On 5/15/06, John Gabriele <jmg3000 / gmail.com> wrote:
> - There's already a Ruby faq, but it could use some more content.
> Editing it seems to require emailing its maintainer, which might be a
> pain compared to simply logging in somewhere and writing some
> markdown/textile/rdoc in a text field and hitting "submit".

I agree with the FAQ. However:

> - PM can act like a password-protected wiki and save folks from having
> to keep a wiki de-spammed all the time. (Though it doesn't really
> replace a wiki.)
>
> - There's already a Ruby wiki, but it takes a lot of work to keep it
> spam-free. Also, it uses UseModWiki (which is Perl-based), so that
> probably puts a damper on folks here hacking on it to improve the wiki
> software itself.

This will be fixed in the next week or two. Jim Weirich has written a
new Rails-based Wiki (Ruse) that deals with this *and* is a password-
protected wiki. It will be going into production soon, but is already
accessible from http://rubygarden.org:3000/ if you want to play with it.

> - The PM ranking thing has a neat community-building effect, and can
> also sometimes help you find stuff that others have rated highly. It
> can lead to karma-whoring I suppose, though I haven't seen that at PM.

I have yet to see a site that uses ranking that doesn't end up
encouraging karma-whoring at some point. As I said, I neither have the
time nor the interest in ranking or being ranked by others. That's so
10th grade. ;)

> So, after looking at those, I was wrong to suggest that maybe the Ruby
> community could use a PM-like site. It looks more like we could stand
> to improve the wiki and the faq.

Wrong? No. I'd never say that. I think that there's always room for
improvement in what the Ruby community offers. And there are some dark,
neglected corners of the Ruby web. I think we should take the best parts
of what others do, but not imitate, either.

-austin
-- 
Austin Ziegler * halostatue / gmail.com
               * Alternate: austin / halostatue.ca