Paste: create initial foundation

[ShawnMcCool]

Paste foundation allows for files to be pasted or dragged into the window. Pastes can be saved. Users can comment on pastes and the comments can be rated. Pastes can be published by their owner globally so that people can see a breakdown of the problem and the solution.

The goal of the additional mechanisms being added is to turn what is normally only IRC-based help into a persistent resource available via Google or our own site. This can help us make the most out of the volunteer help provided by the community.

[carbontwelve]

It would be nice if this worked in a similar way to github gists... or was somehow integrated with it.

[ShawnMcCool]

Since we have users authenticating with GitHub. It's reasonable to tap into it. But, it's also able to handle anonymous pastes. We need too much, for now, to use Gists as a back-end. However, it's something that we can expand later.

[carbontwelve]

How would one introduce themselves to helping work on this and other tasks?

[ShawnMcCool]

This current task is in a phase of heavy design. As recently as the end of last week I discussed it with @jeroengerits for well over an hour. We're trying to identify exactly what a paste should / can be and exactly how to implement it. A very similar, often indistinguishable conversation is occurring over the nature of the forums.

Also, @jeroengerits and @justinseiter are working on setting up a standard for CSS organization and implementation.

In many ways, many of the decisions that guide the initial development of the site are incomplete, but under construction. This project is not simply a development project, but the attempt to question what our needs truly are, and to try to come up with something that addressed them.

It may be hard to jump in until standards and plans are built. But, if you feel like there's something that you want to do, go ahead and comment on a task or create a new issue to discuss it.

It will be easier to contribute once the dust settles a bit.

There is MUCH opportunity to contribute through discussion, though. As many of the ideas in the issues haven't been fleshed out.

[jfelixetcetera]

I know that above it's stated that Gist wouldn't be a good backend for the pastebin, but I think it makes some sense to reconsider this.

As a newcomer to the laravel scene, I am finding it very problematic that the web is littered with links to the old pastebin, all of which are now dead. That's a ton of useful information that is inaccessible, and worse, it often makes blogs and comments and forum posts indecipherable without the linked context. This makes learning laravel more difficult than it should be for developers.

Every pastebin I've ever used has been shut down eventually due to spam, so while you have the best of intentions here, is that something you've thought about? Defaulting to Gists might make a Github account a requirement, but it might also do wonders for the accessibility of laravel information. (You could also post anonymous pastes to a single Github account like "laravelio-anonymous", but that might become a problem on Github's end when spam still gets posted.)

Update: Actually, Gist fully supports anonymous posts. Did not know that...

[ShawnMcCool]

Paging @mitchellvanw

I think that we see the pastebin as a different kind of resource. What you see now is the result of the laravel pastebin going down and the #laravel support channel really needing that resource to do its job. After the official Laravel pastebin went down, they support guys started using a different pastebin. We put this one into place so that we'd have a pastebin built into our application codebase that could do what we wanted it to do. It's essentially a minimum viable product.

But, just like the current site, don't judge it by just what it is now. It's all changing into something new.

[jfelixetcetera]

Yeah, my main point is that seeing it as a solely ephemeral resource doesn't make it so. I haven't been around long enough to know how the old pastebin was pitched, but I do know at least a quarter or more of the laravel resources out there now have missing information because the old pastebin is offline. I can imagine it's quite frustrating to new users (because it's been frustrating to me at times). And to be honest it doesn't reflect too well on laravel itself, since the pastebin was hosted on its domain.

Anyway, just wanted to bring this up, because it will happen again if the laravel community rallies behind this new, central pastebin for more than just temporary storage. And while using Github for the backend is still using a single backend, I trust Github's longevity and resources (and it might help to be off the laravel.io domain). My two cents...

[ShawnMcCool]

Cool, well thanks for the thoughts. Some stuff to think about.