Rusty Web Improvement Bureau

In the community section, I would like to put in something like:

"How to contribute

According to CodeTriage, the Rust language has most contributors than any programming language. If you want to join in the fun but aren’t sure about the process, please read ’Introduction to Contributing in Rust’ and contact our Contributor First Contact at contributions@rust-lang.org."

but that would mean such person would need to exist …

Forward to the rust-community mailing list on google. We're the switchboard.

I'll be writing a short page to that effect as one part of Mentoring newcomers to the Rust ecosystem - announcements - The Rust Programming Language Forum

@efindlay @Manishearth adding a contributing page to the website is mission 3.

Oh I see that @efindlay’s PR for the community page also includes a complete contributing page. cc @sirDonQui

@sirDonQui, I’m really sorry - I inadvertantly created a contribution page for ‘2. Community’ without realizing it was a separate mission.

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Two points I think might be worth emphasizing more on the front page:

  1. The size of the Rust community (most number of contributors to a programming language).

  2. The degree to which Rust is open (http://rustcamp.com/schedule.html#cnichols)

No worries. I hadn’t done much on it yet.

@brson: would missions 3 completed with this PR already then? Or does it need more work/should I take another look after?

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I plan on writing up the mentorship thing on Sunday, I can do any additional work needed for the contributions page then if you don’t mind.

@sirDonQui @Manishearth, I do think that we should revisit the contributing page after @efindlay’s work lands. I haven’t reviewed it closely, but suspect it can be improved yet, more eyes are good.

@efindlay is going to have a go at #5 too, the doc page.

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@efindlay has three PRs up now: #2 community, #3 contributing, and #5 docs.

I think community is getting close to ready. The others need further revision. I’m doing some review now.

Internationalizing the Rust Website

Internationlization of the website is important to a) encouraging an inclusive and diverse community, b) give more people an opportunity to get into Rust.

I suggest multiple front pages,

etc. for different groups. The Ruby homepage is a good example of how this might work.

As (somewhat sleeping) member of the german localization team of ruby-lang.org. I’d like to add a few comments on how it works there to make sure it runs smoothly (not to scare you off, but to clarify):

  • An accepted translation must have a translation team of 3 people at all times
  • They should strive to translate all news (especially security and version announcements). This can be done with a delay, so that the lead language isn’t delayed.
  • All translations should be proofread.
  • Specialized content is allowed, e.g. the german ruby board is only featured on the german page.
  • It means that the website must stay rather small in scope.

That means we need ~15 people for just 5 translations.

Still, the effect of this should not be underestimated: people appreciate if they can read the initial information in their language and might have an easier time grasping changes, etc.

It especially leads to good outreach in often-forgotten parts of the world, e.g. southern america or the asian parts of the world.

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@skade, that’s useful information, and very good point about outreach. Ongoing translation is a huge job. Regarding Rust, is the German discussion forum completely independent in content from the English one or is there some translation there too? Also, what happens about moderation of the Rust German discussion forum?

I had a more detailed look at the Ruby site. I think its a good model to get ideas from. The website is a ‘somewhat’ static mirror, except for a news section on the front page which seems to be updated regularly in almost all the languages they have available. The github source shows that the news section is the most regularly updated section.

I think this structure, where each language is a rough mirror of each other language is good because it gives equal weight to all languages. I say ‘rough’ because there are really four categories of pages:

1 Direct mirror pages

These probably need to be limited as much as reasonable because a change in one page needs to be reflected in all languages, making these pages difficult to manage when changes are required.

2 English language only pages

These pages are linked to from all languages (e.g. User Group List and Main Documentation. Examples are a complete User Group list, and the main documentation, which like Rust is generated automatically from the sourcecode. These pages are the easiest to changes because they have no dependencies.

3 Language specific static pages

These usually follow a direct pattern but with distinct content. For example, User Group pages have information specific to that language, and a link to English UG complete list. These pages are easy to change because they have no dependencies.

4 Ongoing Translations

  • News

  • Translation of discussion forums.

This is where the hard work is.

Mission 2, the community page is merged. Thanks @efindlay.

Edit: Also, good idea thinking about how to manage the foreign-language and unofficial sources of docs.

Like told on IRC, I think it might be interessant to add links to specific languages channels. As far as I know, there is a spanish one, french one and russian one. It could motivate people to start going further into rust if they have people who could help them in their mother tongue.

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Hello, There's suddenly a problem with Rustdocs header, Eric

Huh. That’s strange. It shouldn’t be related to the website changes though, but the deployment of the 1.4 docs. FWIW I don’t see it here.

OK here now.

This week there was a big response to @AndrewBrinker’s FAQ. It’s going to be really good.

I reviewed and made edits to @efindlays contributing page. Feeling good about the direction this is going, but it’s a tough thing to try to be succinct but also provide a way for newbies to find all the right info.

I also reviewed @efindlay’s docs page. There’s so much documentation out there, and again we’ve got to figure out a streamlined way to make sure newbies can find all the good stuff. This page feels difficult to me.

Once the docs change we can redo the navbar.

We’re still in need of an improved example for the front page.