10 ms·

The Official Ruby Site Is Proudly Maintained by No-One

116 points by jordanmessina 15y ago

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
julianz 15y ago
Doesn't seem to be commented on by anyone, either. Oops, damn!
angelortega 15y ago
The article may be seen as a comprehensive list of what not-TO-DO for a project's site.
- Jarred 15y ago
  Yeah, Ruby's website is awful. Even Ruby on Rails' website is pretty bad. They don't make it look nearly as awesome as it actually is.
  - bad_user 15y ago
    As an outsider, I think RubyonRails.org is doing a pretty good job. The install instructions are pretty good, links to documentation and books are good, the screencasts are kept up to date and are IMHO awesome, the blog is active. What else could you want? I mean, yeah, the Rails Guides could use some more effort as I found them lacking, but it's a lot better than nothing at all (as it used to be).
    - petercooper 15y ago
      I don't think rubyonrails.org is too bad, but it could still do with some updates. For example, it doesn't recommend railsinstaller.org to the Windows folks, even though that's the quickest, one-shot way to install the entire Rails and Ruby stack on Windows. And I don't think linking to a tarball with the Ruby source should be the first link to getting Ruby.. there are tutorials they could link to that would be more useful to newcomers. Nonetheless, rubyonrails.org is better updated than ruby-lang.org in any case, and provides a better model to follow IMHO.
  - jsavimbi 15y ago
    I wouldn't put too much effort in judging a language or a community based on the free, unpaid-for, unmaintained website. If you look at the Ruby community, and I include Rails, Sinatra and Padrino folks as well, you'll see that the majority of the activity takes places in more of a social setting, examples being http://rubygems.org/gems/gemcutter http://rubygems.org/gems/gemcutter and http://github.com http://github.com and the great podcasts from folks like Peter Cooper, et al. The time for engaging through a one-way webpage has long passed.
    - petercooper 15y ago
      I actually agree with this, and feel that any sort of official site should link out to others as quickly as possible (rather than be a monolithic resource). Having some sort of official site is useful, however, since there are lot of people who aren't familiar with the modern ways and who will be looking at the official site for guidance. Currently those people are getting told RubyForge is the greatest thing since sliced bread..
acme 15y ago
I suspect it's because Ruby hackers like to write modules, not document or maintain websites.
- draegtun 15y ago
  Also it's hard to write good documentation and lots of hackers probably won't have the necessary skill set. However documentation is important and the more you work at it the better and easier it gets.
  - chc 15y ago
    The Ruby documentation is at ruby-doc.org rather than ruby-lang.org.
Argorak 15y ago
As one of the maintainers of the german version of ruby-lang.org/de, I think that the article fails to explain the scope of ruby-lang and the pain to maintain it. Ruby is - much more then other programming languages - internationally spread (japan/western world being the greatest divide). At the moment, there are 20 translations (released and unreleased) of the site, which means that all new content has to be introduced to the site and then translated and maintained by the corresponding teams. So the scope of the site has to be small, nothing compared to php.net or the like. First of all: not all of these problems are present in other versions of the site. The german page for example is much more up-to-date when it comes to installation options and explaining them, also when it comes to announcements about the german ruby community. The german site is also well staffed with 3 maintainers (if I remember correctly). I would have preferred if ruby-inside would have wrote a mail to the maintainer list before posting this: usually, problems that we are aware of get fixed quickly. ruby-lang certainly has its problems and the post hits some of them, but it is far from unmaintained. The positive effect of this post: a bunch of new volunteers applying.
- petercooper 15y ago
  The positive effect of this post: a bunch of new volunteers applying. This is exactly it. I know I'm a loudmouth playing with his megaphone here, but my intentions are good and I'm pointing to things that, I believe, people would like to fix, if only they had the spotlight for a bit. If I can help that process without greatly offending anyone, I'll use my megaphone. I gain nothing from pissing people off without reason. I didn't get in touch with anyone because I don't have the diplomatic skills to negotiate significant changes to the site, and small patches won't fix the systemic problems with the site (How much negotiation would it take even just to have the official blog posts written properly by a third party? And I already do it anyway, on my own site.) I readily admit I'm a unilateralist who tries to be in charge at most opportunities. This makes me a reasonable entrepreneur, but definitely not the ideal candidate to work in a team to update a community site :-) Thanks for reminding me of the localized versions. I was aware of their presence but had/have little idea of what they're doing. I can't say I support the idea of an EU-like 20 way translation for every change but that's just my opinion, and I have the utmost respect for local teams trying their best to maintain the site in their own language.

116 points by jordanmessina 15y ago

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

julianz 15y ago

Doesn't seem to be commented on by anyone, either. Oops, damn!

angelortega 15y ago

The article may be seen as a comprehensive list of what not-TO-DO for a project's site.

Jarred 15y ago
Yeah, Ruby's website is awful. Even Ruby on Rails' website is pretty bad. They don't make it look nearly as awesome as it actually is.
- bad_user 15y ago
  As an outsider, I think RubyonRails.org is doing a pretty good job. The install instructions are pretty good, links to documentation and books are good, the screencasts are kept up to date and are IMHO awesome, the blog is active. What else could you want? I mean, yeah, the Rails Guides could use some more effort as I found them lacking, but it's a lot better than nothing at all (as it used to be).
  - petercooper 15y ago
    I don't think rubyonrails.org is too bad, but it could still do with some updates. For example, it doesn't recommend railsinstaller.org to the Windows folks, even though that's the quickest, one-shot way to install the entire Rails and Ruby stack on Windows. And I don't think linking to a tarball with the Ruby source should be the first link to getting Ruby.. there are tutorials they could link to that would be more useful to newcomers. Nonetheless, rubyonrails.org is better updated than ruby-lang.org in any case, and provides a better model to follow IMHO.
- jsavimbi 15y ago
  I wouldn't put too much effort in judging a language or a community based on the free, unpaid-for, unmaintained website. If you look at the Ruby community, and I include Rails, Sinatra and Padrino folks as well, you'll see that the majority of the activity takes places in more of a social setting, examples being http://rubygems.org/gems/gemcutter http://rubygems.org/gems/gemcutter and http://github.com http://github.com and the great podcasts from folks like Peter Cooper, et al. The time for engaging through a one-way webpage has long passed.
  - petercooper 15y ago
    I actually agree with this, and feel that any sort of official site should link out to others as quickly as possible (rather than be a monolithic resource). Having some sort of official site is useful, however, since there are lot of people who aren't familiar with the modern ways and who will be looking at the official site for guidance. Currently those people are getting told RubyForge is the greatest thing since sliced bread..

acme 15y ago

I suspect it's because Ruby hackers like to write modules, not document or maintain websites.

draegtun 15y ago
Also it's hard to write good documentation and lots of hackers probably won't have the necessary skill set. However documentation is important and the more you work at it the better and easier it gets.
- chc 15y ago
  The Ruby documentation is at ruby-doc.org rather than ruby-lang.org.

Argorak 15y ago

As one of the maintainers of the german version of ruby-lang.org/de, I think that the article fails to explain the scope of ruby-lang and the pain to maintain it. Ruby is - much more then other programming languages - internationally spread (japan/western world being the greatest divide). At the moment, there are 20 translations (released and unreleased) of the site, which means that all new content has to be introduced to the site and then translated and maintained by the corresponding teams. So the scope of the site has to be small, nothing compared to php.net or the like. First of all: not all of these problems are present in other versions of the site. The german page for example is much more up-to-date when it comes to installation options and explaining them, also when it comes to announcements about the german ruby community. The german site is also well staffed with 3 maintainers (if I remember correctly). I would have preferred if ruby-inside would have wrote a mail to the maintainer list before posting this: usually, problems that we are aware of get fixed quickly. ruby-lang certainly has its problems and the post hits some of them, but it is far from unmaintained. The positive effect of this post: a bunch of new volunteers applying.

petercooper 15y ago
The positive effect of this post: a bunch of new volunteers applying. This is exactly it. I know I'm a loudmouth playing with his megaphone here, but my intentions are good and I'm pointing to things that, I believe, people would like to fix, if only they had the spotlight for a bit. If I can help that process without greatly offending anyone, I'll use my megaphone. I gain nothing from pissing people off without reason. I didn't get in touch with anyone because I don't have the diplomatic skills to negotiate significant changes to the site, and small patches won't fix the systemic problems with the site (How much negotiation would it take even just to have the official blog posts written properly by a third party? And I already do it anyway, on my own site.) I readily admit I'm a unilateralist who tries to be in charge at most opportunities. This makes me a reasonable entrepreneur, but definitely not the ideal candidate to work in a team to update a community site :-) Thanks for reminding me of the localized versions. I was aware of their presence but had/have little idea of what they're doing. I can't say I support the idea of an EU-like 20 way translation for every change but that's just my opinion, and I have the utmost respect for local teams trying their best to maintain the site in their own language.