-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Am 03.02.2014 02:43, schrieb Ignacio R. Morelle: > 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.) >
You are of course right that it *would* be nice to have the information documented in the forums and the discussions happen there. The only problem I see with that is that many developers do not frequent the forums which, as far as I understand is because of at least one of the following reasons: 1) Forums are not what they like to use in general (for them IRC or even emails work better). 2) The forums appear to be too noisy. Meaning: Lots of (felt as useless) comments in own threads and by far too much information being posted all over the forums. Developers somehow feel obliged to read (or at least look at) "all threads" if they are around since otherwise they might get asked all the time "you were in the boards but did not reply to my thread!" which is also problematic. 3) Some developer (more than one) voiced the opinion that the atmosphere in the forums is bad making them just not go there. I don't know the exact reasons for this and what could be done to improve things. Still it might be possible to encourage developers to post in the "regulars only" developer section. Sounds like a good compromise to me between the issues involved in having some separate platform and the maintenance required for it. Still I think that the dev mailing list is the best place to gather some results and allow people to catch up. The benefit is that the traffic is low and only the "important stuff" is likely to appear. Yes, every developer should be subscribed to the list. Cheers, Nils Kneuper aka Ivanovic -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAlLvy00ACgkQfFda9thizwVT9gCeNPN/wN6veXq022donKEa+HFY nwcAn3MBOjDCHI51/lM82smueeAoba9E =xj2f -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Wesnoth-dev mailing list [email protected] https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/wesnoth-dev
