Rails 2.0 is out. It's an awesome achievement, and it has improved a lot from it's 1.x state (I was about to list everything to make this introduction look good, but we all know what 2.0 has to offer, so I won't =P).
We have a core team, and a "not-so-core" team of regular committers. We do not, however, have a documentation team. I think Rails has grown big enough to deserve having that, and it also makes sense to have it. This is what we have today:
The API: This is getting better and better, thanks to documentation patches and various upgrades through out it's history. Also, the caboo.se API contributions are awesome. The API is an API, though, and not a sufficient resource for someone completely new to rails, and even completely new to making webapps in general.
The manuals: The first thing that meets your eye when you browse http://manuals.rubyonrails.org is "Upgrading to Rails 1.0". Need I say more? ; )
Railscasts.com: Probably the most awesome beginner-ish (and free) documentation Rails has. Clean code and good practices. However, this is not a complete tutorial either, as it won't explain how belongs_to works (which the API will explain, but the beginner doesn't even know what belongs_to is, and will never find it there)
The books: The books are also great, but they'll get outdated soon- ish, and aren't free.
So, I'm suggesting that a separate documentation team is set up. This is my first idea for getting started with awesome documentation:
railsbeginner.com (I even registered the domain because I was so extremely pleased with the idea \o/)
People post their questions here. The core documentation team (which would be me (?) and [insert other members here]) would post an answer to that question, and tag/categorize the question (where a tag containing the version of rails this is regarding is important). Perhaps also even edit the question itself, in case it was written poorly.
The answer should be a _real_ answer. No external references. "Look in agile web development with rails", or "read the api" aren't allowed. The answer should be there, in it's full, with everything needed to answer the question.
If someone posts a duplicate question, the doc team will remove the post. A mail will be sent to the person asking the question, notifying him that the question was a duplicate (but stating that it was only removed because it was a duplicate - feel free to post more questions bla bla).
Simple as that. Questions with answers, categorized and searchable.
That way, one will get real questions. Not just questions made up by an author or whatever. And it will be ever expandable.
So, let's just get at it? I can't find any reason not to.
Also, perhaps railsbeginner.com is a stupid idea, as it limits it to beginners only. http://questions.rubyonrails.org, anyone?