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

[Gavin Henry]

<quote who="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.

Very nice, and definitely a Google App feel to it. I can see dojo etc.
there too.

It's fast and I like the red Loading... message, just like google.

Is this a closed app?

Thanks.

>
> --
> John Wang
> http://www.dev411.com/blog/
> _______________________________________________
> List: Catalyst at lists.rawmode.org
> Listinfo: http://lists.rawmode.org/mailman/listinfo/catalyst
> Searchable archive:
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> Dev site: http://dev.catalyst.perl.org/
>