[Vit-discuss] Brainstorming

[Ben Giddings]

On Feb 22, 2005, at 18:50, why the lucky stiff wrote:
> I think it would be cool if we had editors on the main site who weren't
> above inciting a hair of opinion and discussion.  NOT concerning Ruby
> vs. Blank.  AND NOT concerning techniques.
>
> More like: "Here's a new RCR of interest -- what do you think?" or 
> "It's
> been a year or so since any extensions have been added to Ruby stdlib 
> --
> take any away or add any??"
>
> That sort of thing.

I think that would be great, and we could have a blog-like area, or at 
least a place where there are things to discuss -- on the other hand, I 
strongly think that the front page shouldn't be that blog.  It should 
maybe have some (2 or 3) announcements or other newsy type things, but 
it should really be geared towards people who aren't yet part of the 
Ruby community.  Why?

If you're not part of the Ruby community, but have heard about this 
"Ruby" thing, you will probably go to ruby.org (and be sad) then you'll 
ask Google where to find Ruby and it will drop you at 
http://www.ruby-lang.org/

 From there, you can discover what Ruby is.  If you're a seasoned 
programmer, you can find the "Ruby for ___ programmers" link.  If 
you're new to programming, you can find the "Gentle Intro to Ruby" 
link.  Etc.

On the other hand, if you're part of the Ruby community, you should 
have no trouble remembering that the Ruby weblog / announcements / hot 
projects page is actually at http://www.ruby-lang.org/news/ or 
http://news.ruby-lang.org/ or even 
http://news.ruby-lang.org/current-events/.  Or you might remember that 
to get there you go to the main page, click on "What Is Ruby" then 
click on "Community".

If you're just getting into Ruby, you may not know these URLs, but 
you'll probably be willing to spend a couple of minutes poking around 
the site until you find the "current events" or "news" section, and 
then you'll bookmark it.

Either way, I don't think we should design the "splash page" (for lack 
of a better term) for ourselves.  We should design it for people who 
end up there because they don't know where else to go.

The added benefit of this approach is that if we all get busy, or 
something happens, and the current-events section doesn't get updated 
for a few months, the "splash page" won't look like an abandoned 
weblog.

Ben