Slashdot Mirror

Nooo! Go harass the folks at http://www.javajunkies.org/ instead;
same concept, both are/were based on the everything2 engine created by many of
the original /. crew & friends http://everydevel.com/

Everything is an information management system, using a combination MySQL and Perl to create a flexible system of entering, linking, and retrieving information.

source

Sounds unlike googlebase to me.

-swinters

I'm a Perlie and since it opened I've found Perlmonks totally invaluable -- their Q/A section actually has questions that I would ask if wasn't so beyond asking for help.

On that thread, My java-esque friends tell me Java Junkies is equally good if you're of the Bean persuation.

Both sites are, in case you didn't guess, based on the Everything Content Engine which is why they look so much alike.

Is a real run-down comparison between the everything engine, j2ee, zope, and webobjects.

Yeah, so if you're just doing some random weblog, it makes sense to look at things at the unabstract, content-management-system level. But some of us find more interesting the idea of a system that allows for you to create a website by attaching abstract prebuilt website components together, defining the kinds of pages that you will have on your site as types, and then allowing the website to be created on a backend by less tech-saavy users who are shielded by the system from the raw code. This is what the above four systems basically are.. and it is much more powerful than just a simple CMS, though you can certainly incorporate CMS features into something you make with it.

• One thing that i've been wishing someone would implement for years is a database of which applications either "phone home" over the internet or save 'identifying information' in files created by the application; and in both cases exactly what data is transmitted, when, or why.

• Bricolage
• Everything
• TWiki

You don't want a weblog, you want Everything. I think it would suit your purposes perfectly.

Spend some time learning the Everything system (at www.everydevel.com). Or the ArsDigita Community System. Or any of the other systems out there.

No, I love the Everything Engine, and I'm even a code contributor.. but if you're seriously thinking about doing this with Everything, make sure you allocate a lot of time to it's configuration.

The initial instal is cake, but getting pages, templates, themes and whatnot together does take a lot of time. Of course, the effect is nothing short of amazing when it's finished.

You first need to ask yourself what sort of a community you're trying to create; news logs like kuro5hin and slashdot have very differnt community dynamic from places like PerlMonks or E2 and you should probably choose based on that.

And, of course you don't want to drop the possibility of completely rolling your own engine. If you have a grasp of a web-suitable language like Python, Perl or PHP or the like, you could actually hack a small scale content presentation system together in about the time it would take to assemble and Everything based site. If you're into DIY.

if I start a corporation by the name Slashdot tomorrow, then can I sue to get this site down?

No. SLASHDOT is a registered trademark of Blockstackers (CmdrTaco's former company and parent of Everything Development Company), licensed to OSDN.

Yes, i realize this may be a bit offtopic. I'm just hoping to see if i can get some informed opinions while we're vaguely on the subject without it degenerating into a huge flamewar..

Postgres seems to offer a vaguely more robust feature set than mysql, but it seems to be a given that mysql is the product to go with and postgres is just kind of ehh, whatever, yeah it's out there. Why is this? Speed and speed alone?

What is it which leads mysql to be viewed as the default solution for the open-source community, given its featureset is by some accounts a bit minimal? What does it offer over postgresql?

For the record: i have used mysql in several situations, done perl DBI programming with mysql, and never used postgres. Moreover i have a perl database-backed-website library that i am interested in using but am not *quite* certain will work with any DBMS except Mysql. I am just curious as to my options, and wondering if someone could tell me what i am missing.. thanks.

If I have a copy of your copyrighted work, you would need to have an EULA to protect against any usage of its functionality.

Not if you're using it to provide a service to which the public can connect, such as running a server daemon. The courts would probably interpret that as "public performance" of Apache, mod_perl or PHP, MySQL, and whatever nuke/slash/scoop/everything/other weblog engine you're using.

The system is truly impressive as an abstract and astoundingly flexible architecture to let you VERY easily create collaboratively managed websites (assuming you are a relatively experienced perl programmer), and i would just like to suggest that those in the general Slashdot population to whom the system might be useful go take look at it and maybe play with it some. The chances of it being useful to you someday are not bad..

However, node_id 1 is reserved for the nodetype node, at least since release 0.9. I just verified this with the source on my dev box.

nate sure had no idea way back when.... and there's so much more that can be done with the Engine

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But I don't see what the problem here really is at the top end: just generate your pages from a database and stick the content into a template for the browser/platform in question. What's the big deal?

I know of a good system to do this: the Everything engine (which powers the world's largest online encyclopedia). But what about people whose content is hosted on Freeservers, GeoCities, and XOOM, hosts whose security policies do not permit server-side dynamic page generation?

What keeps CowboyNeal busy when he's not keeping Slashdot running, or mixing some tasty tunes in his recording studio?

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I feel that Everything is approaching maturity, and as such the more active editorial presence is perhaps inevitable. There is a lot more quality content now than there was a year ago, but perhaps a corresponding increase in the amount of dross.

I also feel that the "pruning" is essential: consider what the place would be like if every flamebait, rambling writeup were allowed to stand. If anything, I feel that editorial control is exercised too laxly: most writeups which are deleted are short, inane ones. The real problem in my opinion is the longer inane ones. However, as these superficially seem to contain a lot of much-needed content, they are less likely, it seems to me, to be deleted.

However, Saige is right to say that it can be intimidating for newbies. More needs to be done to handhold new users and shield them from the righteous anger of more established users.

"I would love to see someone else do something with the Everything software, it seems like it has a lot of potential uses."

Everything2 is not the only site using the Everything code: check out The Everything Development Company for a list of examples. None of these are at the same stage of maturity as E2, most are pretty experimental.

[EDB] uses [Everything].

Now the Everything engine is very flexible, and Slash lets you get a lot done, there's really nothing out there like Zope for Perl.

At the risk of a shameless plug, let me just say that that's why i started Jellybean.

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It's hard enough to keep something like that going (especially if you've coded yourself into a corner -- how many times can you take down your website for a week while you rewrite something from scratch?) let alone packaging everything up in a consistent bundle so people can install it in diverse environments on their own. You keep your web documents in /var/www? Maybe I keep mine in /usr/local/httpd/public_html. What if you're using a later version of CGI.pm than I am? Or an earlier one? How about answering a hundred questions like that every day? No thanks! Why should I hack on your code for a week just to see if I can get it to run? It's not like you're building a kernel from scratch! :)

There's a whole lot of work that goes into organizing something like this, and VA Linux deserves commendation for getting this far. (Anyone curious about my experiences ought to check out Everything Development, a system I've played with a bit. They spent months working on installation and though it's still not perfect, their hard work has really paid off. I don't take credit for anything they've done.)

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I know you're both nominally involved with Blockstackers and the Everything project. My question is, to what extent? Are you funding this, or letting your more involved roommates slide on the rent, or are you actively involved in the design, testing, and coding?

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