ruby talk (AKA James Britt) wrote:
> 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