Hi, first i would like to state that i absolutely love Ruby more than any
other language i use (perl, python, PHP, javascript, and now ruby). Others
i work with also have taken a look at Ruby and most have the same feeling
about it i do. That being said, we found that there is a huge lack of
english documentation and therefore would consume to much of our time to
learn it and apply it for use in our work.

suggestions:

Documentation:

english speaking ruby users should get together and copy the idea of
python's module index.

contribute code snippets to pleac.sourceforge.net

in general:

other than documentation, maybe it would be a good idea for people who
also know perl to go through cpan and port the modules that are very
useful to various types of companies.

I can honestly say that if there was the type of documentation available
for ruby that there is for python our company would adopt it, we already
like ruby because from doing a bit of research ruby has more community
contributed modules than python. In my career as being a sys adming and
web development programmer I have noticed is that when companies are
looking to embrace opensource tools they look at the community support
which basically adds up to "how many modules do they have that can be used
in business and how are the docs". Are project manager even took a liking
to ruby but it was agreed by all of us we can't use it due to the lack of
thorough documentation on standard modules/classes/methods and also
community contributed ones.

Ruby is a n excellent language, with perl6 taking at least another year or
(and most likely) more and the python community's focus on what is
obviously hobby projects that seem to be for the most part rebuilding the
wheel 7 times over, you as a community can should take more of a pro-active
approach to pushing ruby onto the general public (average joe programmers)
and companies. The way to do it is through thorough documentation and
modules companies find useful. I suggest following in the style of matz by
grabbing the best from other community's and applying it to ruby (python
style documentation and the most frequently used modules from cpan).

Please take into consideration my coworkers and myself do know how to use
google and ri, we have found all the documentation and articles that are
out there on ruby, it was pretty much a 2 week long project our dev crew
and project manager did in out spare/off-work time. if anyone is
interested we use apache/perl/mod_perl and sometimes mason or php for
e-commerce systems and python for general sys admining. 

I like ruby, this isn't meant in anyway as a put-down, it is meant to maybe
get some programmers to take more of a pro-active approach to spreading
ruby and think a little bit as a small company would if there were lots of
lazy but big competition in the same field with the idea of taking over
most of the market share within a year or so. Once perl6 is out, if ruby
hasn't edged it's way into a bit more companies, this is just an assumption
(and a big one), i think it will be very hard for ruby to pick up steam
in the english speaking countries. "The more people making use of the
language the better!" is a great way to think imo, especially with a
language as beautiful and useful as ruby. 

take a pro-active approach! :)

best regards,
stibbs