Rails Hotline (live phone help with RoR)

http://www.railshotline.com/

by stevefink • 15 years ago

189 62 15 years ago

_chap10• 15 years ago

Thanks for the ups guys.

As I said on the site I owe a lot of our success to the generous spirit of the open source community and wanted to give a little back.

If you're interested in volunteering to take calls: http://www.railshotline.com/apply.html

stevefink4• 15 years ago

chap, as I've mentioned before, I think this is yet another great way to contribute to open source. It's not always about writing code - projects like this are just as valuable as someone who works full time on documenting open source projects, writes code or creating user interfaces. thanks for a fresh idea!

ujjvala• 15 years ago

Really great idea. Other opensource community should learn from this.

swombat• 15 years ago

So, I guess this is like going to Freenode#RubyOnRails, but for people who don't know what IRC is?

You should absolutely, totally, utterly figure out a way to charge for this service.

stevefink4• 15 years ago

The major distinction here is voice is much more personal and one on one than IRC. IRC can be intimidating for a novice, and let's be quite frank, many times people's IRC persona does not reflect who they are in real life. As someone who's been contributing to major networks such as EFnet for many years now - I've learned IRC can be a great tool for learning, but it can also be downright aggressive and humiliating, particularly to the majority of users who this service would be targeting.

A voice on the other hand is more personal, synchronous and on-demand. I think there's value there and that it's possible to charge for that additional value.

jrockway• 15 years ago

EFNet and Freenode are quite different, however.

JoshTriplett6• 15 years ago

Looks to me like they plan to use this particular hotline as a demo of their service for providing other similar hotlines for businesses. Seems like a great plan.

One thought: you currently suggest that the experts who volunteer get paid for their support. As an alternative model, you might consider providing credits for priority support. In other words: experts answer the easier questions so support staff don't have to, and then those experts get priority access to ask trickier questions and/or bug reports. Developers really want to interact with those experts anyway, without opening themselves up to handholding-level support questions, so everybody wins.

_chap10• 15 years ago

We need to make that more clear on the site, we don't entend the volunteers to get paid, but rather rewarded with discounts, early access, and recognition from the communities they help.

bquinn• 15 years ago

I know it's a bit OT but if anyone really does want to charge for offering skills in this way, you should check out a startup called www.minutebox.com which offers pay-by-the-minute video calls which are intended to work like this.

Props to these guys for doing it for free! I hope it works out for you.

zwp• 15 years ago

Neat idea.

What do you suggest for non-US volunteers (and callers, although I suspect that is harder to solve, at least for free)?

JoshTriplett6• 15 years ago

Seems like you have several independent problems there. First, issues of timezone, language, and similar. Second, technical issues of long-distance and connectivity. You can pretty trivially solve the second set of issues with VoIP and other means; however, that doesn't address the non-technical problem. To address that one, you might consider making it easier to connect with people in the same general locale, which would also solve the second problem.

BrainScraps• 15 years ago

The Rails community is serious about outreach. Good on ya!

eof3• 15 years ago

Wow. I saw this and thought, 'genius.' What's it going to cost.. $50/ 20 minutes.. that would be more than fair for an expert.

FREE?????

michaeldhopkins2• 15 years ago

It better be free so long as they're not picking up the damn phone. :)

_chap10• 15 years ago

Sorry man, was helping somebody else. Call me now!

stevefink4• 15 years ago

I'm assuming they're getting overwhelmed with traffic after being linked here and other high traffic properties. With only two volunteers on staff, there's only so much you can do. I am sure they are rapidly going to look into adding volunteers if the volume stays persistent (and/or hopefully grows even larger).

ZackOfAllTrades2• 15 years ago

Idea:Record calls and make them available to others through the website. Less repetition of questions and you will be available to have a much wider outreach.

LuisZaman• 15 years ago

Great idea. With some simple transcripts and text-based search, it could be a great searchable tome of information one day.

ZackOfAllTrades2• 15 years ago

Just called in and talked to Chap. I wanted to make sure he got to see the idea and know about before it got lost. He immediately made the jump to transcripts and text-based stuff.

Chap: Recording calls with skype forum post: http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showtopic=477581

Good luck!

charliepark• 15 years ago

And as a rate-limiter, there could be a requirement that you transcribe earlier conversations to get "credits" for service. That is, every 100 words buys you X minutes of advice.

GavinB• 15 years ago

It does seem like this would be a lot easier if there were also chat (or even if it were chat-only). If you're talking about code, it would be really helpful to be able to paste in snippets or links to resources.

eof3• 15 years ago

#RubyOnRails on freenode is basically this.

keeran• 15 years ago

Give the #RubyOnRails users a way to paste a link (shorturl?) to people who come into the channel asking for premium help.

Make a game of it for the users, have a bot which reports the user stats (which users can auth via privmsg/ctcp password).

edit: a bot which reports stats on a request basis only, and privmgs all interactions with other users! no channel spam!

_chap10• 15 years ago

Agreed, some questions are more easily answered through chat and #RubyOnRails on freenode is a great place to get help.

However, I think the cool part is that it's not text. Personally I've find it to be really helpful when I'm stuck just to talk through the problem with somebody else. Often just the act of vocalizing dislodges the log jam.

patja• 15 years ago

"Often just the act of vocalizing dislodges the log jam."

Got my next product idea: mashup of SAM and Eliza as a developer help line

Ygor• 15 years ago

"Often just the act of vocalizing dislodges the log jam."

Hence the rubber duck debugging method:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging

jat850• 15 years ago

This is a neat idea and I commend you for the effort this has taken and will continue to take. I have some questions for you about how you perceive people using the service:

How do you bridge the code-to-voice gap; that is, someone calling in with a question about coding and you have to describe something that requires a lot of code syntax. Do you pass that off to some sort of e-mail type discussion or screen-sharing process, anything like that?

This seems like it could be a great consulting-style opportunity, but also an awesome way to get new developers over the stumbling blocks they experience commonly when picking up new languages.

edit My curiosity on this stems from past experience, doing phone-based coding or tech support to family or friends - it has always been a major challenge for me to verbally describe some more complex tasks, and 9 times out of 10 I find myself saying, "you know what - I'll just swing by and show you, it'll be a lot easier and faster for the both of us". (I am not a very good auditory learner/processor - I need tactile or visual assistance, and teach others better using the same methods.)

JoshTriplett6• 15 years ago

Integration with some kind of web-based collaborative editor or similar seems like a huge win here.

_chap10• 15 years ago

Thanks!

Obviously, some questions you're going to need to work through the code, so we can always move the conversation to text.

So far lots of the calls have been about documentation and best practices which are pretty easy to talk through.

raywu• 15 years ago

Agreed - maybe an Rails environment similar to http://tryruby.org/ for Ruby IRB?

leoc• 15 years ago

Seems like a promising idea, and I have no absolutely intention of knocking it.

But ... you have to admit that it's a wide-open target for parody: picture the earnest young Rails beginner calling (from Chennai, of course) and getting DHH. From there it slides into some kind of ChatRoulette nightmare involving DHH, _why, Zed ("fuck this shit! Just use Python"), a werewolf, ...

JoshTriplett6• 15 years ago

Reading this and pockethotline.com, and thinking about your offer to help set up other community hotlines: what about a Founders Hotline? Call to talk to a real live business founder, whether to get some advice, get a recommendation or opinion for a particular service, bounce an idea or pitch off someone for feedback, or just get a different perspective. And the "experts" would get the benefit of hearing from some interesting people doing interesting things, and having a nice conversation with a fellow founder, as well as the recognition and networking you mentioned elsewhere.

stevefink4• 15 years ago

Like StackExchange, I think it would make sense to take this idea and bring a more abstract platform together. Niche communities (such as Ruby on Rails and Founders) can be created based on community involvement and volunteer willingness to help. A premium model can surely follow for certain communities.

dpkendal• 15 years ago

The only issue I forsee with this is that such a hotline would get spammed up with idea-mongers who refuse to share anything without signing an NDA, and who equate a TechCrunch link with a guarantee long-term success.

JoshTriplett6• 15 years ago

So say "no" and hang up. :) Easy enough to add a FAQ making expectations clear.

bphogan• 15 years ago

If you can think of a way to bring this together with railsmentors.org, ping me. I'd love to see what we could do.

kindlyviking• 15 years ago

These guys are brave!

mdink• 15 years ago

Ok so how many prank calls have you gotten? Anyone mistakenly call thinking it was a phone sex number?? Rails does have a lot of connotations...

gsd• 15 years ago

haha awesome.

weehuy• 15 years ago

I'm not sure if it was intentional or not (to grab attention) but the blue text with drop shadow on that red background hurts my eyes.

_chap10• 15 years ago

Nope, suppose to be white.

I'm guessing you're browser is automatically creating a link to that phone number and using some default stylesheet. What browser are you seeing that?

GFischer2• 15 years ago

I see it as white, but the Skype plugin for Firefox changes phone numbers to highlight them.

I have it installed at home, will try it and then get back to you. Maybe some phones do that as well?.

dsifry• 15 years ago

Just used the service and had a great chat with Chap, one of the founders. There's something qualitatively different when you're talking to someone using voice - it makes it easier to articulate some of the bigger questions that aren't just syntax or "help me debug this" type of questions. Anyway, I think this is a great idea, and love that these guys are making it happen. Kudos.

rickdale• 15 years ago

I called, no hold time. Good stuff. Though I am an excellent holder.

jamesbritt3• 15 years ago

Has Rails become so complex that people need a hotline?

jamesbritt3• 15 years ago

Seriously, downvoters, I'm curious as to what motivated this. What's the need for a hotline? If there are problems, is a hotline really the best approach, or does it suggest that there's some larger underlying issue that makes it necessary?

People used to tout Rails as being stupid easy to use. I.e. http://www.amedias.org/img/java_vs_rails_books.jpg

So, just how complex has Rails become? What are the difficulties people run into?

dreyfiz• 15 years ago

It's not about the complexity of Rails, it's about helping a learner get comfortable at their own speed, outside of the usual channels of support. It's about creating something that will unexpectedly delight people. No one expects free phone-based tech support for an open-source project.

This is ridiculously awesome. I think your reply did not contribute much of use to the conversation, and I think that's why you got downvoted (wasn't me, I can't downvote).

mahmud• 15 years ago

do they offer quiche as well?

jambalaya• 15 years ago

Called and was walked through my problem with a working solution!

user7584• 15 years ago

What is a rail shot?

Rails Hotline (live phone help with RoR)

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