On Sunday 02 February 2014 16:08:54 Nils Kneuper wrote:
> People agreed that it would make sense to e.g. have some kind of "devblog".
I feel like this overlaps a lot with the "Culture of discussion" thread.
If developers wanted to promote and discuss their changes with the userbase,
the forums (and in particular one forum section [1]) have existed for _years_
to serve that purpose. There are some people who have made use of this option
[2] [3] [4] [5], but it's not the norm. Not nowadays, anyway.
1: http://r.wesnoth.org/f2
2: http://r.wesnoth.org/t39430
3: http://r.wesnoth.org/t38748
4: http://r.wesnoth.org/t39570
5: http://r.wesnoth.org/t39840
Having developers post about _development_ in the forums aids a lot in both
showing that activity _is_ taking place (since not everyone uses IRC or
mailing lists in the 2010s) and allowing _feedback_ to take place in both
directions in a more relaxed environment than the bug tracker.
Incidentally, most [6] of these post-FOSDEM discussion threads are a prime
example of choosing the wrong communication channel for important subjects.
How many users read the *developers* *mailing* list? Are *all* developers
even subscribed to this mailing list? What about prospective contributors? And
which is ultimately more visible from www.wesnoth.org: the forums board, or
the mailing list? There must be something wrong with the antiquated ML
approach if every single thread I post here has barely any activity or
visibility, regardless of its importance. Furthermore, there is at least one
existing, _recent_ case of a developer making an extremely significant
decision on their own because their attempt at starting a mailing list
discussion was met with virtually unanimous silence.
6: Not all. The CoD thread, the asheviere thread, and this one are better
suited for the developers' ML for obvious reasons.
Similarly, over the past years there have been severe communication issues
with regard to GSoC, and this has not gone unnoticed by the community [7].
7: http://r.wesnoth.org/t38889
At least in previous occasions there were organization acceptance
announcements in the front page (not the most visible location for _existing_
users, I should say), but last year there wasn't even that. Looking at how
other projects deal with GSoC, they are generally more open with regard to
GSoC events and results and encourage students to interact with the userbase
through blog posts and such, providing progress reports and talking about
existing or future design decisions. The Battle for Wesnoth Project may not be
a purely technical project like a desktop environment framework or an
operating system, but the aspect still exists and is extremely relevant for
other members of our heterogeneous development team, the WML and Lua content
creators in our user community, innovative artists exploring the limits of the
game engine, prospective mainline contributors, and enthusiasts in general.
Right now we are in a position where many crucial areas of mainline
development are stagnating due to various reasons, and one of them is that
there isn't much interest from the userbase in contributing to Wesnoth. The
areas in which we need the most help are barely publicized (not unlike those
that are being actively worked on, though), and for most forumers it just so
happens that some random user will suddenly gain a red username and Developer
rank once in a blue moon, without an explanation at all. I have begun an
effort to alleviate this issue by publicizing new developers [8] and
unaffiliated contributors [9] in release announcements (which I also started
handling in order to make them more enticing and less opaque to the
community), but what we need the most in this regard is clean and unified
*documentation*, rather than pieces and scraps scattered across the wiki that
are not directly reachable from the front page or navigation bar _in one
click_.
8: http://r.wesnoth.org/t39622
9: http://r.wesnoth.org/t39850
(On a related note, having more active contributors always paves the road for
expanding the project's trusted circle and getting more Wesnoth.org staff
members, which is something that may become an issue if any of the four people
with administrative access to baldras get hit by a bus, given that none of
us seem particularly active at once -- yes, this includes me.)
Thus, I think that aside from starting a "devblog" (using what platform?) we
should look into making better use of the tools we already have: the front
page (casual observers!), the wiki (prospective/current contributors and
content creators!), and the forums (everyone).
(On the same line of thought of the devblog, some months ago I thought about
starting a series of informal interviews with members of our development team
and posting them in the forums to raise awareness amongst players of the
_humans_ who invest so many hours of their spare time to instill life into
Wesnoth, and the technical aspects they focus on. Of course, that hasn't gone
anywhere past the planning phase yet.)
--
Regards
Ignacio R. Morelle <shadowm>
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