# Rails documentation - wiki

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-documentation-wiki/74835>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [November 7, 2006, 10:58am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-documentation-wiki/74835 "2006-11-07T10:58:37Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 7\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Heri\_R](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/58956e/32.png) [@Heri\_R](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Heri_R)\
**Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 10:58am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-documentation-wiki/74835/1 "2006-11-07T10:58:37Z")

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I dont know about you guys but i find the rails wiki and other online  
ressources (technoweenie’s website) very hard to find the info i am  
looking  
from.

I thought they ought to be grouped and categorized. like say you want to  
know more about models, there sould be a model category and in this  
model  
sub categories and then articles/tips/code snippets/error explanations  
in  
this subcategory.

Take for example wikipedia, imagine if they show their data like they  
would  
now in [wiki.rubyonrails.org](http://wiki.rubyonrails.org) it would be completely unusable.

or am i missing something ? how do i guys find the correct info ? say  
you  
have an error? i find myself googling page after page and tracking down  
the  
error always takes me too much time.

–  
Heri R.  
[http://sprinj.com](http://sprinj.com)

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**Author:** ![Heri\_R](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/58956e/32.png) [@Heri\_R](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Heri_R)\
**Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 11:01am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-documentation-wiki/74835/2 "2006-11-07T11:01:14Z")

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I agree with your Heri,  
There is alot of useful information out there for rails but finding  
things in the wiki is really quite hard.

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**Author:** ![Heri\_R](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/58956e/32.png) [@Heri\_R](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Heri_R)\
**Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 11:01am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-documentation-wiki/74835/3 "2006-11-07T11:01:49Z")

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With all of the rails-related (and mostly valid) hype around efficiency  
and usability, when I started as a newbee, I chuckled everytime I  
visited the wiki. That being said, the caboo.se doc project looks  
pretty hot.

Compared with other open source projects, the quantity and quality of  
rails information on personal blogs is an amazing phenomenon. I mean,  
it’s not a very DRY way to learn a new language/framework, but every  
rails newbee by necessity a) improves their google skills, b) knows all  
the experienced developers by name and blog theme, and c) has become  
convinced one way or another that they should blog about their  
experiences. A wonderful thing compared with something like TYPO3  
(which I also work with) which has such an (overall) amazing deficiency  
of available documentation and yet still has such a loyal userbase.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Heri\_R](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/58956e/32.png) [@Heri\_R](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Heri_R)\
**Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 11:01am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-documentation-wiki/74835/4 "2006-11-07T11:01:51Z")

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One problem I have with the rails wiki is that sometime it gets  
infested with spam. I have to go back in time several revisions to  
get what I want and then clean it up. Its annoying. I think there  
should be a way to prevent drive-by spamming

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**Author:** ![Heri\_R](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/58956e/32.png) [@Heri\_R](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Heri_R)\
**Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 11:02am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-documentation-wiki/74835/5 "2006-11-07T11:02:07Z")

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Sam G wrote:

> Its annoying. I think there should be a way  
> to prevent drive-by spamming

I don’t know if it’s ‘preventable’ without doing damage to the intended  
usage. But I have been thinking about the possibility of developing an  
administrative capability for Rails wikies that makes it easy to  
identify  
and remove spam updates. Anybody interested in talking about it?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Heri\_R](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/58956e/32.png) [@Heri\_R](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Heri_R)\
**Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 11:01am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-documentation-wiki/74835/6 "2006-11-07T11:01:50Z")

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sudara wrote:

> Compared with other open source projects, the quantity and quality of  
> rails information on personal blogs is an amazing phenomenon. I mean,  
> it’s not a very DRY way to learn a new language/framework, but every  
> rails newbee by necessity a) improves their google skills, b) knows all  
> the experienced developers by name and blog theme, and c) has become  
> convinced one way or another that they should blog about their  
> experiences. A wonderful thing compared with something like TYPO3  
> (which I also work with) which has such an (overall) amazing deficiency  
> of available documentation and yet still has such a loyal userbase.

The great thing about writing a framework like Rails very rapidly is  
you save money on professional documentors. The documentation will get  
scattered into thousands of Web 2.0 forums and stuff.

But because the root documentation site is a Wiki, y’all could start  
fixing it yourself, right? The great thing about naivete is you can add  
to the parts that you didn’t understand. You can also transfer anything  
you Google for to the wiki. That arranges topics by theme, and improves  
the Google pagerank, too.

Finally, I have actually beat a tip or two out of this:

[http://www.google.com/codesearch](http://www.google.com/codesearch)

–  
Phlip

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Heri\_R](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/58956e/32.png) [@Heri\_R](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Heri_R)\
**Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 11:09am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-documentation-wiki/74835/7 "2006-11-07T11:09:00Z")

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Phlip wrote:

> sudara wrote:

> But because the root documentation site is a Wiki, y’all could start  
> fixing it yourself, right? The great thing about naivete is you can add  
> to the parts that you didn’t understand. You can also transfer anything  
> you Google for to the wiki. That arranges topics by theme, and improves  
> the Google pagerank, too.

Which documentation site are you referring to?

PS. The decision to move the rails list to Google groups was great,  
the presentation is so user friendly.

Tony
