The problems I have with Wesnoth

[Gambit]

Is it a good idea to still be pushing svn, considering how apparently imminent the switch to git is?

SVN is still our official VCS. I don't know how far along the move to git is. I know it's definitely coming, I just haven't been that interested in when.

When I've looked at the IRC logs, I've mainly seen "xxx has joined/has quit" lines, sprinkled with a handful of actual comments.

This is definitely a problem that needs fixing. We accidentally killed #wesnoth off.

We had a handful of very active users in the channel who were off-topic 80% of the time (myself among them), but they started conversations and got the less active people coming and going and joining in. But it was decided to create #wesnoth-offtopic. Sadly only a few people joined that one and now we're left with two dead channels instead of one lively but sometimes off-topic one.

Unfortunately the only way to fix it is to keep trying to convince people to come and hang out and chat.

[PorkSol]

I don't agree with a lot of his criticisms but I do think that continuously adding good campaigns to mainline would be beneficial, one or two every year if possible. This would help maintain veteran interest and to make it clear to observers that the game is still "alive" and being actively updated.

Of course a lot of patches are being released, but the changes are sometimes not particularly noticeable at first glance, so a new patch may not bring people back to the game.

It may not be feasible due to the amount of work required to maintain a mainline campaign, but I do think that you will be more successful at drawing people back into the game if they see that there is a new mainline campaign for them to play.

[Telchin]

@ PorkSol - I also like new campaigns being added to mainline, but I believe that there is the problem with each new campaign making the download bigger. Some people might want to download BfW just for multiplayer, making the mainline campaigns a dead weight to them. At least that was the reasoning given in this thread

[artisticdude]

I would argue against adding too many mainline campaigns, since it would increase the size and, more importantly, the maintenance overhead of the core package.

At least as far as singleplayer is concerned, I've always thought of Wesnoth primarily as an engine, rather than strictly a game unto itself. The mainline campaigns serve to exemplify the canonical Wesnoth gameplay using the Wesnoth engine, and also showcase what is possible for UMC authors to create. In that sense, I don't think it would make sense to bloat the core Wesnoth package with too much content that could just as easily be quality UMC content instead.

Edit: Ninja'd.

[Elfarion]

This discussion seems to revolve around one core issue: the relationship between UMC and mainline content. Regarding this issue, I can only repeat what several posters already pointed out:

Do not overrate the importance of mainline.

@PorkSol: In the light of this, I'd say to show the activity and the continous work on the game checking the development forum and the UMC list in the wiki should suffice. (At least it does for me.)

[Pentarctagon]

The issue seems (to me at least) to be some people's perception that the upper-level decisions are closed off and inaccessible to them, however, they have not tried asking around or put in any effort themselves to get answers.

On the other side of things, there also seems to be a perception among some of the developers/staff that because of this (first two sentences) that this means that any major change to anything can be made without so much as a general heads up to everyone else. I'm thinking of the new drake graphics overhaul in particular as an example here; TSI at one point asked why nobody had said anything when the base frames were being done instead of after everything was committed, but its hard to say something if nobody ever tells you its even happening at all.

[Iris]

TSI at one point asked why nobody had said anything when the base frames were being done instead of after everything was committed, but its hard to say something if nobody ever tells you its even happening at all.

You mean like Neorice did ages ago?

If my memory serves, years later TSI’s task was mostly taking Neorice’s work, TCing, and animating it, posting his progress in the Art Contributions forum and accepting feedback during the process.

[Pentarctagon]

TSI at one point asked why nobody had said anything when the base frames were being done instead of after everything was committed, but its hard to say something if nobody ever tells you its even happening at all.

You mean like Neorice did ages ago?

If my memory serves, years later TSI’s task was mostly taking Neorice’s work, TCing, and animating it, posting his progress in the Art Contributions forum and accepting feedback during the process.

Is it really that surprising then, that a lot of people didn't know it was happening when the thread about it occurred and then died 2-3 years beforehand?

[Iris]

Is it really that surprising then, that a lot of people didn't know it was happening when the thread about it occurred and then died 2-3 years beforehand?

Yes, it’s still surprising considering that this thread in Art Contributions (not Art Development) is where the portrait and animation work took place back in the day.

[Pentarctagon]

Huh. Never saw that thread before . Still, I think it would be useful/helpful to reach out a little bit when big and/or really noticeable changes are going to be made. Like put a small announcement up for a week or two saying "Hey the drakes are getting a ton of new sprites and portraits, go here for the thread".

[pyrophorus]

This group is quite empty, and add some 10 guys to it don't seems to me an impossible task.

The unfeasible part of the task is determining who deserves the rank and who does not. We have a very limited amount of people on staff (all unpaid volunteers, etc., I already explained this) and we don’t have all the time and energy of the world to go around trying every single UMC that there is and determining for whom the rank is fair and for whom it is not.

So why not find some trusted users to do that ?
Maybe I made not clear enough I'm not trying to prove the Wesnoth team is doing bad. On the contrary, I think they are doing very well what they do (maintaining the software, technical support and so on). I'm only saying it could be beneficial to enlarge the team adding new roles (not new persons in existing roles). For instance people dedicated to manage addons and external contributions. And you will not have to dig very deep to find them. Some people are already doing it silently, as normal users. I can give names if you want.

And if you don't see the use of giving a Wesnoth cap to people who do a good job not in mainline, why do you use this orange account ? You certainly don't need it to do the administration job. It's communication.

You seem to have answered your question by yourself... If you have a problem with the particular color.

I don't know if you're kidding here or if you think I'm an idiot . Of course, I have no problem with the color. The rank in a forum board means much more than an administrative responsability. Take a troll, give him something useful to do and a rank, he will most probably stop trolling. Take someone who is doing something useful, give him a rank and he will work better and harder. Everyone needs more or less some feedback about one's doings, and ignorance is worst of all. It's a tool to dynamize the whole community.

The reason why I think the ranks here could be revised is they are exclusively related to mainline development. It's more or less saying to people who contribute in other ways: "Well, you children, can play kindly in the garden, but don't disturb serious people who are talking in.". Now, please read carefully. Here, I'm harsh to be clear, not to start a trial. The problem is not what you could have in mind (your own affair and privacy of course), but to know if you really want to convey such a feeling to Wesnoth users. Most probably not.

Friendly,

[Great_Mage_Atari]

My major complaint is basically the perverted use of power here. Wesnoth works like a hierarchical organization (refer to typical White House "power pyramid" [i.e. West Wing section]), and would work more to the advantage of others if it were more like a wheel-and-spokes form of government (JFK White House, in which everyone is treated as equals with only a few higher-ups who are given very limited power in terms of decision-making). The current power system consists of mods and admins (higher-ups who hold power to block users, mute, etc.), who, for the most part, show their feathers by butting into semi-intelligent conversations only to make a sarcastic and needless remark somewhere along the lines of something nobody else felt like saying, or saying "Hey, I really don't like you that much, so I'm just going to mute you for a day just because I can". Those who hold the most power here are basically used to troll those who really don't do anything in the first place in terms of contributing to conversations. If I say "Hey, this would look cool here", someone of higher stature would most likely say something along the lines of "Yeah, but that's [stupid, dull, *sarcastic remark*]". It just seems to me that if the system in which this forum is based off of is more user-based in its governing process then the whole "I'm gonna mute you" process would be taken off the hands of just one guy at a desk somewhere and left up to a vote on whether the user actually said something wrong.

Honestly that's just my opinion. I'm always a "power to the people" kind of guy, but then again, what do I know. I'm just a regular user.

[Dixie]

My opinion is that you have not seriously read with an open mind any of what was replied to you, Great_Mage_Atari, and just stuck to your original idea. If the forum was as you say, you would have been muted and/or ridiculed long ago. Which you were not, in case you hadn't notice.

I wrote and rewrote more, but I figured "meh, why bother". I think you have some sort of issue with authority, or someone in particular and that your vision is distorted. As as been pointed out, Wesnoth is do-ocracy: if you are not satisfied with the way something is, work on it to fix it. Or pay someone to do it, if you won't do it yourself. People working on Wesnoth are unpaid volunteers, they are entitled to at least some say on what they are going to work on. You won't even work on your own stuff, surely you will understand other people not excessively wanting to work on anybody's pet project which might not even fit the game.

[Pentarctagon]

My major complaint is basically the perverted use of power here. Wesnoth works like a hierarchical organization (refer to typical White House "power pyramid" [i.e. West Wing section]), and would work more to the advantage of others if it were more like a wheel-and-spokes form of government (JFK White House, in which everyone is treated as equals with only a few higher-ups who are given very limited power in terms of decision-making). The current power system consists of mods and admins (higher-ups who hold power to block users, mute, etc.), who, for the most part, show their feathers by butting into semi-intelligent conversations only to make a sarcastic and needless remark somewhere along the lines of something nobody else felt like saying, or saying "Hey, I really don't like you that much, so I'm just going to mute you for a day just because I can". Those who hold the most power here are basically used to troll those who really don't do anything in the first place in terms of contributing to conversations. If I say "Hey, this would look cool here", someone of higher stature would most likely say something along the lines of "Yeah, but that's [stupid, dull, *sarcastic remark*]". It just seems to me that if the system in which this forum is based off of is more user-based in its governing process then the whole "I'm gonna mute you" process would be taken off the hands of just one guy at a desk somewhere and left up to a vote on whether the user actually said something wrong.

Honestly that's just my opinion. I'm always a "power to the people" kind of guy, but then again, what do I know. I'm just a regular user.

Because holding a vote every single time someone complained about something or someone is a completely viable way to govern a forum...

[Great_Mage_Atari]

My opinion is that you have not seriously read with an open mind any of what was replied to you, Great_Mage_Atari, and just stuck to your original idea. If the forum was as you say, you would have been muted and/or ridiculed long ago. Which you were not, in case you hadn't notice.

Yeah I was muted a while ago. And ridiculed. Happened a few times, if memory serves me correctly. As for sticking to my original idea, of course that's the case. I tend to be biased on subjects. Small government and more power to the people is my stance on the subject. It's not that I don't have an open mind to others' philosophies. I just particularly care for a lot of the ideas put out there. There's nothing wrong with not agreeing with people. Voltaire once wrote "I disagree strongly with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." That's the basis of a democracy. Reading with an open mind does not mean that one has to accept what he has read.

Or pay someone to do it, if you won't do it yourself. People working on Wesnoth are unpaid volunteers, they are entitled to at least some say on what they are going to work on. You won't even work on your own stuff, surely you will understand other people not excessively wanting to work on anybody's pet project which might not even fit the game.

I'm not talking about game design. I'm talking about the forum. I don't think I said anything about campaign or game development in the last post...

My major complaint is basically the perverted use of power here. Wesnoth works like a hierarchical organization (refer to typical White House "power pyramid" [i.e. West Wing section]), and would work more to the advantage of others if it were more like a wheel-and-spokes form of government (JFK White House, in which everyone is treated as equals with only a few higher-ups who are given very limited power in terms of decision-making). The current power system consists of mods and admins (higher-ups who hold power to block users, mute, etc.), who, for the most part, show their feathers by butting into semi-intelligent conversations only to make a sarcastic and needless remark somewhere along the lines of something nobody else felt like saying, or saying "Hey, I really don't like you that much, so I'm just going to mute you for a day just because I can". Those who hold the most power here are basically used to troll those who really don't do anything in the first place in terms of contributing to conversations. If I say "Hey, this would look cool here", someone of higher stature would most likely say something along the lines of "Yeah, but that's [stupid, dull, *sarcastic remark*]". It just seems to me that if the system in which this forum is based off of is more user-based in its governing process then the whole "I'm gonna mute you" process would be taken off the hands of just one guy at a desk somewhere and left up to a vote on whether the user actually said something wrong.

Honestly that's just my opinion. I'm always a "power to the people" kind of guy, but then again, what do I know. I'm just a regular user.

Because holding a vote every single time someone complained about something or someone is a completely viable way to govern a forum...

Because having one person decide who get's to talk is...