Rails Wiki - Pages Rising from the Dead (mwoaw haw ha ha!)

[Miles K. Forrest]

I'm reading through "Learning Rails" and on page 33 it makes reference
to a page on the wiki:

http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/ReservedWords

That page seems to have disappeared. I remember hearing something
about the Rails Activism team doing a clean up of the wiki. When I
first ran across that ReservedWords page I found it a relief to my
sanity. So I went into archive.org to cut and paste it back.

Did I do a bad thing? If so, can we make sure that something is there
in its place? For newbies, knowing there's a list of words not to use
as variables will save a lot of pain and grief (I know, I have the
scars to prove it :)

Miles

[Matt Aimonetti]

Hey Miles,

 Thanks for your help. The old wiki is still available via this url: http://oldwiki.rubyonrails.org/

When it comes to copying old content to the new wiki, the recommended way of doing so is to create a new page with the proper namespacing(check the new wiki homepage) and create a redirect from the old url to the new own(you can do that in the wiki itself).

If you need help, just shoot me an email and I'll help you out.
Again, thanks for making the extra effort of trying to fix the problem and contact the ML.

- Matt

[Miles K. Forrest]

Thanks Matt.  That's precisely what I needed to know. I suppose I could have googled it or searched around, but it truly was faster to ask the mailing list (plus I didn't have time to look into it).

I'd like to get more involved in the Rails community, especially in the realm of helping new users get acclamated.  I was active a couple of years ago, but had to duck out for some "larva time" (so much to learn, so many foolish questions, so many "RTFM's" from da haters towards da noob :)  I've started a club http://tr.im/ruby which is going well.  Hopefully as a club we can take on some projects that need doing around the Rails world.

Thanks again,

  Miles

[Matt Aimonetti]

Miles, I'm really glad to hear that, we do have plenty of things to do. The documentation is/will be divided in 4 chunks:

* wiki (getting started, simple how-tos and plugins)
* guides (in depth how-tos for rails itself (plugins and other non-core stuff aren't covered in depth))
* the (future) rails book (explanations about why things work this way and in-depth understanding of the overall picture)
* source documentation

I've also failed at working on the case studies and I will soon ask for help (as soon as I get enough time to handle the help) + a lot of other small things that you can do in your area.

Let me know if we can help your club in a way or another.

- Matt

[Miles K. Forrest]

Well, actually, now that you mention it...

Our club is modeled somewhat after Seattle.rb.  I spoke with Ryan once about how he's managed to run such a successful club.  One of his tips was to drop presentations altogether.  Sure they'll do one from time to time, but it's the exception not the norm.  They meet every week to hack on code.  I started FV.rb about 2 months ago, and even though we're youngins in the club world, we do manage to get people out every week.

I'd like us to focus on the activism side of Rails. The easiest place for me to start would be some screen and podcasting, as it's something I've already done and am comfortable with.  Would you or anyone on the Rails Activism team be willing to "meet" with our group?  I'd like to do a little Question and Answer session to start and eventually have some content that others who are new to Rails can use as a starting point.  Some people are fine with blog posts, books, etc.  I tend to be a visual/verbal person and need to connect everything to the people involved, not just the code.

We meet every Wednesday from 7pm - 9pm PST.  I was thinking a video Skype call with a short Q&A with the members of our club, which would be made available through a podcast for other clubs/individuals to watch and act.  Got 15-20 minutes to spare? :)

  Miles

[Matt Aimonetti]

Ryan Bates (Rails Activist) is currently working on a new app to share screencasts and other educational material, I think you really should get in touch with him. I'm almost sure he would appreciate some help with content creation etc...

Contact him directly and get back to me if he doesn't reply. (Mr Bates is a busy man)

- Matt