From: James Britt <jamesUNDERBARb@...>
Date: 2004-11-13T02:53:34+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] Rubymine.org

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

:)

> 
> 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