Blog » Cheat Sheet Requests Updated

The Cheat Sheet Requests system has so far been more successful than I had hoped it could be, so I'm chuffed, and very grateful to everyone who has contributed so far.

Three problems have arisen, however. The first is the sheer volume of requests. There are simply too many to give people a reasonable selection to choose from, so the voting becomes skewed in favour of the items already at the top of the list.

The second problem is abuse, which has of course been rife. Lots of people requesting all sorts of dark and depraved cheat sheets. Amusing, but as requests go live instantly, not ideal.

Finally, there are only so many hours in the day, and I'm never going to be able to fulfil every cheat sheet request (though I am working on something to help people make their own).

Something that was unexpected but entirely positive was (is) the volume of requests and votes for non-techy cheat sheets. A "Girls" cheat sheet is in high demand, though I suspect it would take far more than a A4 sheet to list anything useful about women. And that's assuming any of the content could be agreed on by anyone. "French", "Guitar", "Chess" and "Leadership" are all great ideas, and I'm definitely up for doing more non-geek ones. That said, I suspect "Squid" and "Cockroaches" are not entirely serious requests.

So, I've changed the system. Now, you can still request anything you like, but only short-listed ideas will be displayed for voting. These are the ones I've picked out of the requests list that are very likely, depending on votes, to become cheat sheets. The top of the pile, so to speak. At the moment, the list is 15 requests, drawn from the most popular and the most interesting to date.

Those that aren't on the short list won't be forgotten or ignored. I'm going to start organising the requests into categories, and create a new section for requests and votes for those who want to see, and add to, the full list of requests.

For those of you not part of the Google Group, the new Python and Subversion cheat sheets are both in the preview stage there, so if you want to have a say about what goes on them, or just see what they look like before they're properly released, take a look at the Added Bytes Cheat Sheets Google Group.