Time for a ruby-announce list?

We are seeing a lot or release announcements among the regular posts
these days, taking up a larger and larger percentage of total posts.
Perhaps if we have a separate list for them then:

  1. ruby-talk itself would improve

  2. we’d all know were to look to see what’s new without having to
    sift

  3. other people besides Ryan D. would announce their projects :wink:

T.

On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 2:36 PM, Trans[email protected] wrote:

We are seeing a lot or release announcements among the regular posts
these days, taking up a larger and larger percentage of total posts.
Perhaps if we have a separate list for them then:

  1. ruby-talk itself would improve

How?

  1. we’d all know were to look to see what’s new without having to
    sift

Again How? Many folks use filtered feed of ruby-talk that just caters
to announcements (rather than subscribing to mailing list).
Announcements are very important part of ruby-talk, moving
announcements to a different list serves little purpose.

  1. other people besides Ryan D. would announce their projects :wink:

Announce away! And may be we should send some ninjas to take away
zenspider’s keyboard!

On Jun 24, 2009, at 02:06 , Trans wrote:

We are seeing a lot or release announcements among the regular posts
these days, taking up a larger and larger percentage of total posts.
Perhaps if we have a separate list for them then:

Not counting my latest flood of releases, there are 40 announcements
out of 480 email over the last week or roughly 8.33%. If you do count
my flood, then it is 72 out of 529 or roughly 13.6%. Either way I
hardly think that constitutes the need for another list. seattle.rb,
ruby-core, ruby-talk, rubygems-developers, and UW-ruby… I don’t need
any more ruby based mailing lists. Really, and this is coming from the
person who beat you to the punch by SEVEN years [1].

  1. ruby-talk itself would improve

it would?

  1. we’d all know were to look to see what’s new without having to
    sift

see that “@gmail.com” part of your email address? I hear they’re
pretty good at this sort of thing. Even my lowly mac mail app seems to
do a damn good job of it.

  1. other people besides Ryan D. would announce their projects :wink:

they would?

speculate much?

  1. http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/51569
    and http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/51818

On Jun 24, 2009, at 02:15 , hemant wrote:

On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 2:36 PM, Trans[email protected] wrote:

  1. other people besides Ryan D. would announce their projects :wink:
    Announce away! And may be we should send some ninjas to take away
    zenspider’s keyboard!

Double Dog Dare you. :stuck_out_tongue:

From: “Trans” [email protected]

  1. we’d all know were to look to see what’s new without having to
    sift

Geez, even my crappy Microsquish email client can do:

if Subject contains “[ANN]”
then move to folder “ruby-talk-announce”

… if i wanted it to, that is.

:slight_smile:

Regards,

Bill

On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 11:26 AM, Ryan D.[email protected]
wrote:

Double Dog Dare you. :stuck_out_tongue:
Nice one ;).
Sorry Tom, I stole your idea in the other thread, needless to say that
I back you up on this :wink:

Cheers
Robert


Toutes les grandes personnes ont d’abord été des enfants, mais peu
d’entre elles s’en souviennent.

All adults have been children first, but not many remember.

[Antoine de Saint-Exupéry]

Trans wrote:

I’d have to vote No! I think a Ruby T. list is perfectly the correct
place (in my mind) to have announcements related to things Ruby
developers use/ might want. I have seen numerous threads where people
have announced a gem only for it to be followed by quick responses on
problems people are facing, what might be wrong with it, etc. This
would become a bit more difficult if the gem were announced only on a
separate list.

Cheers,
Mohit.
6/24/2009 | 5:30 PM.

On Jun 24, 5:15 am, hemant [email protected] wrote:

On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 2:36 PM, Trans[email protected] wrote:

We are seeing a lot or release announcements among the regular posts
these days, taking up a larger and larger percentage of total posts.
Perhaps if we have a separate list for them then:

  1. ruby-talk itself would improve

How?

Increasing the concentration/orientation of list toward Ruby issues,
problem solving, etc. rather then yet another 0.0.1 bump release.

  1. we’d all know were to look to see what’s new without having to
    sift

Again How? Many folks use filtered feed of ruby-talk that just caters
to announcements (rather than subscribing to mailing list).
Announcements are very important part of ruby-talk, moving
announcements to a different list serves little purpose.

At the very least it means you wouldn’t need a filtered feed :wink:
Personally I am interested in both announcements and the rest of ruby-
talk. I would prefer to view the two separately. I am not going to go
out of my way to setup filters that will have only a limited level of
success.

T.

On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 11:29 AM, Bill K.[email protected] wrote:

… if i wanted it to, that is.

:slight_smile:
Now that is a philosophical question, personally I prefer to filter on
the ML address rather than on the subject line, seems much more
reliable. But it is a great thing to do in the meantime if one is
bothered …
R

On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 12:35 PM, Ryan D.[email protected]
wrote:

On Jun 24, 2009, at 03:12 , trans wrote:

Personally I am interested in both announcements and the rest of ruby-
talk. I would prefer to view the two separately. I am not going to go
out of my way to setup filters that will have only a limited level of
success.

and yet we should go out of our way to set up an entire mailing list “that
will have only a limited level of success”?

I have no idea if you should ;). I would like it though as soon as the
[Ann] rate hits a 20~30% mark.

Cheers
Robert

Toutes les grandes personnes ont d’abord été des enfants, mais peu
d’entre elles s’en souviennent.

All adults have been children first, but not many remember.

[Antoine de Saint-Exupéry]

On Jun 24, 2009, at 03:12 , trans wrote:

Personally I am interested in both announcements and the rest of ruby-
talk. I would prefer to view the two separately. I am not going to go
out of my way to setup filters that will have only a limited level of
success.

and yet we should go out of our way to set up an entire mailing list
“that will have only a limited level of success”?

On Jun 24, 5:25 am, Ryan D. [email protected] wrote:

ruby-core, ruby-talk, rubygems-developers, and UW-ruby…
First, I think 8%-13% is a good bit. But more to the point, it could
be much worse. Consider how it would be if everyone announced as
regularly as you do.

Personally, I wish they did. I often learn of new projects just by
chance --usually a mention on some blog. I would like to encourage
more people to make announcements --even those little 0.0.1 bumps. I
like to see it become a very regular habit of all ruby developers. But
if that happened then we can expect that percentage to shoot way way
up.

I also suspect that many people do not announce b/c they don’t want to
add too much “noise” to the list or they don’t want to announce their
wares for “all to see” if they don’t feel is quite up to snuff yet. If
there was a separate list they could feel more at ease about these
considerations, and as a result the whole community could benefit.

I don’t need
any more ruby based mailing lists. Really, and this is coming from the
person who beat you to the punch by SEVEN years [1].

  1. ruby-talk itself would improve

it would?

You used to think so too. Do you think now that the lack of
announcements would make ruby-talk worse?

  1. we’d all know were to look to see what’s new without having to
    sift

see that “@gmail.com” part of your email address? I hear they’re
pretty good at this sort of thing. Even my lowly mac mail app seems to
do a damn good job of it.

Many people access the list via other means. I use Google G…
There is also Usenet and Ruby Forum, among others. Filtering is not
always so straight-forward.

  1. other people besides Ryan D. would announce their projects :wink:

they would?

Yes, I think they would. See above.

speculate much?

There’s a fine line between calculation and speculation --I think they
call it evaluation.

1)http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/51569
andhttp://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/51818

I think you make very good points. But something like this cannot work
without being official ruby-lang.org list.

T.

On Jun 24, 5:30 am, Mohit S. [email protected] wrote:

I’d have to vote No! I think a Ruby T. list is perfectly the correct
place (in my mind) to have announcements related to things Ruby
developers use/ might want. I have seen numerous threads where people
have announced a gem only for it to be followed by quick responses on
problems people are facing, what might be wrong with it, etc. This
would become a bit more difficult if the gem were announced only on a
separate list.

While “announce” indicates a one way form of speech, unlike “talk”, I
take your point. However, there’s no reason people can’t utilize the
announce list to follow up an announce post with “quick responses on
problems people are facing, what might be wrong with it, etc.” Such
posts are geared toward issue with the release itself, which makes
sense.

T.

On Wed, 24 Jun 2009 05:43:19 -0500, Robert D.
[email protected] wrote:

will have only a limited level of success"?

I have no idea if you should ;). I would like it though as soon as the
[Ann] rate hits a 20~30% mark.

Actually, there already seems to be a gmane.comp.lang.ruby.announce
newsgroup. I’m already subscribed to this group right now.

Instead of starting another mailing list, why don’t we just resurrect
this existing one?

– Benjamin L. Russell

From: “Robert D.” [email protected]

Now that is a philosophical question, personally I prefer to filter on
the ML address rather than on the subject line, seems much more
reliable. But it is a great thing to do in the meantime if one is
bothered …

Reliable in theory… :slight_smile:

I can imagine a rough equivalence between posters who
currently don’t know to use [ANN], and folks who would end
up posting announcements to ruby-talk regardless of the
existence of a separate “reliable” announce list.

:slight_smile:

Regards,

Bill

On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 3:42 PM, trans[email protected] wrote:

How?

Increasing the concentration/orientation of list toward Ruby issues,
problem solving, etc. rather then yet another 0.0.1 bump release.

That concentration/orientation thing is just overrated. That utopia of
a mailing list where only insightful and interesting things will be
discussed is just not going to work (case in point “thoughful-ruby”
mailing list).

talk. I would prefer to view the two separately. I am not going to go
out of my way to setup filters that will have only a limited level of
success.

It also means, you need a separate list to begin with and as Mohit
pointed out sometimes its interesting to have a discussion about
package being announced right here on ruby-talk, which is the right
channel for such things. A separate list for announcements will be too
limited in scope.


Let them talk of their oriental summer climes of everlasting
conservatories; give me the privilege of making my own summer with my
own coals.

http://gnufied.org

On Wed, 24 Jun 2009 06:05:45 -0500, Bill K. [email protected] wrote:

I can imagine a rough equivalence between posters who
currently don’t know to use [ANN], and folks who would end
up posting announcements to ruby-talk regardless of the
existence of a separate “reliable” announce list.

:slight_smile:

In that case, why not establish a custom of starting discussion of
announcements and topics concerning thereof on [ANN], to be moved to
ruby-talk after a few rounds? This system is already effectively in
use in at least one functional programming community.

That way, later participants would need to go back to [ANN] to catch
up on first rounds of discussions, so they would need to keep [ANN]
and its purpose in mind.

– Benjamin L. Russell

On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 5:06 AM, Trans[email protected] wrote:

We are seeing a lot or release announcements among the regular posts
these days, taking up a larger and larger percentage of total posts.

There already is one:
http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-community-announcements

So far, basically unused. Easier just to filter on [ANN] tag.

-greg

trans wrote:

While “announce” indicates a one way form of speech, unlike “talk”, I
take your point. However, there’s no reason people can’t utilize the
announce list to follow up an announce post with “quick responses on
problems people are facing, what might be wrong with it, etc.” Such
posts are geared toward issue with the release itself, which makes
sense.

I guess you’re right - it really depends. The way I see it, it keeps
all the talk in one place. That said, if another list starts to get
used, I would simply sign up to it with the same email address as this
one and let it drop into the same mailbox. That way, it would work
almost the same - only there is a chance I would get multiple ANN posts
(similar to the way it works between Rails-Talk and Ruby-Talk some
times).

Cheers,
Mohit.
6/24/2009 | 9:22 PM.

On [Wed, 24.06.2009 18:06], Trans wrote:

T.

I personally never had a feeling off “Duh, what are all the questions
doing between the announcements”, nor the other way around.

One particular thing I really like about this list is that is combines
both announcements and discussions. As I skip through all new threads
I eventually get to see interesting stuff, no matter what exactly it is.

Having those two topics seperated would only seem to be a break in my
usual “Let’s see whats up in the Ruby world” reading flow.

If such a seperation would ever take place (besides the fact that it
is hardly possible to cleanly enforce that announcements just go to
one list and general discussions to another) the first thing I’d do
would be to save both MLs to one mailbox.