Today I had 2 hours time and thought I might contribute to the haskell community. The topic I thought I might be able to give some hints is about creating DLLs. So I went to www.haskell.org which redirected me to the wiki www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Haskell. So I entered "DLL" into the search to find what is already there and thus began the unpleasant experience. There was nothing in the search result. So I tried to find a place where it might have posted or at least fit into. That was the next step into nowhere. There is an entry "Contributing to this site" which leads to http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/HaskellWiki:Contributing, but thats gives zero directions where to put what or how to contribute efficiently. There are two other categories under "Learning Haskell": "Wiki articles" and "Blog articles". After going to "Blog articles" it was clear that it was not the right place either. So I went to "Wiki articles" (http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Category:Haskell) which had such interesting subcategories as "Orphaned projects" and "News". (Remember this is under "Learning Haskell".) At this point I dicided that I might eventually post here under "Tutorials", but first try to find out was is already there. With there I meant the knowledge in the mailing lists. So I went to http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Mailing_lists and there to the archives http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell/ and http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/. Unfortunately you cant search this. So I went back and after reading through the mailing list page again went to http://www.mail-archive.com/haskell@haskell.org/index.html. That is the place where you can search the archive. Unfortunately you get the results in a totally mixed up order. When you click on the "Date" link you get it sorted, but it is not your search that is sorted it is the whole archive that is sorted. If you search again you get the same mixed up result as before. So it is not possible t get your search results sorted. (I had a quick check at "refine search" link (http://www.mail-archive.com/faq.html#search) but that gives me only the syntax for different filters but no sorting.) That was the time where I decided it might be best to write this experience down to maybe give some impulses to change. I did a last search on the haskell wiki for "create" as I thought the would be something that would be used in the DLL context and sure enough that generates 133 results and 2 of them are about DLLs (http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/GHC/FAQ and http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/GHC/Using_the_FFI). So it is not that there isn't anything about DLLs on the wiki it just doesn't find it. (By the way http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/GHC/FAQ links to http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/users_guide/win32-dlls.html#win3 2-dlls-foreign wich has a typo for generations but is not editable.) If that is the experience someone gets early on in his haskell adventure he might very well get frustrated. So what to do? 1.) make the wiki search function return all documents containig the search term 2.) create a USEFUL search function for the mailing archives 3.) consider creating a new wiki topic "Problems and solutions working with haskell" I am especially woried about the unusable information in the mailing list archives. We have a great community here and lots of wonderful information was exchanged here but it is not accesible right now! Sorry for the long post I hope it is useful in one way or another. PS: I am in this community for a few years already so this hassle didn't drive me away from haskell, but I must say that similar experiences drove me away from a few haskell projects I had interests in (wxHaskell comes to mind). And it might also be a good idea to have a category "Fata morgana of solved problems" or so. What would qualify? COM interaction, HDirect and from the mailing list today: haskell_mod. An early move of a project into that category might a) stipulate a change of maintainer ship early enough before to much knowledge is lost and b) gives a clear warning that things might be more difficult than all the research papers imply (see COM integration).