[ANN] Rubymine.org

ruby-talk
1

    I've released Rubymine, a place where rubyists can obtain
great knowledge within time of working together. There have
already been an article and a few announcements.

http://www.rubymine.org

Looks cool. But I'm so confused by the high number of
different-but-similar Ruby websites. It seems like there are lots of
websites, forums, email lists, etc. with somewhat overlapping purposes.
Maybe I'm being unrealistic, but it seems like a lot of duplication of
effort. Don't get me wrong - it's awesome that there's such a broad
support network for Ruby users, but it's hard to figure out where to go
for what.

From what I can tell, we have:

ruby-lang.org: news, documentation, some projects

Ruby Garden: blogs, wiki

Ruby Forge: software project home base...

but many Ruby projects seem to have their own websites too (Rails,
RubyXML, instiki)

Ruby Talk: email list

comp.lang.ruby: NNTP version of Ruby Talk (I think)

Ruby Mine: blogs, forums

Ruby Forum: more forums

Is this how it is nowadays with other small but popular languages? How
come so many people make their own place to post Ruby info, rather than
reusing what's already there?

Todd.

2

Bradley, Todd wrote:

   I've released Rubymine, a place where rubyists can obtain great knowledge within time of working together. There have already been an article and a few announcements.

http://www.rubymine.org

Looks cool. But I'm so confused by the high number of
different-but-similar Ruby websites. It seems like there are lots of
websites, forums, email lists, etc. with somewhat overlapping purposes.
Maybe I'm being unrealistic, but it seems like a lot of duplication of
effort. Don't get me wrong - it's awesome that there's such a broad
support network for Ruby users, but it's hard to figure out where to go
for what.

From what I can tell, we have:

ruby-lang.org: news, documentation, some projects

ruby-doc.org for documentation

:slight_smile:

Ruby Garden: blogs, wiki

Ruby Forge: software project home base...

but many Ruby projects seem to have their own websites too (Rails,
RubyXML, instiki)

Ruby Talk: email list

comp.lang.ruby: NNTP version of Ruby Talk (I think)

Ruby Mine: blogs, forums

Ruby Forum: more forums

Is this how it is nowadays with other small but popular languages? How
come so many people make their own place to post Ruby info, rather than
reusing what's already there?

Good question. I hope, in a few weeks, to have a version of ruby-doc.org ready that makes resources (docs, articles, videos, what have you) much easier to find, transparent to location of the actual resource.

I don't think anyone wants to discourage people from getting involved, running sites, promoting Ruby, and supporting the community. But there can be issues of knowing where to find something, or, having found it, knowing it is the most authoritative or up-to-date information.

RSS feeds help mitigate some of this, as do sites such as del.icio.us, so that one can use an aggregator to just pull all this information together. Sites or lists that provide forums, though, are a sticky item, as people may have to bounce around to find out where to ask a question or make an announcement.

As with software projects, there does seem to be a fair amount of duplicate effort.

James
ruby-doc.org

3

True. In theory, you get lots of diversity for the price of having to look more places. I like the fact that if you think Ruby site A has stupid policies regarding whatever, you don't have to sit on the sidelines and carp; you can jump in and try to do it better yourself.

RSS feeds (or syndication feeds, generally) are the glue that can help pull this together. And the role of intermediary is quite useful in this sort of a social ecosystem, too. If there's too much scattered information, then some aspiring Ruby blogger could offer a regular blog pointing out the best bits of content as they come down the pike.

More kinds of machine-parseable formats would help, too. I suspect that DOAP, for example, will be quite helpful in gluing together open-source communities in the near term: I'm personally thinking of making a DOAP feeder site. (Except for those 200 other projects patiently waiting.)

F.

···

On Nov 12, 2004, at 12:53 PM, James Britt wrote:

Bradley, Todd wrote:

Is this how it is nowadays with other small but popular languages? How
come so many people make their own place to post Ruby info, rather than
reusing what's already there?

Good question. I hope, in a few weeks, to have a version of ruby-doc.org ready that makes resources (docs, articles, videos, what have you) much easier to find, transparent to location of the actual resource.

I don't think anyone wants to discourage people from getting involved, running sites, promoting Ruby, and supporting the community. But there can be issues of knowing where to find something, or, having found it, knowing it is the most authoritative or up-to-date information.

RSS feeds help mitigate some of this, as do sites such as del.icio.us, so that one can use an aggregator to just pull all this information together. Sites or lists that provide forums, though, are a sticky item, as people may have to bounce around to find out where to ask a question or make an announcement.

As with software projects, there does seem to be a fair amount of duplicate effort.