Francis Hwang
11/13/2004 12:46:00 AM
On Nov 12, 2004, at 12:53 PM, James Britt wrote:
> Bradley, Todd wrote:
>> 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.
>
True. In theory, you get lots of diversity for the price of having to
look more places. I like the fact that if you think Ruby site A has
stupid policies regarding whatever, you don't have to sit on the
sidelines and carp; you can jump in and try to do it better yourself.
RSS feeds (or syndication feeds, generally) are the glue that can help
pull this together. And the role of intermediary is quite useful in
this sort of a social ecosystem, too. If there's too much scattered
information, then some aspiring Ruby blogger could offer a regular blog
pointing out the best bits of content as they come down the pike.
More kinds of machine-parseable formats would help, too. I suspect that
DOAP, for example, will be quite helpful in gluing together open-source
communities in the near term: I'm personally thinking of making a DOAP
feeder site. (Except for those 200 other projects patiently waiting.)
F.