Best ways to accelerate Ruby's popularity

[Austin Ziegler]

ruby.info is "for sale" ...

-austin

 

[Ben Giddings]

In message "Re: Best ways to accelerate Ruby's popularity"

|It may be that netidentity has nobody actually using the ruby.org
|domain, or at least so few that they might be willing to sell it.

It's no harm to ask them. I had tried for ruby.net before, but the
domain holder did not respond. Maybe I was not too good at
negotiation. Is someone willing to ask netidentity?

Hi Matz,

Thanks for spotting my email. (I was afraid that by replying in a
semi-abandoned thread it might get missed).

I'd nominate the people who are behind the Ruby Central Inc. non-profit
(Chad Fowler and/or David Alan Black). I think being a certified
non-profit gives them more clout, and might make netidentity more open
to listening.

Before they approach netidentity, I'd suggest we come up with a strategy
of what we're willing to offer in return.

It might be helpful for our bargaining position if we can try to find
out if ruby.org is being used at all by anybody. In my initial Google
searches, I didn't manage to find anything, but google doesn't find
everything. Anybody want to explore the wilds of cyberspace to find out
anything we can about the domain?

Once we have some knowledge, I'd open by explaining to them who we are,
what Ruby is, and why we are interested in having the domain (but
without making it seem as though we're desperate, since we're not). I'd
then ask them if there's any way they would consider giving up the domain.

I think initially it would be better not to offer money at all, but
instead to offer them positive publicity. The huge list of Ruby
websites can actually work in our favour this way, if everybody who runs
one of the aformentioned Ruby sites is willing to agree to place some
kind of positive netidentity blurb on their site for some period of time
(say 6 months or 1 year) and Ruby Central is willing to work together
with netidentity to post a press release, that sort of publicity might
be very valuable to netidentity.

If they are reluctant to work with us on that, I suppose we could try to
buy the domain through the non-profit. I'd imagine a few of us would be
able to come up with some cash for that.

Chad, David, what do you guys say?

Ben

 

[Curt Hibbs]

In message "Re: Best ways to accelerate Ruby's popularity"


Hi Matz,

Thanks for spotting my email. (I was afraid that by replying in a
semi-abandoned thread it might get missed).

I'd nominate the people who are behind the Ruby Central Inc. non-profit
(Chad Fowler and/or David Alan Black). I think being a certified
non-profit gives them more clout, and might make netidentity more open
to listening.

While it true that it can't hurt to ask, the lack of hits in your search
merely failed to turn up the way it is being used (I've been a customer of
NetIdentity since the beginning of their existence)...

NetIdentity rents "designer" email addresses. That's why my email address id
curt(at)hibbs.com. I don't own the hibbs.com domain, but I get my email
service through them (as do many of my relatives whose last names are also
Hibbs). NetIdentity hold many thousands of domains.

The fact that you didn't get any google hits is mostly because no one has
renting the associated web space from them (www.hibbs.com).

I think it is unlikely that they would give up the domain, but it still
can't hurt to ask.

It might be better to try to snap up one or more of the newer top-level
domains.

Curt

 

[ruby talk]

Hi Matz,

Thanks for spotting my email. (I was afraid that by replying in a
semi-abandoned thread it might get missed).

Perhaps I've skimmed too much or otherwise missed part of this thread,
but has it been established that the lack of ruby.[com|net|org] is a
real concern?

I suppose if someone just handed over any of these domains for free
that would be nice, but beyond that, how much time and money is this
worth?

Given how people become aware of URLs (links from a known site,
Google, on-line or printed articles, word of mouth, RSS, blogs, and so
on), is the actual domain name (remarkably) valuable?

Offhand, having ruby.org be the default Ruby site would be sort of
nice, but I'm extremely skeptical that it has anything to do with
language adoption.

James Britt
(trying out a gmail approach to ruby-talk)

 

[Ben Giddings]

While it true that it can't hurt to ask, the lack of hits in your search
merely failed to turn up the way it is being used (I've been a customer of
NetIdentity since the beginning of their existence)...

NetIdentity rents "designer" email addresses. That's why my email address id
curt(at)hibbs.com. I don't own the hibbs.com domain, but I get my email
service through them (as do many of my relatives whose last names are also
Hibbs). NetIdentity hold many thousands of domains.

The fact that you didn't get any google hits is mostly because no one has
renting the associated web space from them (www.hibbs.com).

Right, but do a google search for "hibbs.com", within the first few
links I find "(e-mail address removed)", "(e-mail address removed)", and RubyTalk entries
from you. OTOH, when I search for ruby.org, and try to get rid of the
Ruby-language related entries I find... almost nothing. Maybe hibbs is
a more common last name, but it seems to me that I should find a few
random ruby.org addresses in there.

Here's a URL for a google search that tries to find "ruby.org" without
ruby-language links:

http://www.google.com/search?num=30&hl=en&lr=&q="ruby.org"+-programming+-python+-xml+-jp&btnG=Search

(i.e. search for ruby.org without "programming", "python", "xml" or "jp")

There are less than 400 of them, and virtually all of them appear to be
related to the language, a few others are links to ruby.org.uk, but I
can't find any bare "ruby.org" links that aren't related to the language.

It might be better to try to snap up one or more of the newer top-level
domains.

Might as well get both, if possible. People are already accidentally
linking to ruby.org, and I think it's the most natural domain for the
Ruby language.

Ben

 

[Ben Giddings]

Perhaps I've skimmed too much or otherwise missed part of this thread,
but has it been established that the lack of ruby.[com|net|org] is a
real concern?

I suppose if someone just handed over any of these domains for free
that would be nice, but beyond that, how much time and money is this
worth?

Given how people become aware of URLs (links from a known site,
Google, on-line or printed articles, word of mouth, RSS, blogs, and so
on), is the actual domain name (remarkably) valuable?

I don't know how you can quantify its value, but I'd say it definitely
has some. Sure, ruby-lang.org is the first hit when you search for Ruby
using Google, but given that Python's official site is python.org, and
perl's is perl.[com|org], I'm not sure if people would realize that
ruby-lang.org is Ruby's official site.

Now, by redesign and such, I think it could be more clear that that is,
in fact, the main site. I just think that ruby.org would mean instant
credibility, ease of use, and lack of confusion.

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).

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. Of course, in this perfect world, I would be
4m tall and made out of titanium, able to shoot lasers from my eyes and
to bend humans to my whim with mind-control rays... so I wouldn't count
on my perfect world coming into being in the next few months... at least
not until the price of titanium drops a little.

On a slightly more serious note, is there any real interest in revamping
the look of ruby-lang.org? Are other people as confused as me with all
the various ruby sites, their "officialness", and their role in the
ecology of the language?

Ben

 

[Eustaquio Rangel de Oliveira Jr.]

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Hi!

I'm writing a basic tutorial (almost 100 pages right now), on Portuguese.
If you guys wants to download it or know some guy who talks Portuguese and
wants to learn Ruby:

http://beam.to/taq/tutorialruby.php



- ----------------------------
Eustáquio "TaQ" Rangel
(e-mail address removed)
http://beam.to/taq
Usuário GNU/Linux no. 224050
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Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

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[why the lucky stiff]

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.

This conversation is rubbing off. I'm seeing things. Here's a mockup:
<http://redhanded.hobix.com/cult/rubyorgMockup.html>

There's some commentary in the post, so I won't repeat it all here,
despite the welling enthusiasm I feel for such a project.

Of course, in this perfect world, I would be
4m tall and made out of titanium, able to shoot lasers from my eyes and
to bend humans to my whim with mind-control rays... so I wouldn't count
on my perfect world coming into being in the next few months... at least
not until the price of titanium drops a little.

In my perfect world, you would be 4m tall and made out of titanium as
well. However, your laser glance would be disabled and you would have a
ghettoblaster built into your chest and jacuzzis in your feet. Walking
party.

Also, the cassettes for your ghettochesto would be able to transform
into a gracefully jaguar, a sleek falcon and an ordinary J2EE-compliant
IT director.

_why

 

[Dick Davies]

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.

Well, couldn't that be done with the ruby-lang.org domain? All we need is
15 minutes work on DNS and a few ServerAliases. ruby.org would be ideal, but
the general 'ruby mafia' single domain[0] would still work.

Not exactly what you were looking for, but almost as good.

Of course, in this perfect world, I would be
4m tall and made out of titanium, able to shoot lasers from my eyes and
to bend humans to my whim with mind-control rays... so I wouldn't count
on my perfect world coming into being in the next few months... at least
not until the price of titanium drops a little.

Crushed beer cans for the body.
Platform heels for the height.
An awful necktie to blind your foes.
Kiss Me Quick Hat for the mind control.

Not exactly what you were looking for, but almost as good...


Can't we just unify domains while we're waiting for the new one ?


[0] Yes, com/net/org are free. I know, I was tempted...

 

[Curt Hibbs]

This conversation is rubbing off. I'm seeing things. Here's a mockup:
<http://redhanded.hobix.com/cult/rubyorgMockup.html>

There's some commentary in the post, so I won't repeat it all here,
despite the welling enthusiasm I feel for such a project.

I just posted a comment on you mockup page, but I want to repeat it here
for the benefit of those who haven't clicked through:

"I hesitate to be just another commenter who merely says "this is great"
(which is really is), so instead I'll say that ruby home page would be 100
times better by just adopting this as is, without debate. And then move
forward by tweaking on this excellent start!"

Curt

 

[Curt Hibbs]

Right, but do a google search for "hibbs.com", within the first few
links I find "(e-mail address removed)", "(e-mail address removed)", and RubyTalk entries
from you. OTOH, when I search for ruby.org, and try to get rid of the
Ruby-language related entries I find... almost nothing. Maybe hibbs is
a more common last name, but it seems to me that I should find a few
random ruby.org addresses in there.

Here's a URL for a google search that tries to find "ruby.org" without
ruby-language links:

http://www.google.com/search?num=30&hl=en&lr=&q="ruby.org"+-pr
ogramming+-python+-xml+-jp&btnG=Search

(i.e. search for ruby.org without "programming", "python", "xml" or "jp")

There are less than 400 of them, and virtually all of them appear to be
related to the language, a few others are links to ruby.org.uk, but I
can't find any bare "ruby.org" links that aren't related to the language.

Interesting! Well, its worth a shot!

Curt

 

[Zach Dennis]

I just posted a comment on you mockup page, but I want to repeat it here
for the benefit of those who haven't clicked through:

"I hesitate to be just another commenter who merely says "this is great"
(which is really is), so instead I'll say that ruby home page would be 100
times better by just adopting this as is, without debate. And then move
forward by tweaking on this excellent start!"

I agree.

Zach

 

[Simon Strandgaard]

On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 05:15:40 +0900, why the lucky stiff

This conversation is rubbing off. I'm seeing things. Here's a mockup:
<http://redhanded.hobix.com/cult/rubyorgMockup.html>

[snip]

very nice why.


I got so inspired by looking at your mockup.. that I decided to make a
mockup for a new ruby-doc.org homepage.
http://aeditor.rubyforge.org/rubydoc/

 

[ruby talk]

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

 

[Ben Giddings]

I got so inspired by looking at your mockup.. that I decided to make a
mockup for a new ruby-doc.org homepage.
http://aeditor.rubyforge.org/rubydoc/

Wow, I can't tell you how much more I like that than the current
ruby-doc site.

I love the documentation but ugh, the interface. The banner ad at the
top? I know, bandwidth is expensive, but ugh. The fonts are also
really small, and there's just too much text, going across the entire
screen.

The one minor thing I'd propose (other than a titanium body with a
ghettochest for yours truly) is that there be some visual cue that it's
one of the main Ruby sites. Maybe a shared icon in the upper left
corner, or a shared Ruby banner, or something.

Ben

 

[gabriele renzi]

why the lucky stiff ha scritto:

This conversation is rubbing off. I'm seeing things. Here's a mockup:
<http://redhanded.hobix.com/cult/rubyorgMockup.html>

There's some commentary in the post, so I won't repeat it all here,
despite the welling enthusiasm I feel for such a project.

too many people saying 'great' so I'll try to say "bad"
Please consider that I actually like this theme, I'm trying to be critic
so that it can be made better.

First, where are docs? were they outsourced to ruby-doc in toto or
it is my chance to just read the 4 "learn ruby" titles?
And why is "browse handbook" which (if I knew what "the handbook" is) is
supposed to bring me to documentation, separated from the other stuff?

What is the difference beetween "ruby sites" and "get involved" ?
is redhanded that much different from ruby-doc.org or rubyxml ?

Why should a reader care about ruby being 1.8.2 ? isn't a "download" or
"get ruby!" link enough?

Where should a wannabe core developer go? how do he accesses ruby.core
or report a bug?


Is RAA considered abandonware?

Since 5 out of 10 links on the news section of current ruby-lang are
from 12/2004, and the older is from 5 months ago, why is that considered
"not current" ?
Maybe because there are old pages buried in the site but not on the
home, I think (i.e. the infamous 1.4 manual).

What happened to the japanese version of the site?

How can I contribute money?

I understand this is a mock page, what I mean is that once you go this
route you may end up re-adding lots of the stuff wich is there aty the
moment, again messing up the page.

IMO, a good approach is the on of Pike's homepage
(http://pike.ida.liu.se/) as someone pointed out more than one time.

News on the right, with RAA/RF feed bottom.
Propaganda, success quotes, "What's this" and "contribute" link on the left.

And a menu. There are so much things to show up, that it does not make
sense to try to fit in one page.

A nice, simple 4/5-item menu would be killer.

- Documentation (ruby license,tutorials, rdoc, links to ruby-doc)
- Development (bug report, cvs, links to ruby-core/dev,raa,rubyforge,
rcrchive)
- Community (wiki, ml/ng subscribe, blogorrea)
- "Download" (tgz, win version(s), rpms,deb,ports,whatever)
- No about. we have the propaganda box and the doc page for that

and the tiny "jap/english" can fit right there

Ah, and definitely, less red.

 

[Glenn Parker]

ruby.info is "for sale" ...

Ugh, whoever is "selling" this, it's a scam. You can't even make an
offer on one of their domain names without first buying a $25/year
"membership" in their "club". No thanks.

 

[Ben Giddings]

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.

On closer inspection, that is the only thing that isn't arguably
documentation-related. On the other hand, it's the first thing you see
on the downloads page. Probably the rest of it is good to keep, though
it might help to organize it better.

Even as a sorta-vet Ruby user, I'm not sure what the "Ruby documentation
bundle" would contain, and how it's different from the RDoc HTML or the
ri data files.

Now, I'm not sure *how* it should all be organized, but I think
something along the lines of the PHP documentation:

http://www.php.net/docs.php

Or the GNU make manual:

http://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html

Something where you can find the general category of thing you're
looking for, then the specific version.

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.

I don't think the technical issues should be too hard. Apache, at
least, is happy to serve docs from multiple virtual hosts, and something
can be known as say rubyforge.org, www.rubyforge.org and
rubyforge.ruby-lang.org pretty easily.

I think the more significant part is the fan/user/enthusiast thing
though. Some people (Tom Copeland and _why_ for example), seem to be
chomping at the bit to make their sites amazing, and would probably have
the time and energy to make their sites more official. Other people are
doing it as a hobby, in whatever spare time they can happen to find. It
would be unfair to ask them to take on the responsibility of being an
official site maintainer. I dunno, maybe there's some way of
compensating them for their efforts?

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.)

Right, and I think that's the thing that needs the most work. I think a
search function would really help a lot with that, and if everything
were under the same tld, then google, told to only return sites from
that tld, could really help. Better organization of all the available
stuff would help as well.

But, as a minimal thing, I think having a common toolbar on each core
site with a logo and links to the other core sites, would be a big boost
to userfriendliness.

Ben

 

[Ben Giddings]

This conversation is rubbing off. I'm seeing things. Here's a mockup:
<http://redhanded.hobix.com/cult/rubyorgMockup.html>

As usual, why, you're amazing. I think the design is great. Some of
the important points:
* prominent search <- I think this is really important
* hot project(s) <- great idea, a new user wants to know that there's
something exciting going on, and long-time users might stumble upon the
hot thing this way
* news headlines without the body, limited to around 3 entries <- I
think the main Ruby page should probably have news, but that it
shouldn't overwhelm the page. This isn't a blog and isn't a news site,
keeping most of the page pretty static helps newbies and vets alike
(again, think www.google.com) The only thing I'd add here is a date for
the news.
* prominent download link, with current version <- great! I think
having the version there is key, because you might not realize a new
version was released (or that your version is really old) unless you see
that

I think that you're right about the docs, that we need docs like PHP. I
don't personally find Python's docs very useful. I never know where to
look for anything there. I think the other great docs are the Java API
docs. I don't much like the framed interface, but I *love* how it's all
hyperlinked. I look up Foo.unWhyify() and see a list of the various
versions of unWhyify(), I see the one that takes the args I want, click
on it, and get a detailed version, I see that one parameter is a
GargleSound but I don't know where to get one of those, so I click on it
and find out about GargleSounds, etc.

As for the Ruby in 5 minutes, I think that's a good idea, but given that
installing Ruby normally takes a few minutes, it might be good to have a
few different 5 minute sessions. The first could take you from click to
your very first IRB "Hello World!". The second could let you play with
iterators, the third with creating classes... I'd be happy to try to
write one or two of those.

Oh, and btw. I mean no disrespect for NaHi's design. I think the
ruby-lang.org site is well designed, especially for Ruby veterans, I
just have my own idea of what the site could be fore newcomers. It also
seems like the Ruby community is evolving even more quickly than the
language, so it's worth changing the site to try to keep up.

In my perfect world, you would be 4m tall and made out of titanium as
well. However, your laser glance would be disabled and you would have a
ghettoblaster built into your chest and jacuzzis in your feet. Walking
party.

Also, the cassettes for your ghettochesto would be able to transform
into a gracefully jaguar, a sleek falcon and an ordinary J2EE-compliant
IT director.

As long as they made that whoo-haa-haa-kaa-sheet sound that all the
transformers made when they transformed. That sound was amazing. Ooh,
and I want the plane ghettochesto cassette. It could be used to fetch
snacks which (if you re-enabled my laser glance) I could heat up for all
the partygoers...

If you're making my perfect website, how far behind can the titanium
body be??

Ben

 

[Ben Giddings]

Well, couldn't that be done with the ruby-lang.org domain? All we need is
15 minutes work on DNS and a few ServerAliases. ruby.org would be ideal, but
the general 'ruby mafia' single domain[0] would still work.

Not exactly what you were looking for, but almost as good.

Yup, and I think that's a good step, but I don't think they should be
added as vhosts until the sites have a more unified look and feel (and
until all the server and domain owners decide it's what they want to do).

I always come back to google, because I think their design is so good,
but try going there and clicking on "web", "images", "groups", "news",
"froogle".

Each site is different, especially news, but it's clear that you're on a
google site. They all have roughly the same header, the same looking
search bar, etc.

Now compare that to Perl (www.perl.org). If you click on the links at
the bottom, "books" has the same sort of look and feel as the main site,
as does "dev", but "bugs" is pretty different, and "history" looks
nothing like the other sites, the most prominent banner on that page is
"Washington University in St Louis", and there's no link back to the
other perl pages from there. Jobs is another different site, and again,
no link back, or on to other sites from there. Same with
learn.perl.org, lists.perl.org and use.perl.org.

So... if we just made the DNS change now, we'd be doing about as well as
Perl... but isn't the whole point of Ruby to do better than Perl?

In any event, if we were to get all the major sites under the
ruby-lang.org or ruby.org umbrella, one major benefit would be searches.
Searching for Ruby stuff would be as simple as using Google and
telling it to use the ruby-lang.org domain.

Ben