Railers (if you allow me to you so), *before_create* ============ I am not a moderator of Ruby on Rails(RoR) forum, I am not trying to become one, and I am not pushing for any moderation of this sort. However, I am a bit worried that some of the questions we get on this forum are not really Ruby on Rails questions. In addition, some of questions are already taken care of by the many tutorials that are available online.
I know that we have different backgrounds and levels of programming complexity. I am not in any way trying to scare new Rails developers, but I think we need to draw a line between RoR and non-RoR questions. *1. Posting Right Questions* ======================= There are some questions that are not necessarily worthy posting on this forum. For example, questions on how to create HTML elements like textboxes, buttons, forms, e.t.c. in Ruby on Rails. These are HTML specific questions. If one wants to create them using Rails helpers there are tutorials that are dedicated to that. All in all, there are guides on how to do that on rubyonrails.org (for example this one: http://guides.rubyonrails.org/form_helpers.html). If one is not sure of something in Ruby on Rails, they may search online first, before posting on this forum. Things are happening very fast. It is very likely that most of the "general questions" about RoR have been answered via blog posts or various forums already. *We need to know the difference between a search engine and a forum*. Only when there is no tutorial or blog post tackling a particular question then we can go ahead posting it here. *2. Differentiating between Ruby and Ruby on Rails Questions* ================================================== This is slightly similar to the first one but I think it needs special treatment. We need to understand that this forum is not a Ruby forum; it is a Ruby on Rails forum. I know that this is one of the most difficult thing to do on this forum; even myself I admit that I am not good at it but I'm trying my best. Some of the questions that we tend to ask here are Ruby specific. Most of Railers would not love to respond to Ruby questions, not because they cannot manage to but because a Ruby forum actually exists and this forum is dedicated to seeking help with Rails, announcing Rails projects, and discussing all kind of matters surrounding the Rails framework and the community. If we need any help with Ruby related problems or Ruby syntax (such as looping, hashing, mapping (e.g. map, each, inject, reduce), e.t.c), let us direct them to the right forum. *3. Framing Questions and Email Titles/Subjects before Posting* =================================================== We need to take our time framing our questions before posting them on this forum. Some of the questions do not make real sense at all. It becomes hard for us to figure out what someone is looking for, and (I'm sorry to say that) we tend to ignore them. Some of the subjects are too general like "I need help" , "I have problems with my Rails application" or "Newbie question". Remember that questions on this forum are searchable online, posting search engine compatible questions will do us all good. Having "good questions" and "straight-forward email subjects" will also help others who may be experiencing similar problems like ours. This will help them not to replicate the same questions here. There is one thumb rule: if you are failing to ask the question well, then you don't even know what you are looking for. *4. Posting Jobs* ============= Let me take advantage to remind everyone that when we are posting about an open job position or looking for a Rails developer, we are requested to prefix email subject with [JOBS] tag. I cannot say why we need that, but that is a request that is clearly spelled out on the forums page. *5. Readme* ========= We are all dedicated to providing good and beneficial responses/solutions to questions that come on this forum. Let us make sure that we ask those questions that will attract more attention for response, and will in the end benefit more people. Remember that the frequent/regular responders (the likes of Brian Crossland, Peter Bell, Fredrick Cheung, Collin Law and Chris Kottom, just to mention but a few) on this forum were not specifically employed by this forum to our answer questions, but they do this in the spirit of sharing. They too have other projects and businesses to do, and they get busy too. Some of them only spend limited time looking at forum issues/questions, so they will go for those that are straight-forward and easy to understand. *self.last* ======= Enjoy your coding! --- Edmond Software Developer | Baobab Health Trust (http://www.baobabhealth.org/) |Malawi Cell: +265 999 465 137 | +265 881 234 717* My array starts from 0.5* -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en.
