From: ara.t.howard / noaa.gov [mailto:ara.t.howard / noaa.gov] 
> is it me, or are others also thinking that a thread complaining about
> experienced users evaporating that also aims to reduce newbie 
> posts might just
> succeed in reducing the volume on ruby-talk to zero?

At the risk of exacerbating the problem:
Ah-frickin-men.

I personally don't think there's a 'solution' to the 'problem' that Ruby
and the mailing list have become so popular that it's no longer mostly
hard core ruby geeks discussing esoteric idioms and proposing crazy
changes to the core language.

It's lamentable for those who were into that sort of thing. The past is
the past, however. You (anyone) can start your own cool new elite club
and ask only the cool kids to hang out there and hope they come. You can
be old-man-on-the-porch and yell at the kids to get off your lawn and
complain about how good things were in back in the old days. In my
opinion and experience, neither will work.

Ruby is getting popular. The startup days are gone, for better or worse.
You'll have to walk among the unwashed masses and hope that others you
wish were there will choose to do so.

This doesn't mean that we shouldn't strive for all manner of
signal-to-noise improvement projects. There's room for better education
and simpler, quieter responses. The reality is, however, that there will
always be users new to Ruby and/or the Internet. They will cause a
ruckus, and no amount of FAQs and RTFMing will eliminate that entirely.

/lurk mode back on