Proposal to create a new mailing list

Hello fellow Rubyphilics!

As other have remarked, the quality of this list is rapidly declining --
not because of a lack of participation, but rather because of the
increase of the same. Each and every question, no matter how nubish, is
answered, which of course is good. But the deep, poignant (no pun
intended) discussions seem to have faded in both frequency and quality.

I therefore propose we establish a ruby-experts (or the like) mailing
list intended for exactly those discussions.

Thoughts?

Daniel Schierbeck

Tons

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.ruby/browse_frm/thread/21d95f5999ab9fb7

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.ruby/browse_frm/thread/a7fd0a2e47257e2d

  robert

···

On 30.12.2006 17:07, Daniel Schierbeck wrote:

Hello fellow Rubyphilics!

As other have remarked, the quality of this list is rapidly declining --
not because of a lack of participation, but rather because of the
increase of the same. Each and every question, no matter how nubish, is
answered, which of course is good. But the deep, poignant (no pun
intended) discussions seem to have faded in both frequency and quality.

I therefore propose we establish a ruby-experts (or the like) mailing
list intended for exactly those discussions.

Thoughts?

} Hello fellow Rubyphilics!
}
} As other have remarked, the quality of this list is rapidly declining --
} not because of a lack of participation, but rather because of the
} increase of the same. Each and every question, no matter how nubish, is
} answered, which of course is good. But the deep, poignant (no pun
} intended) discussions seem to have faded in both frequency and quality.
}
} I therefore propose we establish a ruby-experts (or the like) mailing
} list intended for exactly those discussions.
}
} Thoughts?

First off, I vote no.

Second, I think there has been a drop-off in "poignant" discussions largely
because people have settled on what is needed (or, rather, the community's
view of where Ruby should be going matches Matz's view to a large extent).
At this point, there are really two major priorities for Ruby: some
cleanup (piddling missing functionality like blocks that take blocks, code
cleanup/rewrite, removing syntax ambiguity, a formal specification of the
language, etc.), and performance (i.e. a VM rather than an interpreter).

The first is being served by progress toward Ruby 2.0, which mostly gets
discussed on ruby-core, I think. The second is being addressed by numerous
initiatives, including YARV, Rubinius, Ruby.NET, Cardinal (Ruby on Parrot,
which may or may not be dead), and JRuby.

Third, I think you'll find that a lot of the "poignant" discussion is
happening on blogs rather than the mailing list. For example, _why's blog
(Redhanded) is a great place to find some interesting discussion of deep
Ruby, particularly meta programming.

Finally, try releasing something cool (that isn't a Rails app or plugin)
and announcing it. I think you'll find that there is a lot of room on the
current list for discussion when there is something specific to talk about.
Not to be a _why fanboy, but Hpricot has gotten numerous discussions going
both on ruby-talk and on the Rails list.

} Daniel Schierbeck
--Greg

···

On Sun, Dec 31, 2006 at 01:07:38AM +0900, Daniel Schierbeck wrote:

Who decides who the experts are?

James Edward Gray II

···

On Dec 30, 2006, at 10:07 AM, Daniel Schierbeck wrote:

Hello fellow Rubyphilics!

As other have remarked, the quality of this list is rapidly declining --
not because of a lack of participation, but rather because of the
increase of the same. Each and every question, no matter how nubish, is
answered, which of course is good. But the deep, poignant (no pun
intended) discussions seem to have faded in both frequency and quality.

I therefore propose we establish a ruby-experts (or the like) mailing
list intended for exactly those discussions.

Thoughts?

Daniel Schierbeck wrote:

Hello fellow Rubyphilics!

As other have remarked, the quality of this list is rapidly declining --
not because of a lack of participation, but rather because of the
increase of the same. Each and every question, no matter how nubish, is
answered, which of course is good. But the deep, poignant (no pun
intended) discussions seem to have faded in both frequency and quality.

I therefore propose we establish a ruby-experts (or the like) mailing
list intended for exactly those discussions.

Thoughts?

While I think it is a worthy idea. But I can tell you from experience
it probably won't fly unless it gets offical's ruby-lang.org support or
you are some sort of marketing guru.

Personally I think all these [Typo] blogs are the bane of of ruby-talk.
Most posts would be much better served on a mailing list anyway.
Communicating through blog comments is disorganized, decentralized,
lacks audiance and cohesion. I think Blog and Ego are too closely
related. I hope that now that Time's man of the year is the Blogger
(and other such narcissists.), people can get over the hype and get
back to better ways of communicating. On occsaion when you do have a
serious "blogicle" than submitting it to a big name blog like Redhanded
is a much better idea --more like contributing to a web mag.

MOLMHO (More Or Less My Humble Opinion),
T.

Daniel Schierbeck wrote:

Hello fellow Rubyphilics!

As other have remarked, the quality of this list is rapidly declining --
not because of a lack of participation, but rather because of the
increase of the same.

I for one -- somewhere between Ruby nuby and Ruby expert but a genuine expert in many non-Ruby things -- think this is rubbish! I don't for a minute think that the quality of this list is declining, rapidly or otherwise.

···

--
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky, FBG, AB, PTA, PGS, MS, MNLP, NST, ACMC(P)
http://borasky-research.blogspot.com/

If God had meant for carrots to be eaten cooked, He would have given rabbits fire.

Please go search the archives for why this list hasn't been split in the past despite a split being proposed nearly every six months.

···

On Dec 30, 2006, at 08:07, Daniel Schierbeck wrote:

As other have remarked, the quality of this list is rapidly declining --
not because of a lack of participation, but rather because of the
increase of the same. Each and every question, no matter how nubish, is
answered, which of course is good. But the deep, poignant (no pun
intended) discussions seem to have faded in both frequency and quality.

I therefore propose we establish a ruby-experts (or the like) mailing
list intended for exactly those discussions.

Thoughts?

--
Eric Hodel - drbrain@segment7.net - http://blog.segment7.net

I LIT YOUR GEM ON FIRE!

I think Daniel Schierbeck really wanted is to take n00b-caring off the ml.

I think this is a good ideia to promote clean, good discussion and thought sharing. However, if the n00bs were to be "outcast" to a different system (yes, i think ml is not the best troubleshooting system), would you still go there and help them? And if you would, would the majority also go there? I don't think so. IMHO, i think this would just degrade the level of the community receptiveness. Do you really want to bipolarize it?

If you really want poignant discussions, start them and make then regular. If you want to separate the "n00b noise", encourage tagging n00b mail. These are my two cents.

Paulo Jorge Duarte Köch
paulo.koch@gmail.com

···

On 2006/12/30, at 16:31, Gregory Seidman wrote:

On Sun, Dec 31, 2006 at 01:07:38AM +0900, Daniel Schierbeck wrote:
} Hello fellow Rubyphilics!
}
} As other have remarked, the quality of this list is rapidly declining --
} not because of a lack of participation, but rather because of the
} increase of the same. Each and every question, no matter how nubish, is
} answered, which of course is good. But the deep, poignant (no pun
} intended) discussions seem to have faded in both frequency and quality.
}
} I therefore propose we establish a ruby-experts (or the like) mailing
} list intended for exactly those discussions.
}
} Thoughts?

First off, I vote no.

Second, I think there has been a drop-off in "poignant" discussions largely
because people have settled on what is needed (or, rather, the community's
view of where Ruby should be going matches Matz's view to a large extent).
At this point, there are really two major priorities for Ruby: some
cleanup (piddling missing functionality like blocks that take blocks, code
cleanup/rewrite, removing syntax ambiguity, a formal specification of the
language, etc.), and performance (i.e. a VM rather than an interpreter).

The first is being served by progress toward Ruby 2.0, which mostly gets
discussed on ruby-core, I think. The second is being addressed by numerous
initiatives, including YARV, Rubinius, Ruby.NET, Cardinal (Ruby on Parrot,
which may or may not be dead), and JRuby.

Third, I think you'll find that a lot of the "poignant" discussion is
happening on blogs rather than the mailing list. For example, _why's blog
(Redhanded) is a great place to find some interesting discussion of deep
Ruby, particularly meta programming.

Finally, try releasing something cool (that isn't a Rails app or plugin)
and announcing it. I think you'll find that there is a lot of room on the
current list for discussion when there is something specific to talk about.
Not to be a _why fanboy, but Hpricot has gotten numerous discussions going
both on ruby-talk and on the Rails list.

} Daniel Schierbeck
--Greg

I think that's going to be a problem with any skill level based
separator we create: Who is a beginner? Who is an expert? What if a
beginner has a question that an expert needs to answer? If there
needs to be a split, perhaps the only way to do it effectively is a
topic driven one such as another's suggestion to create ruby-talk and
ruby-help.

--Jeremy

···

On 12/30/06, James Edward Gray II <james@grayproductions.net> wrote:

On Dec 30, 2006, at 10:07 AM, Daniel Schierbeck wrote:

> Hello fellow Rubyphilics!
>
> As other have remarked, the quality of this list is rapidly
> declining --
> not because of a lack of participation, but rather because of the
> increase of the same. Each and every question, no matter how
> nubish, is
> answered, which of course is good. But the deep, poignant (no pun
> intended) discussions seem to have faded in both frequency and
> quality.
>
> I therefore propose we establish a ruby-experts (or the like) mailing
> list intended for exactly those discussions.
>
> Thoughts?

Who decides who the experts are?

James Edward Gray II

No-one. Those who join the ruby-experts (I really just used "expert" to
emphasize the higher level of discussion) can discuss topics on an
expert level. Use whatever word you like, the real question here is
whether we want two lists at all, not what their respective names should
be.

Cheers,
Daniel

···

On Sun, 2006-12-31 at 01:39 +0900, James Edward Gray II wrote:

On Dec 30, 2006, at 10:07 AM, Daniel Schierbeck wrote:

> Hello fellow Rubyphilics!
>
> As other have remarked, the quality of this list is rapidly
> declining --
> not because of a lack of participation, but rather because of the
> increase of the same. Each and every question, no matter how
> nubish, is
> answered, which of course is good. But the deep, poignant (no pun
> intended) discussions seem to have faded in both frequency and
> quality.
>
> I therefore propose we establish a ruby-experts (or the like) mailing
> list intended for exactly those discussions.
>
> Thoughts?

Who decides who the experts are?

Trans schrieb:

(...)
Personally I think all these [Typo] blogs are the bane of of ruby-talk.
Most posts would be much better served on a mailing list anyway.
Communicating through blog comments is disorganized, decentralized,
lacks audiance and cohesion. (...)

+1

Sometimes I read some blogs about Ruby, and often I wonder why those messages aren't posted to ruby-talk. I almost never answer questions or participate in discussions there for exactly the reasons you mention.

Regards,
Pit

Why the experts themselves, of course :slight_smile: It's an old problem, isn't it? Reminds me of Juvenal, the sixth satire: "Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" It was probably an old problem already in his day.

If the list _must_ be split, I urge the split not be made on the basis of the poster's level of experience, but on the basis of subject matter. I think spinning off a ruby-help list might be generally beneficial. Those seeking help on coding or installation problems could be more confident that they are posting to the right list, and those who wish to avoid reading such posts could simply not subscribe. Such a specialization would be commensurable with the other specialized mailing lists such as ruby-core.

Regards, Morton

···

On Dec 30, 2006, at 11:39 AM, James Edward Gray II wrote:

Who decides who the experts are?

I agree that it may just be that I'm not as enthusiastic as I have been,
but I've lost that urge to check the list every few minutes, just to see
if someone has posted something genius.

It's very subjective, so I'm basically asking if you're feeling the
same. You don't seem to, and of that I am jealous :stuck_out_tongue:

Cheers,
Daniel

···

On Sun, 2006-12-31 at 06:27 +0900, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:

Daniel Schierbeck wrote:
> Hello fellow Rubyphilics!
>
> As other have remarked, the quality of this list is rapidly declining --
> not because of a lack of participation, but rather because of the
> increase of the same.
I for one -- somewhere between Ruby nuby and Ruby expert but a genuine
expert in many non-Ruby things -- think this is rubbish! I don't for a
minute think that the quality of this list is declining, rapidly or
otherwise.

Those who have been thanked for useful answer on ruby-talk@,
I guess.

···

On Sun, Dec 31, 2006 at 01:39:56AM +0900, James Edward Gray II wrote:

Who decides who the experts are?

--
---- WBR, Michael Shigorin <mike@altlinux.ru>
  ------ Linux.Kiev http://www.linux.kiev.ua/

"A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy" by Clay Shirky[1] is surely
already grokked by everyone involved but I personally stopped
following ruby-talk@, although didn't unsubscribe, since there
are several high volume mailing lists of more importance to me
at the same time as I'm quite rarely developing anything at all.
(so if anyone cares to reply, please Cc: me personally; thanks)

Mind you, I've used mutt for a year or so when subscribing
ruby-talk@, so there wasn't much space left for optimization
already.

This is a very usual story, and to grow, wise listmasters and
"list elders" must know when to split discussion and keep its
volume practically consumable. One might remember one of the
very first major USENET votings on comp.os.linux split[2] not
to reinvent the historic solution to already known problem of
successful and growing projects.

PS: very nice FAQizer which could help those involved in list
maintainership to cherrypick useful discussions and easily put
them into categorized FAQ articles with original thread reference
once was at typo3.org but that was gone[3] since the latest major
site revamp (guess it's just too much trouble to touch the job
so nobody does).

PPS: happy New Year and merry Christmas!

[1] http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html
[2] http://www.tdl.com/~netex/linux-doc-project/install-guide/node47.html
[3] http://typo3.org/documentation/mailing-lists/english-main-list-archive/

···

On Sun, Dec 31, 2006 at 11:05:43AM +0900, Eric Hodel wrote:

Please go search the archives for why this list hasn't been split in
the past despite a split being proposed nearly every six months.

--
---- WBR, Michael Shigorin <mike@altlinux.ru>
  ------ Linux.Kiev http://www.linux.kiev.ua/

Paulo Köch wrote:

I think Daniel Schierbeck really wanted is to take n00b-caring off the ml.

I think this is a good ideia to promote clean, good discussion and thought sharing. However, if the n00bs were to be "outcast" to a different system (yes, i think ml is not the best troubleshooting system), would you still go there and help them? And if you would, would the majority also go there? I don't think so. IMHO, i think this would just degrade the level of the community receptiveness. Do you really want to bipolarize it?

I suspect many here are already bipolar.

:slight_smile:

1) Banishing people to a Nuby Ghetto would be a Bad Thing.
2) Experts? Who decides? How 'bout we call the new list "r00by-1337-h4x0rz!1!"

If you really want poignant discussions, start them and make then regular. If you want to separate the "n00b noise", encourage tagging n00b mail. These are my two cents.

Life is what you make it.

···

--
James Britt

http://www.jamesbritt.com - Playing with Better Toys

Why not post to the list with a link to the blog, along with your thoughts?

···

On 12/30/06, Pit Capitain <pit@capitain.de> wrote:

Trans schrieb:
> (...)
> Personally I think all these [Typo] blogs are the bane of of ruby-talk.
> Most posts would be much better served on a mailing list anyway.
> Communicating through blog comments is disorganized, decentralized,
> lacks audiance and cohesion. (...)

+1

Sometimes I read some blogs about Ruby, and often I wonder why those
messages aren't posted to ruby-talk. I almost never answer questions or
participate in discussions there for exactly the reasons you mention.

Much better than my idea. Thanks!

Cheers,
Daniel

···

On Sun, 2006-12-31 at 02:14 +0900, Jeremy McAnally wrote:

I think that's going to be a problem with any skill level based
separator we create: Who is a beginner? Who is an expert? What if a
beginner has a question that an expert needs to answer? If there
needs to be a split, perhaps the only way to do it effectively is a
topic driven one such as another's suggestion to create ruby-talk and
ruby-help.

Daniel Schierbeck wrote:

  

Daniel Schierbeck wrote:
    

Hello fellow Rubyphilics!

As other have remarked, the quality of this list is rapidly declining --
not because of a lack of participation, but rather because of the
increase of the same.
      

I for one -- somewhere between Ruby nuby and Ruby expert but a genuine expert in many non-Ruby things -- think this is rubbish! I don't for a minute think that the quality of this list is declining, rapidly or otherwise.
    
I agree that it may just be that I'm not as enthusiastic as I have been,
but I've lost that urge to check the list every few minutes, just to see
if someone has posted something genius.

It's very subjective, so I'm basically asking if you're feeling the
same. You don't seem to, and of that I am jealous :stuck_out_tongue:

Cheers,
Daniel
  

Maybe it's *because* I'm more than a nuby but less than an expert in Ruby. I discovered Ruby only this year, shortly after deciding that I wanted to spend the rest of my career programming in R. :slight_smile: Like many, I started out by noticing that you couldn't open your eyes without stumbling across Ruby on Rails, and I decided that it was prudent to understand how Rails and my lack of knowledge of Rails in particular and web application design in general could limit my career. In retrospect, if I had really been interested in learning how to write web applications, I would have been better off studying PHP. But the opportunity or motivation to write a web application has not materialized yet, so instead I focused on learning Ruby.

There is also the "agility" factor. Ruby and Rails seem inextricably intertwined with the agile movement, and I think splitting the list up would be a step backwards in that respect.

···

On Sun, 2006-12-31 at 06:27 +0900, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:

--
M. Edward (Ed) Borasky, FBG, AB, PTA, PGS, MS, MNLP, NST, ACMC(P)
http://borasky-research.blogspot.com/

If God had meant for carrots to be eaten cooked, He would have given rabbits fire.

No good. I've been thanked.

/n00b

···

On 1/3/07, Michael Shigorin <mike@osdn.org.ua> wrote:

On Sun, Dec 31, 2006 at 01:39:56AM +0900, James Edward Gray II wrote:
> Who decides who the experts are?

Those who have been thanked for useful answer on ruby-talk@,
I guess.