From: ruby talk <ruby.talk.list@...>
Date: 2005-01-20T06:36:23+09:00
Subject: Re: Best ways to accelerate Ruby's popularity

On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 04:52:42 +0900, Ben Giddings
<bg-rubytalk@infofiend.com> wrote:
> OTOH, I think that redesign of the main Ruby sites is more important
> (and probably more doable).  I think it would be great if they all
> shared a unique look and feel, and fulfilled one, and only one role.
> For instance, the ruby-doc.org site shouldn't have any non documentation
> downloads, and rubyforge.org shouldn't have anything but ruby projects
> (and that means it shouldn't host the ruby bug database).

Define "documentation" and "Ruby projects."

ruby-doc offers assorted things for download, but arguably all
documentation-related.

Off the top of my head, the only except may be the (now outdated )
actual Ruby source code tarball.

> 
> In the perfect Ruby world that exists only in my head, www.ruby.org
> would be the official Ruby site, and would be a simple page for newbies,
> with few links and an easy way to find out what they need to find out
> about Ruby.  In this perfect world, Ruby documentation would be at
> doc.ruby.org, files would be availble from downloads.ruby.org or maybe
> files.ruby.org (or both).  There would be forums at forums.ruby.org, a
> wiki at wiki.ruby.org, news at news.ruby.org, etc.  In this perfect
> world it would be instantly obvious that all the various ruby sites were
> all official ruby sites, under the same umbrella, and not just
> fan/user/enthusiast sites.  

There are assorted technical and practical issues with having all site
grouped by a single TLD. A more significant matter, though,is that
every Ruby site is run or maintained by a fan/user/enthusiast.

Classifications and categories are hard to get right, and differ among
users. It is not so much that people must get to the exact site they
need on the first guess at a URL, but that whatever site they are on
makes it easy to get to where they want to be.  (And a big part of
that is helping users know where they should probably want to go, and
what they probably need.)


James