Ruby community website / forum

Coming from Perl, what I miss in Ruby the most is (surprise !) not CPAN,
but rather the community at Perlmonks (http://perlmonks.org).

For those not familiar with Perlmonks, it's a community website that's
actually a collection of forums, subdivided into topics, with registered
users that receive ratings from fellow users for each post / reply.

Two aspects make Perlmonks great:

1) It's a *true* forum. With all due respect to RForum powering
"ruby-forum.com", a real forum must at the very least support
hierarchical threading correctly, and allow to post text with simple
formatting, especially for source code.

2) It is very active, and the vast majority of Perl hackers hang out
there, from the nubies to the prominent leaders of the Perl community.

Thus, I know that if I have a question, I can always turn to Perlmonks
for an answer. The topics are organized logically in hierarchical
threads, and logs date years back, making everything easy to find. The
moderation system makes the signal-to-noise ratio very high (you can use
the rating of posts to filter stuff similarly to Slashdot, and the
trolls / spams can be simply deleted by moderators).

Ruby has three loosely connected community entry-points:

1) The mailing list - an old-fashioned (at least IMHO) way to
communicate, lacking hierarchy and formatting (try following the
discussion in one of the most recent 50+ message threads).

2) ruby-forum.com - a gateway to the mailing list, which disconnects
from time to time. It's not a true forum, and suffers heavily from being
connected to the maillist, topics being split to "Re:" topics from time
to time, and long discussions are impossible to follow.

3) comp.lang.ruby - a mostly-nonfunctional gateway to the list, which in
itself is probably the closest Ruby has to a normal forum, since it's
hierarchical and enjoys the excellent built-in Google search.

When I have a Ruby question, I truly don't know where to ask it, so I
ask everywhere, which may sometime annoy people (on days when the
gateways function). I much prefer the newsgroup, but when the gateway
doesn't work, it is much less read, so answers take a long time in
arriving. Am I the only one with this experience ?

I truly feel that a single place for the community is very important.
Ruby has a big potential for such a community because it's a fun
language. People who code in Ruby really enjoy coding, and enjoy
discussing it. I just know that a more cohesive place for the community
to "meet" online would make Ruby and even more enjoyable experience.
Surely I'm not the only one who feels this way ?

Eli

Coming from Perl, what I miss in Ruby the most is (surprise !) not CPAN,
but rather the community at Perlmonks (http://perlmonks.org).

[...]

Ruby has three loosely connected community entry-points:

1) The mailing list - an old-fashioned (at least IMHO) way to
communicate, lacking hierarchy and formatting (try following the
discussion in one of the most recent 50+ message threads).

2) ruby-forum.com - a gateway to the mailing list, which disconnects
from time to time. It's not a true forum, and suffers heavily from being
connected to the maillist, topics being split to "Re:" topics from time
to time, and long discussions are impossible to follow.

3) comp.lang.ruby - a mostly-nonfunctional gateway to the list, which in
itself is probably the closest Ruby has to a normal forum, since it's
hierarchical and enjoys the excellent built-in Google search.

When I have a Ruby question, I truly don't know where to ask it, so I
ask everywhere, which may sometime annoy people (on days when the
gateways function). I much prefer the newsgroup, but when the gateway
doesn't work, it is much less read, so answers take a long time in
arriving. Am I the only one with this experience ?

I truly feel that a single place for the community is very important.
Ruby has a big potential for such a community because it's a fun
language. People who code in Ruby really enjoy coding, and enjoy
discussing it. I just know that a more cohesive place for the community
to "meet" online would make Ruby and even more enjoyable experience.
Surely I'm not the only one who feels this way ?

I second your opinion of Perlmonks, a fine site with a good signal to noise ratio. About as good a community web site as I have seen.

Being an old fashioned guy I like a mailing list for Ruby, and my mail reader can do a reasonable job of pseudo-threading the posts when I need them. I have pretty much given up on newsgroups these days.

Mike

Two aspects make Perlmonks great:
1) It's a *true* forum. With all due respect to RForum powering
"ruby-forum.com", a real forum must at the very least support
hierarchical threading correctly, and allow to post text with simple
formatting, especially for source code.

I haven't spent much time at Perlmonks, but I hate visiting there when
someone points out something "interesting." It's almost as bad as LtU.

2) It is very active, and the vast majority of Perl hackers hang out
there, from the nubies to the prominent leaders of the Perl community.

This is true of ruby-talk. The best place to get an answer about Ruby
is on ruby-talk.

1) The mailing list - an old-fashioned (at least IMHO) way to
communicate, lacking hierarchy and formatting (try following the
discussion in one of the most recent 50+ message threads).

I have no problem doing that. I use Gmail which makes it easier, but a
good threading client helps as well.

2) ruby-forum.com - a gateway to the mailing list, which disconnects
from time to time. It's not a true forum, and suffers heavily from being
connected to the maillist, topics being split to "Re:" topics from time
to time, and long discussions are impossible to follow.

I would agree.

3) comp.lang.ruby - a mostly-nonfunctional gateway to the list, which in
itself is probably the closest Ruby has to a normal forum, since it's
hierarchical and enjoys the excellent built-in Google search.

*shrug* It's not really hierarchical. It follows the same standards
that the mailing list does for references.

When I have a Ruby question, I truly don't know where to ask it, so I
ask everywhere, which may sometime annoy people (on days when the
gateways function). I much prefer the newsgroup, but when the gateway
doesn't work, it is much less read, so answers take a long time in
arriving. Am I the only one with this experience ?

Ask ruby-talk. The mailing list. This is the core that everything else
reflects to.

-austin

Eli Bendersky wrote:

1) It's a *true* forum. With all due respect to RForum powering
"ruby-forum.com", a real forum must at the very least support
hierarchical threading correctly, and allow to post text with simple
formatting, especially for source code.

[snip]

discussing it. I just know that a more cohesive place for the community
to "meet" online would make Ruby and even more enjoyable experience.
Surely I'm not the only one who feels this way ?

I agree that having a single place to look keeps things simple and
centralized (perhaps I'm stating the obvious there). Whether it's good
or bad (I'm not making a statement either way), the community seems to
have gravitated to ruby-talk, the mailing list.

I don't use it directly per se, but I do use it indirectly through
ruby-forum.com, which suits my needs.

I think RForum updates and improvements would go a long way. I don't
know how keen Andreas is on accepting patches.

Pistos

Ok, ok. I've heard enough... You're hired!

My suggestion (for anyone reading this who might like to embark on
such a project) is to look at what software is available, then decide
if you'd like to use one of those choices or else if you'd rather roll
your own. After you've got something running locally that you're happy
with, find someone who can host it live (you might ask here, when
you're ready to go live).

Note though, that anyone can put up a customized phpBB. But to get
people to use it, and to measure up to the mighty perlmonks, you'll
very probably need something more than that.

John Gabriele wrote:

Surely I'm not the only one who feels this way ?

Ok, ok. I've heard enough... You're hired!

My suggestion (for anyone reading this who might like to embark on
such a project) is to look at what software is available, then decide
if you'd like to use one of those choices or else if you'd rather roll
your own. After you've got something running locally that you're happy
with, find someone who can host it live (you might ask here, when
you're ready to go live).

Note though, that anyone can put up a customized phpBB. But to get
people to use it, and to measure up to the mighty perlmonks, you'll
very probably need something more than that.

For starters, the software that powers Perlmonks itself can be used. It
is freely distributed for non-commercial needs by The Everything
Development Company (http://everydevel.com/\), and in fact it also powers
a Java-aimed website named javajunkies.org

It's a Perl / MySQL based CMS. I guess it can be OK to get the website
running, and later embarassed Ruby hackers can rewrite it in Ruby

Eli

Austin Ziegler wrote:

I have no problem doing that. I use Gmail which makes it easier, but a
good threading client helps as well.

I second that. Most email clients I come across aren't smart enough to realise when a thread has been broken, but Gmail is pretty smart about it. It will also sort your threads by the date of the most recent post in the thread and not by the date of the first post in the thread. This is akin to the thread sorting in a lot of forums.

So before Eli has the Rubynuns up and running reading the list over gmail might remedy the present situation.

alex

Note though, that anyone can put up a customized phpBB. But to get
people to use it, and to measure up to the mighty perlmonks, you'll
very probably need something more than that.

phpBB is the work of the devil.

Opinion is a nice Rails alternative.

Seriously, if you want to do this, you should do it, but if you're
just wishing it existed and hoping the entire Ruby community will
reorganize itself for your convenience, that seems pretty unlikely.

You've already got a healthy community here, it's just you're used to
the norms of a different community. Here, you use Gmail and this list
to do the exact same thing you're used to doing on PerlMonks. That's
really the only difference.

It's like trying to find good Chicago pizza when you're in Tokyo. It
just won't happen. It's just a different culture. That's just how it
is.

You know what really bothers me....DevShed doesn't have a ruby forum. I
learned so much perl using that place. I really liked it. I can't
figure out why they don't have a ruby forum.

Charlie Bowman
www.recentrambles.com

Well, places like perlmonks have a lot of content there besides just
archives of messages posted. There's tutorials, code snippets, etc.
And they're often cross-linked (nodes pointing to other nodes). It
would probably be *much* less work to start with something fairly
simple, in Ruby (RoR-based I'm guessing), then improve it over time,
rather than go with the perlmonks code and migrate all the accreted
content over to something Ruby-based.

I took a peek at RubyForge, searching for "cms", but there's a lot of
"coming soon!" projects in those results. Searching for "forum" gives
similar results.

Considering that the site would be based on a forum, but probably
heavily modified, it's probably going to require something custom.

I "third" that. Gmail is great - just create a filter which keeps all
your Ruby-talk stuff out of the inbox and nothing could be easier. In
fact, I don't know of a better web application than Gmail.

Actually, to be more specific, I think it may be more like:

Perlmonks == ruby-talk (via Gmail perhaps) + Ruby FAQ + Ruby wiki

On PM, you might tell someone, "take a look at [this other PM node]
for an example of what you're trying to do", whereas here, I think a
possible reply might be closer to, "take a look at <this wiki page>
(or <this faq item>) for an example of what you're trying to do".

Well, places like perlmonks have a lot of content there besides just
archives of messages posted. There's tutorials, code snippets, etc.
And they're often cross-linked (nodes pointing to other nodes). It
would probably be *much* less work to start with something fairly
simple, in Ruby (RoR-based I'm guessing), then improve it over time,
rather than go with the perlmonks code and migrate all the accreted
content over to something Ruby-based.

By borrowing from Perlmonks I didn't mean the content, but the code.
Perlmonks is a customized Everything engine (a Perl CMS). It is quite
possible, I am sure, to have a 'skeleton' version of Perlmonks with no
content at all but all the features.

I took a peek at RubyForge, searching for "cms", but there's a lot of
"coming soon!" projects in those results. Searching for "forum" gives
similar results.

Considering that the site would be based on a forum, but probably
heavily modified, it's probably going to require something custom.

Just a forum is not enough, I think, because part of what makes
Perlmonks great is exactly what you mentioned above - it has articles,
tutorials and code snippets on it, all conveniently cross-linked with
the 'discussions' (forum posts). Another is the user rating system,
allowing to rate posts and replies, and thus ensuring trust between
users and providing a real feeling of a community.

Just slapping a forum together is a 10-minutes job, using phpBB. It
won't be enough, though.

Gmail is great for what it is, but I think the OP was looking for
something more durable -- a site like perlmonks where you've got got
not only the messages archived, but also tutuorial content and other
stuff (like user-owned pages filled with useful links, for example).
Besides that, messages there are rated and ranked, and everything is
easily searchable.

Perlmonks really is a very useful site that's much more than a mailing
list. I agree that it'd be great for the Ruby community to have a site
like it.

Dunno if I'd call it RubyNuns though.

Right. But what I was getting at was, once you've got a body of
contributed material forming (including user accounts, messages
posted, tutorials, howto's, etc.), if you then want to switch over to
some custom Ruby solution, you've got to migrate all that content over
to the new system (which doesn't sound fun *or* easy. ). That's why
I was suggesting just starting with some custom RoR webapp right from
the start.

>
> I "third" that. Gmail is great - just create a filter which keeps all
> your Ruby-talk stuff out of the inbox and nothing could be easier. In
> fact, I don't know of a better web application than Gmail.
>

I think he was lamenting the fact that there is no way to get a
threaded view of the conversation in gmail, and I must agree with him
on this one. Gmail is nice for personal mail, but it does get
somewhat unwieldy for larger threads.

Gmail is great for what it is, but I think the OP was looking for
something more durable -- a site like perlmonks where you've got got
not only the messages archived, but also tutuorial content and other
stuff (like user-owned pages filled with useful links, for example).
Besides that, messages there are rated and ranked, and everything is
easily searchable.

Perlmonks really is a very useful site that's much more than a mailing
list. I agree that it'd be great for the Ruby community to have a site
like it.

Yeah, you definitely might want to consider it as a total package. It
would be awesome to have a comprehensive site for ruby with similar
material. I don't think anybody is advocating replacing ruby-talk,
this would just be an extra resource.

Dunno if I'd call it RubyNuns though.

I kinda like it =)

I don't know about reusing the Everything Engine though. I haven't
read through the code, but Chromatic (editor of perl.com), is doing a
column[1] on refactoring the engine. He describes as follows:

    "The Everything Engine is an aging software project that powers Perl Monks,
    Everything 2, and a few other websites. It suffers from poor design and
    maintainiability [sic]."

You might be better off just writing something in ruby from scratch.

[1] O'Reilly Media - Technology and Business Training

I see no value in this.

Literally, none.

I *would* like to see RubyGarden pick up a bit more, but the
principals involved have been very busy, partially with fixing the
RubyGarden Wiki.

-austin

> >
> > I "third" that. Gmail is great - just create a filter which keeps all
> > your Ruby-talk stuff out of the inbox and nothing could be easier. In
> > fact, I don't know of a better web application than Gmail.
> >

I think he was lamenting the fact that there is no way to get a
threaded view of the conversation in gmail, and I must agree with him
on this one. Gmail is nice for personal mail, but it does get
somewhat unwieldy for larger threads.

Don't know what you mean, Gmail put the whole Sharp Knives and Glue
thread together quite capably - 99 messages or so, showing only the
last few responses I hadn't seen by default, or expanding when asked.

Odd. I've never had a problem with gmail, and I've used a *lot* of
different mail and news clients over the years. gmail is probably the
best I've used.

-austin

No one said RubyGarden couldn't be that site, but AFAICT there's no
forum at RubyGarden.

Really, it's all about folks coming forward and putting in the work to
either create a "RubyMonks" or else, as you seem to be suggesting,
adding a forum to RubyGarden with some PerlMonks-like functionality.

BTW, I've noticed that the Ruby wiki there has been really hammered
with spam lately.