Forum: Ruby Re-post: [Mailing list -> ruby-forum.com broken?]

I posted this on the mailing list, but obviously that didn't get 
duplicated to the forum :) Sorry to those on the mailing list who have 
to see this twice:

It looks like messages sent to the mailing list are not being propagated 
to the ruby-forum.com.

Some examples:
"Mixin Syntax for Newbies" thread (started on forum, replies from 
mailing list not showing up)
"YAML in limbo?"  thread (same as above)
"So I got a binary file..." thread (same)

"[ANN] MinDI 0.3" thread (started on mailing list, isn't on forum)
"Generate unique filenames" thread (same as above)

However, messages posted on the forum are getting sent to the mailing 
list. Is this a known issue?

This is kind of a problem, because people are getting answers to their 
questions from the list, but the answers never reach them if they are 
using the forum.

-Justin

So, we have three lists?
1) comp.lang.ruby
2) ruby-talk
3) ruby-form.com

-
Minkoo Seo

Justin Collins wrote:
> I posted this on the mailing list, but obviously that didn't get 
> duplicated to the forum :) Sorry to those on the mailing list who have 
> to see this twice:
> 
> It looks like messages sent to the mailing list are not being propagated 
> to the ruby-forum.com.
> 
> Some examples:
> "Mixin Syntax for Newbies" thread (started on forum, replies from 
> mailing list not showing up)
> "YAML in limbo?"  thread (same as above)
> "So I got a binary file..." thread (same)
> 
> "[ANN] MinDI 0.3" thread (started on mailing list, isn't on forum)
> "Generate unique filenames" thread (same as above)
> 
> However, messages posted on the forum are getting sent to the mailing 
> list. Is this a known issue?
> 
> This is kind of a problem, because people are getting answers to their 
> questions from the list, but the answers never reach them if they are 
> using the forum.
> 
> -Justin

Justin Collins wrote:
> It looks like messages sent to the mailing list are not being propagated 
> to the ruby-forum.com.
> However, messages posted on the forum are getting sent to the mailing 
> list. Is this a known issue?
> 
> This is kind of a problem, because people are getting answers to their 
> questions from the list, but the answers never reach them if they are 
> using the forum.

Gee, that sucks.

/me mumbles.

I was wondering why the traffic seemed to have died down the last few 
days...

I've felt for a while now that ruby-forum.com has been neglected 
(abandoned?).

If the RForum software works as-is, I am willing to host a mailing list 
<-> forum bridge, whether temporarily or permanently.

Pistos

> Justin Collins wrote:
> It looks like messages sent to the mailing list are not being propagated 
> to the ruby-forum.com.
> However, messages posted on the forum are getting sent to the mailing 
> list. Is this a known issue?

Does anyone know if ruby-forum.com is missing any posts that have 
appeared elsewhere? I'm waiting to see if anyone replies to a couple of 
posts I've made and I don't want to double post, but at the same time I 
don't want to miss out on answers to my questions.

> Does anyone know if ruby-forum.com is missing any posts that have 
> appeared elsewhere? I'm waiting to see if anyone replies to a couple of 
> posts I've made and I don't want to double post, but at the same time I 
> don't want to miss out on answers to my questions.

search ruby-talk... there are replys there that do not appear in the 
forum

brad wrote:
> search ruby-talk... there are replys there that do not appear in the 
> forum

I'm searching here:

http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/ruby/ruby-talk/threads.html

and can't seem to find anything. Is there another interface to 
ruby-talk?

Nathan Olberding wrote:
> brad wrote:
>> search ruby-talk... there are replys there that do not appear in the 
>> forum
> 
> I'm searching here:
> 
> http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/ruby/ruby-talk/threads.html
> 
> and can't seem to find anything. Is there another interface to 
> ruby-talk?

I'm posting from the ruby-forum so I'm not sure if this will reach 
anyone, but if you look at this thread:
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/vframe.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/191006?190922-191129
You can see that only some of those replies are also visible on the 
forum. The posting behaviour of the thread started indicates that he is 
also a forum user and because of that he missed some excellent replies.

(This must be extremely irritating for the ruby-talk subscribers)

Edwin

Edwin van Leeuwen wrote:
> I'm posting from the ruby-forum so I'm not sure if this will reach 
> anyone, but if you look at this thread:
> http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/vframe.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/191006?190922-191129
> You can see that only some of those replies are also visible on the 
> forum. The posting behaviour of the thread started indicates that he is 
> also a forum user and because of that he missed some excellent replies.

I must say, this is quite disturbing [for me].  I think we forum users 
need to take action now.  Like I said, I believe ruby-forum.com is 
abandoned (would the administrator please make some comments?).

I'm thinking perhaps I am going to stop using it, since it is borderline 
useless if we can't assume it is a consistent mirror in both directions. 
:(

Pistos

Pistos Christou wrote:
> I must say, this is quite disturbing [for me].  I think we forum users 
> need to take action now.  Like I said, I believe ruby-forum.com is 
> abandoned (would the administrator please make some comments?).

I didn't even know this forum had a mailing list attached to it! I was 
suspicious because of the e-mail style quoting which people seem to 
enforce as if this were a mailing list, but I didn't really know. I 
googled for "ruby forum" one day and here I am.

How do I subscribe to the mailing list?

Nathan Olberding wrote:
> How do I subscribe to the mailing list?

Go to ruby-lang.org and look for the Mailing Lists link:
http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/20020104.html

On 5/2/06, Justin Collins <collinsj@seattleu.edu> wrote:
> I posted this on the mailing list, but obviously that didn't get
> duplicated to the forum :) Sorry to those on the mailing list who have
> to see this twice:

Hm. As far as I'm concerned, it's broken the wrong way.

-austin

"Austin Ziegler" <halostatue@gmail.com> writes:

> On 5/2/06, Justin Collins <collinsj@seattleu.edu> wrote:
>> I posted this on the mailing list, but obviously that didn't get
>> duplicated to the forum :) Sorry to those on the mailing list who have
>> to see this twice:
>
> Hm. As far as I'm concerned, it's broken the wrong way.

Exactly my thoughts. :-P

And I was worried my job was beginning to block my @ruby-lang emails!

On 5/2/06, Minkoo Seo <minkoo.seo@gmail.com> wrote:
> So, we have three lists?
> 1) comp.lang.ruby
> 2) ruby-talk
> 3) ruby-form.com

We have ruby-talk. This has been mirrored for a long time with
comp.lang.ruby. I haven't heard anything reliable from the original
mirror person, but it would be nice if someone picked that up again.
In the last year, ruby-forum.com went live and shortly thereafter, a
mirror with ruby-talk was created (also one with the Rails list).

My problem is that for every good posting and question we get from
ruby-forum.com, we get ten nonsensical ones that could have been
solved with a three-second Google search. The problem *isn't* the
gateway as such, it's that forums are the bottom of the barrel when it
comes to what people actually do, and there's not enough indication to
the users of ruby-forum.com that this is going to both a mailing list
and a newsgroup as well as the forum, so they ask their questions in
forum-style. Which is to say, badly spelled and poorly considered.

I would much rather see ruby-forum.com act differently with respect to
the ruby-talk mailing list. First, the current "Ruby" forum should
probably be renamed and be a read-only view of ruby-talk and
comp.lang.ruby. Second, a new forum should be posted for discussion
purposes. Third, code could be added for moderated questions to be
migrated from the forum discussions to be posted to ruby-talk for
discussion there.

The forum currently makes it too easy to forget that you're dealing
with people who do *not* have the full thread in front of them because
they're not using the forum. It just looks like it.

-austin

I have fixed the problem, no mails were lost.

Pistos Christou wrote:
> I must say, this is quite disturbing [for me].  I think we forum users 
> need to take action now.  Like I said, I believe ruby-forum.com is 
> abandoned (would the administrator please make some comments?).
> 
> I'm thinking perhaps I am going to stop using it, since it is borderline 
> useless if we can't assume it is a consistent mirror in both directions. 
> :(

Funny enough, you didn't care notifying me about the problem, as did 
nobody else. The gateway would have been up again in no time.

On 5/2/06, Pistos Christou <jesusrubsyou.5.pistos@geoshell.com> wrote:
> <-> forum bridge, whether temporarily or permanently.
Please don't. I'm not against ruby-forum in general, but the quality
of posts is generally much lower with minimal information from
ruby-forum than from the mailing list or the newsgroup.

-austin

On May 2, 2006, at 5:35 PM, Austin Ziegler wrote:

>> their
>> > questions from the list, but the answers never reach them if  
>> they are
>> > using the forum.
>> If the RForum software works as-is, I am willing to host a mailing  
>> list
>> <-> forum bridge, whether temporarily or permanently.
>
> Please don't. I'm not against ruby-forum in general, but the quality
> of posts is generally much lower with minimal information from
> ruby-forum than from the mailing list or the newsgroup.

And I've seen forum replies come without context, or under a
different name, or in a new thread.  This makes answering them very
difficult.

Please, let ruby-form go its own way.

--
Eric Hodel - drbrain@segment7.net - http://blog.segment7.net
This implementation is HODEL-HASH-9600 compliant

http://trackmap.robotcoop.com

Andreas S. wrote:
>> :(
>>     
>
> Funny enough, you didn't care notifying me about the problem, as did 
> nobody else. The gateway would have been up again in no time.
>
>   

Thanks Andreas. I looked on the site for a contact, but must have missed 
it.
I do appreciate the Ruby Forum and I think it's a good resource for 
people.

-Justin

Eric Hodel wrote:
>>> > This is kind of a problem, because people are getting answers to 
> And I've seen forum replies come without context, or under a different 
> name, or in a new thread.  This makes answering them very difficult.

And I've seen emails on the mailing list with the same problems. I don't
think cutting off that part of the Ruby community is the solution. I'm
more in favor of some of the other suggestions, such as an explicit
statement about how the forum is a mailing list gateway (although it
_is_ on the main page, right under the forum name), maybe a posting of
the newsgroup FAQ, and requiring people to create an account.
Personally, I use the mailing list most of the time, but different
people have different preferences.

Just my opinion.

-Justin

On 5/3/06, Justin Collins <collinsj@seattleu.edu> wrote:
> And I've seen emails on the mailing list with the same problems. [...]

I have seen a dramatic increase in endless September questions since
the establishment of the ruby-forum bidi link.

I do *not* think that it is sufficiently clear; someone noted that
they were surprised to learn that the forum was actually tied to a
mailing list *in this very thread*.

The web interface is reducing the quality of discussion dramatically,
and merely increasing the warning level is not going to help that. The
style of discussion on fora is too radically different for the way
that ruby-talk is presented on ruby-forum. Something different needs
to be done, because what exists is detrimental to the community.

-austin

Austin Ziegler wrote:
> I do *not* think that it is sufficiently clear; someone noted that
> they were surprised to learn that the forum was actually tied to a
> mailing list *in this very thread*.

That was me. After my first couple of posts, I thought it prudent to 
treat this forum like a mailing list. Everyone else seemed to. It would 
at least help somewhat if it was insinuated somewhere on the forum that 
this is cross-posted to a mailing list.

> The web interface is reducing the quality of discussion dramatically,
> and merely increasing the warning level is not going to help that.

Help? Yes it would. Solve? Well...

> The
> style of discussion on fora is too radically different for the way
> that ruby-talk is presented on ruby-forum. Something different needs
> to be done, because what exists is detrimental to the community.

Is it really detrimental?

I think I see a little class separation going on here. I'm a newbie to 
Ruby. I'm not incompetent, but I do often ask question that "could be 
answered with a 3 second Google search"... if I only knew what on earth 
I was searching for. It may be obvious to one person, but otherworldly 
to someone who's just encountering a gotcha for the first time.

I've really loved ruby-forum.com since I started using it. People are 
VERY friendly, understanding, patient, and have all the answers to all 
my questions. Excellent community, excellent dialog.

I'm not sure it'd be a good idea, but to keep n00bz like me from 
drowning the pro discussions, maybe we should have a "basic Ruby 
concepts that even experienced developers from other languages might 
snag on" forum. 90% of my questions are in regards to Ruby's 
implementation of common features. I see a lot of people with similar 
questions.

In any event, it's dangerous to have a web site with a forum labeled 
simply "Ruby." Everyone will flock to this :-)

I do not believe web based interface makes the level of discussion low.
Take comp.lang.c++.modreated and comp.programming.threads as
examples. Two of them are filled with discussion of 
detailed/professional
discussion on C++ and concurrency, respectively. However, both of
them are exposed to the public via groups.google.com.

The quality of comp.lang.c++.moderated is maintained by moderators
who examine all the messages and approves them only if they are not
too novice questions. Sometimes, a moderator directly answer to the
question via email before they filter the message. This can be done
because there are many other places where novice can ask anything.
Such atmosphere of them are maintained not because of the absence
of web-based interface, but because of process.

This is the list which is just named ruby-talk. It's not named like
'ruby-master'
or something like that. Not having web based interface does not 
guarantee
the
quality of discussion, I believe. Why don't you let people access all 
the
messages
in the mailing list? Why should we have to raise the bar to newbies
(which includes me) anyway?

Actually, I've joined mailing list when I've found out that ruby-forum 
does
not work
(I know it runs well right now), but I found not too much difference in 
this
list.
People in comp.lang.ruby are discussing some ruby questions on APIs, 
bugs,
how-to. Messages in this is not radically different from them.

I mean, what is quality anyway? I believe it might be something too
subjective.

Sincerely,
Minkoo Seo

Nathan Olberding <nathan.olberding@gmail.com> writes:

> I think I see a little class separation going on here. I'm a newbie to 
> Ruby. I'm not incompetent, but I do often ask question that "could be 
> answered with a 3 second Google search"... if I only knew what on earth 
> I was searching for. It may be obvious to one person, but otherworldly 
> to someone who's just encountering a gotcha for the first time.
>
> I've really loved ruby-forum.com since I started using it. People are 
> VERY friendly, understanding, patient, and have all the answers to all 
> my questions. Excellent community, excellent dialog.

How about just requiring users to register before they can post to
ruby-talk?  AFAICS, everyone can post ahead right now.

On 5/3/06, Christian Neukirchen <chneukirchen@gmail.com> wrote:
> > my questions. Excellent community, excellent dialog.
>
> How about just requiring users to register before they can post to
> ruby-talk?  AFAICS, everyone can post ahead right now.

Yep, including guests, which leads to this nonsense:
http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/63894#70349

Christian Neukirchen wrote:
> How about just requiring users to register before they can post to
> ruby-talk?  AFAICS, everyone can post ahead right now.

I like this idea.

On May 3, 2006, at 1:03 PM, Nathan Olberding wrote:

> this is cross-posted to a mailing list.
>
> Is it really detrimental?

I don't believe anyone gets paid to respond to ruby-talk so increase
in noise makes it much more likely that mails will be ignored.

> I think I see a little class separation going on here. I'm a newbie to
> Ruby. I'm not incompetent, but I do often ask question that "could be
> answered with a 3 second Google search"... if I only knew what on  
> earth
> I was searching for. It may be obvious to one person, but otherworldly
> to someone who's just encountering a gotcha for the first time.

Subscribing to a mailing list takes work and causes you to get mail
you might otherwise not want.  Posting on ruby-forum takes much less
effort, you don't need to log in and it won't clog up your inbox.
The difference between the two causes people who go the mailing list
route to do a more exhaustive search.

--
Eric Hodel - drbrain@segment7.net - http://blog.segment7.net
This implementation is HODEL-HASH-9600 compliant

http://trackmap.robotcoop.com

Andreas S. wrote:
> Funny enough, you didn't care notifying me about the problem, as did 
> nobody else. The gateway would have been up again in no time.

Andreas: I didn't mean to irk you with my behaviour.  Rest assured 
you'll hear from me quickly if anything like this ever happens again. 
;)

Christian Neukirchen wrote:
> How about just requiring users to register before they can post to
> ruby-talk?  AFAICS, everyone can post ahead right now.

Sounds good to me.

---

I'm all for keeping low-quality posts out of ruby-talk.  I wouldn't want 
to be in the judgement seat deciding which are good or bad, though. 
Personally, I would rather not see the forum mirror for ruby-talk 
disappear.  I have always preferred forums over mailing lists and 
newsgroups (though my stance has softened lately with the advent of 
GMail which displays threads rather nicely).

I've been on more than a few forums in my life, and the fact is (based 
on my experience) postings are not really bad just because they're done 
on a forum versus a mailing list.  There are juvenile forums, and there 
are top-notch forums.

My opinion is that we should just keep putting in little strictures and 
making little adjustments until we get to some reasonable state of 
affairs.  Requiring forum registration to post to ruby-talk would be a 
good start, I think.

Who knows, maybe we could also have moderation for ruby-forum, to act as 
a bit of a pre-ruby-talk sieve.

Some extra warning text about the mirror-ness might help, too.

Pistos