Back to Basics: Drawing a line between Rails and HTML

Railers (if you allow me to you so), before_create

Railers (if you allow me to you so),

*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:Action View Form Helpers — Ruby on Rails Guides). 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*

I don't worry an awful lot about this, although I don't read the pure ruby forums that much (so in that sense I'm happy to get my dose of ruby related questions). On top of that, I'm not sure it is always clear to the person asking the question what is core ruby and what is a railsisms. To me it's a much more fuzzy line than the html & css type question.

*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".

Sometimes it's even hard to work out what the question is, or it takes multiple back and forths to coax out the relevant piece of information. Treading the line between too much and too little information does require some skill.

*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.

There was a discussion a few years back about whether or not jobs posts should be allowed here. In the end, the compromise emerged that if they were easily identifiable (eg by having a tag in the subject) then those not interested can filter them out relatively easily. It's not stuck to very rigorously (not counting the countless job postings that have nothing to do with rails that never make it to the mailing list.

Fred

Well said. While language barriers may occasionally keep a member from asking a question properly, it is TRULY in the best interest of the user to ask a well-written, intelligent, pertinent question. I'm a recent college grad and am appalled by the lack of creativity/ ingenuity/drive displayed by my own student peers.

It seems common enough for people to find a forum and ask a question, rather than research the topic themselves. Personally, I tend to exhaust all resources before asking people for help, and then I take quite a bit of time in formulating my question.

Recently I joined Stack Overflow (which many of you are likely familiar with) and they have very clear information about how to post on and use their forums. Included in this information is scoop about asking questions clearly, I think all people who use forums for knowledge should adhere to similar policies.

Because really, these forums are our tools and communities combined. Abuse them, use them poorly, and they'll probably stop working properly for you.

All good guidelines. It’s unfortunate that the people who follow this mailing list most closely (and therefore are most likely to read this post) are probably the ones who are already adhering to best practices.