The new and revitalized Rails Wiki launched about two weeks ago, so it’s time for a progress report back to the Rails community. The short answer: things are going well. We’ve had nearly a hundred edits, dozens of topics put in place, and an active discussion on the wiki mailing list. Translators are already at work making the wiki content available in multiple languages. For topics ranging from a first Rails application walkthrough to handling timezones, the new wiki is already a spot to go for quality Rails content.

The wiki team has applied lessons learned from the old Rails wiki, which has gone from being a comfortable spot to find out a few things to a cluttered mess over the years. They started out by defining an overall structure and figuring out what warranted coverage in the wiki. Then they protected a few pages from edits and set up a login system to encourage accountability. The result, so far, is a very promising start at an information resource that can benefit all Rails developers.

But there’s plenty more to do. If you take a look at the new wiki home page you’ll find a bunch of topics in red with dashed underlines. Those are topics that we want, but that no one has written yet. If you have a few minutes to give back to the community, why not drop by? Whether it’s drafting a new topic from scratch, revising an existing topic to be more clear or correct, adding links to high-quality external resources, or translating the wiki into another language, there’s plenty left to do – and just about every Rails developer should be able to contribute.