHA' moment that they saw float through 
the email list they can send it my way, I can compile them and then 
forward them onto the documentation project for analysis and 
inclusion. Its a minimal thing but maybe it could be the start of a 
truly user built knowledge base that takes into account the actual 
needs and common questions of users. If this concept sucks or is 
already being implemented ignore me and post some details on how to 
contribute in a manner that won't be flamed or ignored.

Keep in mind, Minivend is so huge and so flexible that I doubt it can 
ever be adequately documented. The options it provides are really 
limited only by your imagination and skills. Its an incredible, if 
frustrating at times, product.

Lets turn this into a useful discussion rather then a lame flamefest 
on the merits of capitalism and the concept of contributions.

Thoughts?
John-

>******    message to minivend-users from Colocator User 
><minivend@twu.net>     ******
>
>
>After around half of the people in the MiniVend world try to shoot me out
>of the sky for DARING to raise my voice against the piss-poor
>documentation for this admittedly VERY FINE product? Should I really?
>People, wake up and smell the coffee-- MiniVend is a solid, good piece of
>software with documentation that isn't fit for toilet paper. The FAQ could
>fit on my thumbnail and the documentation has not yet yielded a solution
>to ANY of the problems of any complexity worth noting that I have had. And
>the worst part is that you guys are afraid to hear it.



--------------------------------------------------------------------
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	-Uncle John's Fourth Bathroom Reader