From: Bob Hutchison <hutch@...>
Date: 2002-01-23T22:26:39+09:00
Subject: Re: [POLL]: ruby-talk separation

On 1/23/02 6:14 AM, "Stephan K�mper" <Stephan.Kaemper@Schleswig-Holstein.de>
wrote:
> 
> let me mention what I wouldn't like to see and why first...
> IMHO, 3 lists are really enough for this list/news group.
> The reason I think so is 'diversity': Sure, there are
> a lot of postings per day - and I'm really happy with this,
> because it reflects the interest people have in this great
> language. 
> But we're not so many poeple posting here that
> a large number of 'sub groups' is justified - too many
> sub groups/lists might only lead to 'orphaned' groups.
> 
> I'm not sure whether spinning off 'specialized' sub
> groups for XML, GUI or OS related topics is a Good Thing
> right now.
> Ruby is still young, a lot of things are still in the
> flow and if some are like me thry're interested in a lot
> of topics, without wanting to go too terribly deep into
> the details. I personally like the diversity in this news
> group, and wouldn't that much like to subscribe to 5 or
> 6 groups simply because organizing more groups is (to me,
> mentally) more effort than skipping some postings...
> 

I agree with Stephen here. I think Ruby is still 'young' in that there are
many changes and additions that are in the works. To try to separate these
developments at this stage is to delude ourselves into thinking they are
independent, and to deny ourselves the advantages to be had from unexpected
inter-relationships (I'm trying not to say 'synergies'... :-)

Now, having said this, there maybe some areas that are self-contained. One
of these is, I think, porting ruby. One that is not (and illustrates the
point I tried to make in the previous paragraph) are GUIs. Yes, lots of us
are not interested, and I admit to not reading them (thanks again for
removing the article number from subject line :-), but I did notice that at
some point XUL came up, and XUL is an XML technology, and I think the folks
working on XML might be interested in where this goes (which maybe nowhere).

Announcements are becoming a problem for me. The list on RAA is a
most-recent-ten list. The span of time between the oldest and newest on that
list is getting pretty short -- I, for one, cannot guarantee that I can read
that page that frequently. I'd really like to see all of these on a mailing
list (even ruby-talk) -- I know that most are, but not all. An announcements
list is kind of interesting in the Ruby community where there are mailing
lists conducted in different languages. I'd like to see one announcement
list where all announcements end up regardless of language. Even if we
cannot all read every announcement, at least we see the activity.

So assuming we add new mailing lists, how does this all play against the
usenet gateway? There is a very different process on usenet for making new
groups.

So...

ruby-dev (which I think already exists)
ruby-talk
ruby-announce
ruby-ports

Cheers,
Bob