CPAN Module Author => Wikipedia Editor

Are you a CPAN Author?
Do you know Wikipedia is now the first source information of the Internet?
Maybe you will like to advertise your modules into Wikipedia like these examples (look at end of every page):

Metaphone
Double Metaphone
Soundex
CGI.pm (gasp!, a CPAN module that has his own wikipedia page!!!)
Perl DBI (another!)
Bare XML
METAR
Universally Unique Identifier
Template Toolkit
Diffie-Hellman key exchange
pcap
Selection algorithm

So... We can to flood Wikipedia with CPAN/Perl links.

It's mindblowing or terrible idea?
We need to show/advertise more of our powerful computer language.

If you like this idea, I recommend to search into Wikipedia for pages something to do with your module, and to insert your links like the Metaphone page, with a link to your CPAN module, and links to Perl and CPAN Wikipedia pages.

But... this follow another idea... Wikipedia have a Category page for Perl modules, but only have a handful. Where is the 10.000 modules? :-) Of course, I want not to duplicate CPAN into Wikipedia (Wikipedia is not a reference manual), but we can to insert a short text, like the pod Description section of the CPAN module (like the DBI and CGI Wikipedia pages).

Do you know how many CPAN pages links to Wikipedia? (like Crypt::Dining)

Update: I started with the Spanish Wikipedia... I inserted the link to Log::Log4perl module. Wow... is a very long work... maybe... we need a Perl module for this work :)

Comment on CPAN Module Author => Wikipedia Editor

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Re: CPAN Module Author => Wikipedia Editor by grinder (Bishop) on Aug 18, 2007 at 18:46 UTC
So... We can to flood Wikipedia with CPAN/Perl links. It's mindblowing or terrible idea? Well flooding Wikipedia is a terrible idea, but adding links to CPAN modules on pages that deal with specific subjects (for intance, algorithms) is indeed a very good idea indeed. Anything that raises the profile of Perl in the programming community is a worthy endeavour. The first thing to do would be to get individual authors to look at their own modules, to see whether any of them could be referred to from a specific Wikipedia entry. I can think of a couple of my own modules that would fit into that category, but certainly not the majority. Apart from that, it would, as usual, require a dedicated crew of volunteers to sift through CPAN, and try and correlate modules with Wikipedia entries. That will be the hard part. It would also be important to check whether the distribution has a good test suite, and that the CPAN testers shows good results, preferably no fails. • another intruder with the mooring in the heart of the Perl	[reply]
Re: CPAN Module Author => Wikipedia Editor by clinton (Priest) on Aug 18, 2007 at 18:05 UTC
Good idea! ++ There are always links to PHP, or Python modules, and it's about time that Perl got a look in. It's not so much for regular Perl'ers, because we know about CPAN, but if proselytising means that this language that we love is used by more people, I'm all for it. (Also, helps to keep the Perl job market growing.) I've added links to my own modules. I feel a bit embarrassed writing a whole page about them though. Clint	[reply]
Re^2: CPAN Module Author => Wikipedia Editor by Gavin (Archbishop) on Aug 19, 2007 at 13:13 UTC
You shouldn’t feel self conscious; after all you made your modules available for the benefit of others. A little bit of self publicity is no bad thing, if you find it difficult pretend that you are reviewing a module that is not your own.	[reply]


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