Proposal to create a new mailing list

[Daniel Schierbeck]

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

 

[Robert Klemme]

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?

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

 

[Gregory Seidman]

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

 

[James Edward Gray II]

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

 

[Trans]

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.

 

[Paulo Köch]

I think Daniel Schierbeck really wanted is to take n00b-caring off =20
the ml.

I think this is a good ideia to promote clean, good discussion and =20
thought sharing. However, if the n00bs were to be "outcast" to a =20
different system (yes, i think ml is not the best troubleshooting =20
system), would you still go there and help them? And if you would, =20
would the majority also go there? I don't think so. IMHO, i think =20
this would just degrade the level of the community receptiveness. Do =20
you really want to bipolarize it?

If you really want poignant discussions, start them and make then =20
regular. If you want to separate the "n00b noise", encourage tagging =20
n00b mail. These are my two cents.

Paulo Jorge Duarte K=F6ch
(e-mail address removed)

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 =20
declining --
} not because of a lack of participation, but rather because of the
} increase of the same. Each and every question, no matter how =20
nubish, is
} answered, which of course is good. But the deep, poignant (no pun
} intended) discussions seem to have faded in both frequency and =20
quality.
}
} I therefore propose we establish a ruby-experts (or the like) =20
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 =20=

largely
because people have settled on what is needed (or, rather, the =20
community's
view of where Ruby should be going matches Matz's view to a large =20
extent).
At this point, there are really two major priorities for Ruby: some
cleanup (piddling missing functionality like blocks that take =20
blocks, code
cleanup/rewrite, removing syntax ambiguity, a formal specification =20
of the
language, etc.), and performance (i.e. a VM rather than an =20
interpreter).

The first is being served by progress toward Ruby 2.0, which mostly =20=

 

[Jeremy McAnally]

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

 

[Daniel Schierbeck]

Who decides who the experts are?

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

 

[James Britt]

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.




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.

 

[matt]

Or how about:

ruby-lang-new-mailing-list-discussion
ruby-lang-spam
ruby-lang-announcements-that-might-be-spam
ruby-lang-could-someone-do-my-homework-for-me-pretty-please
=20
or my favorite:
ruby-lang-sarcasm =20



Happy New Year everyone!! =20


Matt

 

[Gregory Seidman]

}
} ruby-lang-new-mailing-list-discussion
} ruby-lang-spam
} ruby-lang-announcements-that-might-be-spam
} ruby-lang-could-someone-do-my-homework-for-me-pretty-please
}
} or my favorite:
} ruby-lang-sarcasm

Best. Post. Ever.

} Happy New Year everyone!!
} Matt
--Greg

 

[Trans]

Or how about:

ruby-lang-new-mailing-list-discussion
ruby-lang-spam
ruby-lang-announcements-that-might-be-spam
ruby-lang-could-someone-do-my-homework-for-me-pretty-please

or my favorite:
ruby-lang-sarcasm

i think too many of you are bending this way out of shape. there are
good reasons for some division. honestly would you want all ruby-core
discussions on ruby-talk? how about rails discussions too? why bother
separating the japanese list from english? come on lets just have one
one big...

ruby-enchilada

t.

 

[Pit Capitain]

(...)
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

 

[Pat Maddox]

(...)
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.

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

 

[Morton Goldberg]

Who decides who the experts are?

Why the experts themselves, of course 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

 

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

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.

 

[Giles Bowkett]

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

I think this is a very good question.

Blogs are better in some ways. If you blog about the homework you want
other people to do for you, nobody's ever even going to see it.
Likewise if you have a thought it takes some time to develop, blogs
work slower, and encourage slower reactions. The worst blog fights
I've ever seen have been better than even mild flame wars.

At the same time, there's are good reasons mailing lists exist. But
the user of a Ruby mailing list is the Ruby community, and the user of
a blog about Ruby is also the Ruby community. So the idea that the
blogs and the mailing lists should serve the community in tandem, that
is actually a very, very good idea.

I think that sort of thing happens in general quite naturally, but
it'd be interesting to see what we could do deliberately to assist it.

I think that'd be a lot more useful than a ruby-experts list.

At the same time, I think it'd be really useful to stop the newbies
from being annoying AND make sure they have a forum to be newbies in.
There's a great post from Kathy Sierra's blog about how you have to do
this IF you want your user community to grow. It's targeted of course
at people who have that as an explicit goal; we seem to have it as a
phenomenon like the weather, something we can't do anything about
either way and just have to handle well whether we want to or not. But
since the community is growing and very probably will continue to
grow, it's worth thinking about.

http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/12/how_to_build_a_.html

I think a ruby-answers list might be the most useful thing. People are
coming onto the general Ruby list to get specific answers, there's a
type of fun in answering their questions, but it's different from the
higher-level discussions that can also happen. Dedicating a space to
that particular type of social interaction might clear this space a
little bit. (If that is in fact a good goal.)

 

[Devin Mullins]

I think a ruby-answers list might be the most useful thing. People are
coming onto the general Ruby list to get specific answers, there's a
type of fun in answering their questions, but it's different from the
higher-level discussions that can also happen.

Indeed. I learned a lot of Ruby very quickly by answering questions (and
reading others' answers) on ruby-talk.

Devin

 

[Daniel Schierbeck]

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.

Much better than my idea. Thanks!


Cheers,
Daniel

 

[Daniel Schierbeck]

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


Cheers,
Daniel