[Catalyst] [ANNOUNCE] Grokbase - Catalyst-based mailing list archive

[John Wang]

I've been working on a new site, Grokbase, to make it easy to read and
access mailing list archives through modern web techniques. It's now ready
for everyone to take a look, at http://grokbase.com. The site is based on
Catalyst, Template::Toolkit, DBIx::Class::Storage and many other Perl
modules. It also uses AJAX and JavaScript to make the browsing experience
more efficient. Grokbase refers to each mailing list as a "group" and
message threads as "topics."

The primary reasons to use a mailing list archive are to find information
and to view it. In addition to enhancing both these, Grokbase allows you to
keep track of useful information once you have found it.

To help you find information, Grokbase has tag-based categorization and
full-text search capabilities. Full-text search is powered by Xapian, and
allows searching of both individual posts and entire threads with filtering
on group and date. You can also search for groups themselves, a feature that
will become useful as the number of archived lists grows.

Viewing is enhanced through multiple viewing modes, DHTML and meta-data.
Sometimes it is easier to access email by post, while at other times it is
easier by topic. Grokbase allows viewing by post and by topic, having
chronological/flat and thread modes for topic viewing. You can switch
between view modes at any time and Grokbase will keep track of your
preference. Thread viewing is enhanced with DHTML for thread collapsing and
expansion. Post meta-data such as tags and vote scores are displayed in
collapsed topic views to allow for quick scanning.

To keep track of useful information once you have found it, Grokbase lets
you tag and add notes to posts, groups and users. For example,
http://www.grobkase.com/groups/tag/catalyst shows all groups tagged with
"catalyst". Since there is not a lot of information associated with groups
themselves, tags and notes are also indexed for searching groups. Tags
propogate up to topics, so that a topic shares the tags of all of its
messages. Each topic also has a "Grok counter", showing how many people have
tagged posts in that thread, as a measure of topic popularity.

Registration and use is free. Any mailing list can be archived by
subscribing the Grokbase archive user to the list which will automatically
create a group and begin archiving messages. For old messages, mbox files
can be imported - contact me for details. The site is running in a public
beta mode now. The beta label on the site will be removed once everything
has been proven.

A number of additional features may be added in the future, depending on
user demand, please let me know what you'd like to see! Possibilities
include ranking threads by pouplarity, web-based replies to the groups, XML
feeds, access via Message-ID, and others.

Feel free try it out at http://grokbase.com/ and let me know what you think.
It would be great to get some feedback.

-- =

John Wang
http://www.dev411.com/blog/
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