From: ptkwt@... (Phil Tomson)
Date: 2004-05-14T04:23:55+09:00
Subject: Presenting a more unified front (Ruby webring?)

In article <EAENKKNOJPMNCDMLDOMLKEHHEFAA.curt@hibbs.com>,
Curt Hibbs <curt@hibbs.com> wrote:
>Assaph Mehr just posted the first presentation to Why Ruby
>(http://whyruby.rubyforge.org/). Its intended audience is software
>developers. You can download it here:
>
>  http://whyruby.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl?Ruby_Presentations
>
>A big thank you to Assaph!
>
>Also, I know there's got to be many Ruby presentations floating around out
>there, and if you'd like to share, we would love to have them. Remember, you
>will be helping to promote the wider adoption of Ruby.
>
>I want to make it as easy as possible. You can upload them yourself (see
>instructions below), or you can email them to me (or email me a link).
>
>Thanks, in advance, for your help.
>
>Curt
>

Curt,

It's great that you've set this up and it's wonderful that people are 
putting presentations there ( I need to put my OSCON presentation "Ruby 
for Perl Programmers" there), so don't take the following as a criticism.

When you look at Ruby's web presence it seems very disconnected.  There's: 
 *http://www.ruby-lang.org (I tend to view this as the official Ruby 
      site), 
 *RubyGarden (http://www.rubygarden.org) which has a large Wiki of 
      Rubystuff.
 *Rubydoc (http://www.rubydoc.org) which is becoming a major source of 
      Ruby Documentation.
 *RubyForge (http://www.rubyforge.org) which hosts a lot of Ruby projects 
      and WhyRuby? 

....I'm sure there are others I have missed.  Basically, we've got stuff 
all over the place.

If I were a Ruby Newbie just coming into the language and community I 
think I would find it a bit overwhelming.  Where should I start?  Is there 
a single source for all of these links?  Where should I go for a 
'one-stop' source for all things Ruby?

Of course, the way we're doing things has it's advantages.  If one of the 
sites is down, others will probably still be up.  

Is there any way we can present a more unified front even if in the 
background things are really distributed among several websites?

Some ideas (not saying they're good ideas, but I'm trying to start a 
discussion):

* What if all the Ruby sites linked each other, maybe like a webring?

* What if all the Ruby sites had a similar style so that when you move 
from one to another it looks seamless, even though you're moving to 
different sites?  


Any others?
Is this really a problem at all?

Phil