Is a personal Rust learning diary appropriate on this forum?

meta
1

Hello everyone!

I recently started a Rust learning diary on this forum, but I received a comment suggesting that a personal blog might be more appropriate.

That made me curious about what the community thinks.

I can imagine arguments on both sides.

Possible arguments against it:

Every time I update my diary, the topic moves back to the top of the forum. This could create unnecessary noise for people looking for technical questions and discussions.

Possible arguments in favor of it:

Sharing a beginner’s learning journey might be useful to other learners and could encourage interaction and connections within the community.

I’ve received some friendly replies to my diary, which I really appreciate. However, I understand that friendly responses don’t necessarily mean those people support continuing the diary on this forum. I don’t want to make that assumption.

Since I’m still new here, I’d genuinely like to understand the community’s perspective.

Do you think personal learning diaries are appropriate on this forum? I’d love to hear your opinions, whether positive or negative! :crab:

⸻

日本語訳

みなさん、こんにちは！

最近、このフォーラムでRustの学習日記を始めたのですが、個人ブログのほうが適しているのではないかという意見をいただきました。

そこで、コミュニティの皆さんがどう考えているのか気になりました。

私としては、賛成・反対の両方に理由があると考えています。

反対意見として考えられること

日記を更新するたびにトピックが上位に表示されるため、技術的な質問や議論を探している人にとって、不要なノイズになる可能性があります。

肯定意見として考えられること

初心者の学習過程を共有することは、ほかの学習者にとって役立つ可能性があり、コミュニティ内での交流やつながりを生むきっかけにもなります。

実際、私の日記には友好的な返信をいただいており、とても嬉しく思っています。しかし、友好的な返信があるからといって、その人たちがこのフォーラムでの日記の継続を支持しているとは限りません。そのように決めつけたくはありません。

私はまだこのフォーラムに来たばかりなので、コミュニティの皆さんの考え方を純粋に知りたいと思っています。

皆さんは、このフォーラムで個人的な学習日記を書くことについてどう思いますか？

肯定的な意見も否定的な意見も、ぜひ聞かせてください！:crab:

2

I cannot fit your use case in the rules(is it rules?)

3

Is keeping a learning diary generally frowned upon in this community?

4

I wouldn't mind this. A forum is after all a place for people to gather, whether it's for mutual help, collaboration, inspiration, feedback, or just to have fun. It is not my place to prescribe the forum's purpose, and the moderators really doesn't either.

Though you don't see it now, it was not so long ago that this place flourished with far more newbie questions. This was recently noted:

There were problems of these times—at least one user left this forum from being tired of answering—but the Latest Topics page being flooded by noise? That was not one of the problems back then. I'll assure you, you are not even close to causing such an effect.

I think posting your experiences on a forum topic would be fine as long as these experiences are at all related to Rust. I would only consider a personal blog if you're also interested in writing about other things in your life.

I'll end my post with an old saying: Be bold.

It probably doesn't make sense to directly translate my English writing into Japanese. Even so, I hope you didn't need a translator to tell that my post amounts to a "Yes". If you'd like to converse in Japanese, you can tell me either in reply or DM.

5

Thank you so much for your thoughtful reply! :smiling_face:

I also really appreciate your offer to communicate in Japanese. I’m glad you don’t have a negative view of my learning diary.

I’ll take your words, “Be bold,” to heart.

For now, I’ve decided to pause my diary until I’ve had some time to sort out my feelings. :crab::two_hearts:

6

I flagged your original post for review by the moderators because my understanding is that this forum is not the right place for what amounts to a personal blog.

Consider that every day when you update it, it gets bumped to the top of the forum; it basically becomes a sticky. Consider also if more people started doing the same thing with their own threads - it doesn't scale well.

I just felt that, technologically, this website is not the right medium for your diary.

7

You’re free to flag my post, but I believe that reporting should be reserved for cases where a user has actually done something wrong.

8

Well the "wrong" thing here, that I wanted to raise with the mods, is that this isn't the sort of forum where people keep personal diaries. It's also an English language forum, so I have to agree with the commenter in the other thread that having a learning diary, in Japanese, pinned to the top of the forum simply isn't what this forum is designed for.

None of this is to say you shouldn't keep a diary - do whatever you want to. It's very common for people to do what you're describing, but they tend to use dedicated blogging sites of which there are myriad options available. I'm sure that some people reading this thread would be very interested to follow your trials and tribulations.

9

There’s something that’s been bothering me, so I’d like to say it.

I don’t think it’s right for a forum to discourage other languages simply because English is the main language used here. I believe a forum should be welcoming to people who speak different languages.

Also, I use both Japanese and English in my posts.

That said, I really appreciate what you said about there being people who might be interested in following my learning journey. Thank you for that.

10

I don't have a reference for this at the moment, but if I remember correctly flags are not just for problematic posts, they're considered appropriate whenever we want to call moderators for something. And in this case your original question warrants their answer.

11

Thank you for sharing that.

My counterpoint for you to consider would be the following: a forum (or blog or whatever) is, by its nature, intended for public consumption. (If you want to keep a diary just for the sake of keeping a diary, then you could do it the old school way of writing it down in a private notebook).

Given the fact that this is an English language forum (I don't actually know what the forum rules are on different languages, but it is de facto English language), then who are you hoping to actually engage with, if you're communicating in a language that a vast majority of people here won't be able to understand? (presumably there's a handful of Japan-o-phones here who would be able to read the diary entries, but they would then also have to be the same users who would want to engage with your posts).

12

Yes, that is also my understanding of the flagging system.

13

The forum rules are silent on choice of language; that said, with the existence of decent machine translation options, I would prefer that someone expressed themselves clearly in their native language (giving me a fighting chance of working out what they mean via multiple machine translation services) than that they stuck to English even when they didn't know how to express themselves in that language.

Ideal for me is if someone who feels that their English is bad expresses themselves unclearly in English, and very clearly in their native language - then I've got their English (which might be better than they thought), and multiple machine translations to go on when I'm looking to understand what they're saying. And, of course, I might know enough of their native language for that to help, too.

That said, I'm not convinced that this is the best place to maintain a diary - somewhere like Dreamwidth, or one of the free blog hosting services would be a better place, with a single post linking people to the blog, and then relying on your readers picking up interesting posts and linking to them.

14

Sorry for the late reply.

I understand that everyone has been encouraging me to start a blog, and I think it’s a great suggestion. I’m also really happy that you’ve said it’s fine whether I write in Japanese, English, or any other language. I’m still in high school, so my English isn’t very good, but I’d like to use translation tools to join the discussion.

As for the blog, part of the reason I’m hesitant is that someone I know expressed a negative opinion about it. Also, I think a diary is different from a blog.

To be honest, I never really wanted to become a blogger in the first place. What I truly want is to interact with other Rustaceans here on the Rust Users Forum, share my learning experiences, and have discussions about Rust. That’s why I’d prefer to keep my diary here rather than move it to a separate blog.

Given my personality, I can’t ignore replies once I receive them (because I’d feel guilty if I did), so I reply to each person individually—which I think is another reason why topics tend to come up frequently.

15

Historically (I lived through this era), a "blog" was another name for a web log - where a log in this context is another name for a diary (it was originally used for the type of diary a ship's officer would keep, recording the day's events).

Having a diary (or log) of your Rust learning experience, with comments disabled and people asked to contact you via your thread here if they want to discuss an entry with you would be a good compromise.

Much of what you write will, inevitably, not be something that people feel the need to respond to, since it will be a clear and accurate representation of how you've had a good experience; but if you do miss something helpful, people can reply here and let you know, and the resulting discussion is likely to be of wider interest, since you are likely to be indicating places where Rust's documentation is not as clear as we want it to be.

16

I like seeing some of your diary post because they are positive and I'd like to read more posts that simply say "I like this feature of Rust". If you decide to move it to a blog, I suggest that once in a while you still post here when you have something to say that you feel particularly strongly about, positive or negative. This would be a compromise.

17

If you start your blog somewhere else, and you want to get people reading it, I might suggest submitting individual posts to This Week in Rust. My impression is that I often see users’ blog posts featured there, at a variety of expertise levels and in many languages

18

Post whatever you want, we have moderators from Europe.

19

Thank you for teaching me about the history of blogs, too! :smiling_face:

Actually, rather than simply keeping a diary, I’d like to use this forum as a place to exchange ideas and have discussions with other Rustaceans.

20

Your kind words mean a lot to me. Thank you so much! :smiling_face:

I don’t have any plans to start a blog, but I’d like to focus on exchanging ideas and having discussions with others here on the forum.