Frustrating experience of a wannabe contributor

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).

The closest existing page I could find on the wiki was this one:
http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/GHC/Using_the_FFI
But it is a Wiki. If you were to just make a page and put it
somewhere, I doubt anyone would get too mad.
On 7/18/07, Bulat Ziganshin
Hello Andreas,
Wednesday, July 18, 2007, 8:17:38 PM, you wrote:
So I tried to find a place where it might have posted or at least fit into.
there is a full list of wiki pages
-- Best regards, Bulat mailto:Bulat.Ziganshin@gmail.com
_______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

----- Original Message -----
From: "Antoine Latter"
The closest existing page I could find on the wiki was this one:
How did you find it? If you look in my original post you can see that I found it too but only by searching for "create" and then manually checking.
But it is a Wiki. If you were to just make a page and put it somewhere, I doubt anyone would get too mad.
Yes, but will the next one find it? And is there a standard way to find such things we can describe to a newbie? Kind regards, Andreas
On 7/18/07, Bulat Ziganshin
wrote: Hello Andreas,
Wednesday, July 18, 2007, 8:17:38 PM, you wrote:
So I tried to find a place where it might have posted or at least fit into.
there is a full list of wiki pages
-- Best regards, Bulat mailto:Bulat.Ziganshin@gmail.com
_______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
_______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

MediaWiki's search isn't fantastic - what I did was a google search on
"site:www.haskell.org DLL"
It's not a very good answer, but it's the only answer I know.
On 7/18/07, Andreas Marth
----- Original Message ----- From: "Antoine Latter"
To: Sent: Wednesday, July 18, 2007 8:26 PM Subject: Re: [Haskell-cafe] Frustrating experience of a wannabe contributor The closest existing page I could find on the wiki was this one:
How did you find it? If you look in my original post you can see that I found it too but only by searching for "create" and then manually checking.
But it is a Wiki. If you were to just make a page and put it somewhere, I doubt anyone would get too mad.
Yes, but will the next one find it? And is there a standard way to find such things we can describe to a newbie?
Kind regards, Andreas
On 7/18/07, Bulat Ziganshin
wrote: Hello Andreas,
Wednesday, July 18, 2007, 8:17:38 PM, you wrote:
So I tried to find a place where it might have posted or at least fit into.
there is a full list of wiki pages
-- Best regards, Bulat mailto:Bulat.Ziganshin@gmail.com
_______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
_______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

On Wed, 2007-07-18 at 14:06 -0500, Antoine Latter wrote:
MediaWiki's search isn't fantastic - what I did was a google search on "site:www.haskell.org DLL"
It's not a very good answer, but it's the only answer I know.
In general I find Google's search to be more comprehensive and effective than pretty much any search provided by a site (for itself). Useful tricks for haskell, Search mailinglists: site:haskell.org inurl:pipermail Search new wiki: site:haskell.org inurl:haskellwiki Search old wiki: site:haskell.org inurl:hawiki

On 7/18/07, Derek Elkins
On Wed, 2007-07-18 at 14:06 -0500, Antoine Latter wrote:
MediaWiki's search isn't fantastic - what I did was a google search on "site:www.haskell.org DLL"
It's not a very good answer, but it's the only answer I know.
In general I find Google's search to be more comprehensive and effective than pretty much any search provided by a site (for itself). Useful tricks for haskell,
Search mailinglists: site:haskell.org inurl:pipermail Search new wiki: site:haskell.org inurl:haskellwiki Search old wiki: site:haskell.org inurl:hawiki
Would it be possible to replace mediawiki's search function with a google search? I've seen lots of sites that provide a search feature by just using google search restricted to their domain (like in the examples above). Perhaps the haskellwiki could be modified to do this by default? Of course, this assumes we can keep robots from crawling around where they shouldn't be in the wiki. Jason

I am not sure what you are refering to.
Are there any pages about DLLs that I didn't find? If so why couldn't I find
them?
Are you refering to wiki pages in general? I never said that there are no
wiki pages.
I just said that I couldn't find an appropriate place where I would post
something about creating DLLs.
A second point was that I think "wiki articles" and "wiki blogs" are not
very well positioned under "Lerning Haskell" on the main wiki page.
Am I missing something? (If yes then why?)
Did I missunderstand you?
Kind regards
Andreas
PS: Bulat I really appreciate your involvement here, in fact I wanted to try
to contribute that what I feel I can contribute, but I failed.
And I thought I describe my failure so we as a community can learn from it.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bulat Ziganshin"
Hello Andreas,
Wednesday, July 18, 2007, 8:17:38 PM, you wrote:
So I tried to find a place where it might have posted or at least fit into.
there is a full list of wiki pages
-- Best regards, Bulat mailto:Bulat.Ziganshin@gmail.com
_______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

Hello Andreas, Wednesday, July 18, 2007, 10:36:14 PM, you wrote:
I am not sure what you are refering to.
i will go into Special pages -> All pages and not seeing any "dll" here, will go to ask in haskell-cafe/irc -- Best regards, Bulat mailto:Bulat.Ziganshin@gmail.com

Hi Andreas - very good problem report, thanks. I have just cleaned up the archive links at http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Mailing_lists a bit. I added the ever-excellent gmane and an overview of all archives. I think some of the archive descriptive text is no longer needed, but I stopped here. Best -Simon

Now I learned that gmain has a niche interface that can search the mailing
list & sort the results. :-)
I changed the (read via gmain) into (read & search via gmain) for both links
at that page.
So one easily can see that he can search the archives via gmain. (I didn't
know gmain at all, so had no idea that I could use it for a search.)
Thanks
Andreas
----- Original Message -----
From: "Simon Michael"
Hi Andreas - very good problem report, thanks.
I have just cleaned up the archive links at http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Mailing_lists a bit. I added the ever-excellent gmane and an overview of all archives. I think some of the archive descriptive text is no longer needed, but I stopped here.
Best -Simon
_______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

You can even post via gmane. Tip: for more powerful searching, use Thunderbird + gmane's NNTP interface.

On Wed, 18 Jul 2007 13:00:20 -0700, you wrote:
You can even post via gmane.
Tip: for more powerful searching, use Thunderbird + gmane's NNTP interface.
I think people are missing the original poster's point. He's not looking for alternative ways to get from A to B; he's pointing out that a typical approach that one might try to get from A to B is broken. As an aside, this seems to be a prevalent issue, particularly with non-commercial technically-oriented communities. When a newcomer says, "Hey, I tried this [intuitively obvious] way to do something, and it didn't work," the welcoming response is NOT, "Oh, don't do that; do this other [less intuitive] thing instead." The welcoming response is to fix the damn thing so that the intuitive approach works! Steve Schafer Fenestra Technologies Corp. http://www.fenestra.com/

Thanks for again pointing out that I didn't want another way to get the
information, but I have to defend Simon.
His first response was a reworking of the wiki page for the haskell mailing
lists.
What led me to learning about gmain and its search function.
So I added the hint that you can use gmain to search in the mailing archives
on that page.
And now hopefully the next person who tries to find something in the mailing
lists succeds in doing so. :-)
That leaves 2 (of my original 3) points:
1) make the wiki search function return all documents containig the search
term (who can do that?)
2) consider creating a new wiki topic "Problems and solutions working with
haskell"
As the 2nd point regards the main wiki page I think the community should be
involved with that decision.
I don't really want that topic but we are missing a categorie here.
Kind regards
Andreas
PS: I don't consider my self a newcomer. :-) I am on this list already a
couple of years, I just don't post to often.
(Actually the recent discussion about maintaining the community and the
progress of newcomers to experts inspired me to move forward and put
something on the wiki.)
----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Schafer"
You can even post via gmane.
Tip: for more powerful searching, use Thunderbird + gmane's NNTP interface.
I think people are missing the original poster's point. He's not looking for alternative ways to get from A to B; he's pointing out that a typical approach that one might try to get from A to B is broken. As an aside, this seems to be a prevalent issue, particularly with non-commercial technically-oriented communities. When a newcomer says, "Hey, I tried this [intuitively obvious] way to do something, and it didn't work," the welcoming response is NOT, "Oh, don't do that; do this other [less intuitive] thing instead." The welcoming response is to fix the damn thing so that the intuitive approach works! Steve Schafer Fenestra Technologies Corp. http://www.fenestra.com/ _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

On 23:25 Wed 18 Jul , Andreas Marth wrote:
Thanks for again pointing out that I didn't want another way to get the information, but I have to defend Simon. [...] 1) make the wiki search function return all documents containig the search term (who can do that?) 2) consider creating a new wiki topic "Problems and solutions working with haskell"
On a related note, I have found that the Haskell wiki has some really great articles on topics, but there's often no clear path to get to them. I would argue that improving search isn't the right solution to this (search should be a last resort, IMHO). I've often thought the Haskell wiki could be improved with portal pages akin to what Wikipedia does for topics that are prominent on the front page. e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Science When one looks at the Haskell homepage now, there's a link to "Wiki articles" which just links to an alphabetised category (good if you know what you're looking for, not so good for browsing). Would adding some portal-like pages for major wiki topics (e.g. theory, applications, techniques, etc.) be useful? Or am I just missing some obvious pages somewhere? Cheers, Asumu Takikawa

Simon Michael
Hi Andreas - very good problem report, thanks.
I have just cleaned up the archive links at http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Mailing_lists a bit. I added the ever-excellent gmane and an overview of all archives.
Ok, this list was crushing my OS X Mail program (not the coldest beer in the fridge) so I went to a hybrid approach of reading on gmane, and using NetNewsWire to track the news feed from gmane. As a result, I don't have original mail messages to reply to. I nevertheless want to use my Mail program to originate posts, in order to cc: interested parties directly as appears to be the custom, and in hopes that at least some recipients won't have xs@(x,xt) in Haskell source code rewritten as xs <at> (x,xt). When I send a message "Re: thread" it appears to break the thread, showing up as a singleton in gmane's thread list. It appears that I am caught between a rock and a hard place.
participants (9)
-
Andreas Marth
-
Antoine Latter
-
Asumu Takikawa
-
Bulat Ziganshin
-
Dave Bayer
-
Derek Elkins
-
Jason Dagit
-
Simon Michael
-
Steve Schafer