RForum Software Sucks?

Rails
1

(Donning flameproof suit)

Am I the only person who thinks that the Ruby forum software sucks?

E.g. search only for a word. Can’t search for new posts, can’t search
by date, topic list doesn’t indicate when I’ve already read a post,
there can be several independent replies to a topic, just to name a few.

There are lots (admittedly not Ruby based) of good forum software out
there.

I’ve found only one alternate that uses “normal” forum software at
forum.textdrive.com.

2

At the risk of just adding some kerosine …

You do realize that RForum is at version 0.2, right?

3

Rick Williams wrote:

(Donning flameproof suit)

Am I the only person who thinks that the Ruby forum software sucks?

I believe this could be rephrased as:
Hi, do you guys have problems with rforum search??
Also, it would be nice to have an indication of what threads i have
read.

See?? Nice an polite…

Show me your code?!?!

4

Rick –

if you don’t want flames in reply, I suggest you write posts that are
respectful and not derisive. Announcing that Produc XZY sucks isn’t
respectful. It sticks out noticably from the supportive and
collaborative hum of the list.

As I’m sure others will comment, RForum is open source software. If
you don’t like it, your choice is between patching or moving on.

cheers
Gerret

5

+1!

http://rforum.andreas-s.net/trac/file/trunk/app/models/search_ferret.rb
uses ferret and it wouldn’t be too much of a problem to add dates to the
index. lucene (and therefore) ferret provides ordering functions on the
result sets as well. Lot’s of people are eagerly awaiting your patch
Rick!

ruby-forum.com has already helped me a lot. Keep up the good work
Andreas!

Regards
Jan

6

I’m curious what happened to several months of posts. They appear to
have been deleted - Apr-Nov 2005?

http://wrath.rubyonrails.org/pipermail/rails/

7

Gerret:

I’d just like to post my support for your opinion. I think people
who don’t want to break their legs should take care when walking on
slippery surfaces rather than blame some institution for not posting
a sign “Slippery when wet”. I’d love to see a little less tolerance
in the world towards the intolerant. A mirror is just whether it
reflects ugliness or beauty.

I really think this community is awesome. I’ve benefitted a ton and
try to give back when I have something to offer. I suppose the
software can be viewed as sucking but then so could Rick. It is too
easy to criticize, as Edward de Bono says ‘You only have to take a
sufficiently extreme position…this chair is too complex, that one
too simple’. I love the idea of open source.

if you don’t like it, your choice is between patching or moving on.

+1

bruce

8

On 1/19/06, Jake J. [email protected] wrote:

The Ruby Forum is a nice way to shoe-horn an email list into a forum
style (which I personally prefer). If most folks prefer the forum
style, wouldn’t it just be better to move the community to a
phpBB/vBulletin or other forum?

I love the combination of the mailing list + gmail.

The forum gateway is a great addition, but I’d never want to give up
the mailing list. Plus, I don’t think we should move the forum to
other software - let’s just contribute to, and improve RForum.

Ben

9

Jake J. wrote:

I’d be interested in knowing how many folks on the Ruby list here are
using the Ruby Forum to read it.

The Ruby Forum is a nice way to shoe-horn an email list into a forum
style (which I personally prefer). If most folks prefer the forum
style, wouldn’t it just be better to move the community to a
phpBB/vBulletin or other forum?

I don’t agree. Half the time, emails to the list that are sent from the
forum are “out of context” because the reply did not quote the original
and the replier assumes it’s just being read by the forum reader. For
those of us that just use the list, that leaves fragmented messages that
have no context in order to give a meaningful response. The rforum
gateway to this list should be required to quote originals in some way.

-Sean

10

I’d be interested in knowing how many folks on the Ruby list here are
using the Ruby Forum to read it.

The Ruby Forum is a nice way to shoe-horn an email list into a forum
style (which I personally prefer). If most folks prefer the forum
style, wouldn’t it just be better to move the community to a
phpBB/vBulletin or other forum?

Jake

11

Ben M. wrote:

I love the combination of the mailing list + gmail.

The forum gateway is a great addition, but I’d never want to give up
the mailing list. Plus, I don’t think we should move the forum to
other software - let’s just contribute to, and improve RForum.

Ben

That’s fine. I didn’t know how many folks liked the email style. I was
conducting a poll. :slight_smile:

But, (hypothetically) if we were to give up the mailing list, I don’t
see any reason to further RForum. Why reinvent the wheel?

12

Steve R. wrote:

I use RForum frequently and prefer it to keeping my own archives or
searching the ones at gmane. I dunno why, but I like rforum better and I
do use it.

Jake J. wrote:

I’d be interested in knowing how many folks on the Ruby list here are
using the Ruby Forum to read it.

Me too, for similar reasons. Although I will leave more of the quotes
in for those without a threading email reader.

So why reinvent the wheel? I view my use of RForum as beta testing. The
more people use it, the more bugs get found and fixed. When I finally
get around to integrating a forum into my app, I’ll know right where to
look for one that has been thoroughly stomped on and survived.

_Kevin

13

On 1/19/06, Jake J. [email protected] wrote:

But, (hypothetically) if we were to give up the mailing list, I don’t
see any reason to further RForum. Why reinvent the wheel?

It’s the only Ruby on Rails forum software I know of (correct me if
there’s more?).

Now, that’s not saying that I don’t believe in using ‘the right tool
for the job’, or that I wouldn’t look at alternatives simply because
they’re not done in RoR. It’s just that having good forum software
done with RoR means that it’s easier to integrate into other RoR sites
than something done in another language / framework, and for us Ruby
programmers it’s easier to extend and fix.

Plus, it’s just fun. Nothing wrong with reinventing the wheel provided
that you do it better than before :wink:

Ben

14

Sean S.-2 wrote:

…
I don’t agree. Half the time, emails to the list that are sent from the
forum are “out of context” because the reply did not quote the original
and the replier assumes it’s just being read by the forum reader. For
those of us that just use the list, that leaves fragmented messages that
have no context in order to give a meaningful response.
…

That is true. But forcing a user to quote in reply can also cause
excessive nested quotes … A simpler solution to this problem is to
have the current “Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/” tag line
linking back to the corresponding thread in that forum.

By the way, I am a member of a project called Nabble - part of it has a
similiar idea to Gmane and RForum in providing mailing lists with a
searchable archive, a threaded view, and a web gateway.

Nabble also uses Lucene for search. The difference is that Nabble allows
to combine child lists for browsing and search. For example, RubyOnRails
has several mailing lists, instead of browsing and searching them
separately, you can also browse and search from the common parent here:
http://www.nabble.com/Ruby-on-Rails-f13830.html

Or here is a combined archive of all Ruby related lists organized in
heirachy: http://www.nabble.com/Ruby-Lang-f13925.html

I am posting from Nabble’s interface. If you want to view the context of
this thread, you can click the link at the end of the message. The
default view is a flat dump view, but there is a “View Threaded” link
that you can click, then it will become a threaded view. That will show
the context of a post bridged from web.

I hope this can help the discussion.

Will L

15

I use RForum frequently and prefer it to keeping my own archives or
searching the ones at gmane. I dunno why, but I like rforum better and I
do use it.

Jake J. wrote:

I’d be interested in knowing how many folks on the Ruby list here are
using the Ruby Forum to read it.

16

LOL - I wrote the original post in such a way that I thought it would
elicit some good responses and get some dialog going on this issue. It
is too easy to accept the status quo and accept marginal functionality.

I really like Ruby and Rails. Wouldn’t posting/reading here otherwise.
But is it really necessary to have the forum running on Rails? I’m here
to get information not because the forum/list runs on Rails.

Is is possible to interface the list to a php type forum? (I’m talking
about a forum in the classic sense)

Thanks to all of you for your replies. Let’s keep this going and get
something better.

Rick

17

Rick Williams wrote:

Is is possible to interface the list to a php type forum? (I’m talking
about a forum in the classic sense)
It’s just a mailing list. I’m reading it perfectly happily in
Thunderbird, but then I probably read it far more often than most. I’m
sure that, if it’s possible, someone out there will have found a way.

18

Rick Williams wrote:

LOL - I wrote the original post in such a way that I thought it would
elicit some good responses and get some dialog going on this issue. It
is too easy to accept the status quo and accept marginal functionality.

I really like Ruby and Rails. Wouldn’t posting/reading here otherwise.
But is it really necessary to have the forum running on Rails? I’m here
to get information not because the forum/list runs on Rails.

Is is possible to interface the list to a php type forum? (I’m talking
about a forum in the classic sense)

Thanks to all of you for your replies. Let’s keep this going and get
something better.

Rick

Rick,

The mailing list doesn’t run on rails or RForum any more than the
internet runs on internet explorer. It is a separate entity, which
Andreas made a simple interface to.

Sure, you could set up a PHP forum to do the same thing. There are
other alternatives for this list out there as well.

_Kevin

19

But, (hypothetically) if we were to give up the mailing list, I don’t
see any reason to further RForum. Why reinvent the wheel?

For convenience, let me narrow down the scope of realistic outcomes of
this debate: The mailing list isn’t going any where.

But as you can see from the url, http://www.ruby-forum.com, the
web-based gateway is just a service offered by Andreas. It’s not
necessarily the service. If you think you can setup something that’s
better, then more power to you. I believe
http://www.better-ruby-forum.com is available.

I for one appreciate Andreas’ work. The value of doing dwarfs the
value of complaining by at least 1539%. So please do convert the time
of complaints, especially when worded in an offensive manner, into
time for improvement. You’ll feel much better afterwards. Kinda like
actually going to the gym beats watching people running on TV.

David Heinemeier H.
http://www.loudthinking.com – Broadcasting Brain
http://www.basecamphq.com – Online project management
http://www.backpackit.com – Personal information manager
http://www.rubyonrails.com – Web-application framework

20

Rick Williams wrote:

(Donning flameproof suit)

Am I the only person who thinks that the Ruby forum software sucks?

I’d vote for a new UI. There’s something not right which makes it hard
on my eyes and head. Maybe it’s the red on white, or font, font size, or
spacing - who knows, I’m not a designer. All I know is it’s hard for me
to read.

Searching does need work also.