Discovery of new & trending projects came in 2nd place behind the Detection and flagging of unmaintained projects in the recent community survey. In that regard today I'm happy to introduce trending projects.

The overall goal was to identify libraries that already have some sustained traction while still growing:

This feature is based on the recently added historical rubygem download data.

I'd love to describe the elaborate uses of machine learning techniques used to build the feature but it's simply based on recent Rubygem download rates and their growth, with the query tweaked until the results seemed consistent and reasonable to me. If you're interested in specifics or would like to suggest improvements please take a look at the query on GitHub, the feature's documentation page or the original pull request.

Today's release also marks the end of my time working on the Ruby Toolbox as my main project that I began in last December thanks to Ruby Together's ongoing funding of my work on this site. I will of course continue maintaining the site and adding improvements, but the recent activity spike ends today as I begin a new freelance project soon.

To close things properly I will follow up with a look back at the goals set based on December's community survey results within the next two weeks, but I'd already like to say a big thank you to Ruby Together for their support and sincerely hope that my recent work on the Ruby Toolbox has helped to make it more useful to you!

Best,
Christoph