State of the Community

[sli]

Long since overdue is a reality check on what's happening on these boards. The influx of those with an total lack of motivation is killing us, and taking everyone else with it. Too many hand-hold threads are posted each day and quite frankly it needs to come to an abrupt end. I've seen Kore grow and evolve from day one and no one was happier when the OpenKore project was finally created. Kore was in dire need of the overhaul.

But today I see the helpless, I see the frustration of the moderators and the developers, I see the demands of the uneducated users, and I see the project rotting from the inside out. As darkfate said, 99% of the users are just that: users. In that respect, 99% of this community is in no position to make demands, react angrily to help, or do anything besides ask and say "thank you." Most of you aren't fit to kiss our shoes, much less think we owe you anything.

In its infancy, Kore was a Godsend. It was respected, studied, and loved. The earliest well-known RO botting and hacking community, Apez, the cesspool that was, does not begin to approach the level of absolute helplessness that we deal with on a daily basis right here on these boards. While we do what we can, there is only so much we can do, and indeed there is only so much we should do. I'll admit, I have very high standards. I've been using Kore since it's release, I knew Kura personally from cRO, and would offer support to new Kore users. OpenKore has progressed further than Kura could have ever forseen for Kore, and yet the principles of absolute simplicity have yet to change. Despite that fact, more and more users expect us to become personal tour guides to their configuration, their mon_control, their autosell. How was I, with zero knowledge of Kore, able to pick it up and have it working within five minutes?

The answer is simple: I took my time, I skimmed over the control files, I experimented, I had fun. Apparently the concept of learning has become one of the past; the future is bleak, indeed. I learned without a wiki, without a manual, and without the help of an experienced team of users. None of use quite know how to explain what's wrong when a user can't discern the meaning of "XSTools.dll is not found," nor do I think we should.

One basic principle must be understood: botting is a privilege, not a right. None of the experienced Kore users reached their level of expertise by leeching the life out of a once thriving community. I'm sure it's safe to assume they used my same methods, the methods used by anyone truly desiring to reach a goal, not those who simply want OpenKore to work. That is what has been lost. There is no longer a desire to become a skilled botter, it has been replaced with an urgent need to just bot.

These boards have become a chore to me. I come hoping to find an interesting new post of thread in the development sections, instead I find The Helpless asking how to configure their bot to only attack one monster. Perhaps this moderating and development team should adapt a Jesus mentality: we help those who help themselves.

[Bibian]

I come on these boards daily and i usually end up trashing a few posts for being stupid or not according to the rules...

The level of ignorance in todays community is just wow... the old skool kore and skore users had almost nothing to work with 75% of the current code wasnt written.
Kore and sKore both were a bitch to develope in. But i ,like sli, taught myself. Todays community just thinks they can leech it from someone else.

I'v had serious thoughts about just making openkore private, just to root out the fucking idiots that piss me off on a daily basis, but meh....

[Retu]

J'ai décider de poster en français parce que je ne parle pas assez bien l'anglais. Tan pis pour ceux qui ne comprennent pas, libre à un bilingue de traduire un peu mon post.

En effet Openkore n'évolue plus (ou mal). En effet 99% des utilisateurs sont des leechers. Mais 95% des utilisateurs ne sont pas programmeurs... Comment voulez vous qu'ils règlent des problèmes comme le decodage des packets ? Comment voulez vous qu'ils s'occupent de reprogrammer l'IA de Openkore ?...

Openkore souffre en plus d'un peu de désorganisation et d'information (http://www.openkore.com/wiki/index.php/Developers : http://openkore.sourceforge.net/srcdoc/, la doc n'est même plus accessible à l'adresse indiquée). Il faudrait tenir une vraie page d'information pour connaitre les problèmes et l'état de Openkore (une page d'accueil avec toutes les informations nécessaire pour les guests) ou même utiliser des outils comme http://getsatisfaction.com ou Bugzilla qui facilitent les échanges et simplifient l'interface entre programmeurs/utilisateurs. Le problème majeure est que toute la communauté Openkore est sur un même support, mais cette communauté a des niveaux de compétence beaucoup trop différents (les messages de noob du genre "help me plz" se mêlent aux vrais conversation de reflexion sur le logiciel).

Enfin je pense aussi que Bibian est sur la bonne voie. Il ne faut pas rendre Openkore privé, mais être beaucoup plus dur et exigent sur les posts qui sont postés et ne pas hésiter à supprimer les messages inutiles (le forum devient un chat, plus un lieu d'échange d'informations pertinentes).

Voilà, pour moi Openkore a juste besoin d'organisation pour repousser ce "noobisme" qui arrive en masse :
-Utilisez des outils qui vous simplifie la vie (c'est fait pour ça, c'est inhumain de gérer de tel projet à 4 personnes avec phpBB...)
-Soyez très exigent sur les messages postés...
-...Mais tenez un maximum de personnes au courant grace à une page d'information (tout le monde poste le même message sur le même sujet...)

Sans prétention, quelqu'un qui veut aider cette communauté...

[[Lance]]

*agrees with sli*

A large number of people just take things for granted. When it's available and it's free, no matter how important it is, people just treat it like trash. But when the day finally comes and the thing is gone, it's too late regret.

This situation doesn't only happen in OpenKore - it's practically everywhere. To name a few communities I observed, Fusion (now gone), eAthena, L2J and RO private server communities. People don't read manuals, don't follow rules, don't give a damn on the needs of the community and most probably don't even use their brains. What they do is what parasites does - leech, leech and more leeching (and maybe drop toxic wastes back to the host).

What I see is good projects killed by the community themselves. It's sad, really.

[Cozzie]

Honestly Openkore has a lot of contradictory programming practises such as the lack of a GUI (which would fix 95% of noob questions which imo is worth the effort not to mention increases usability) and very unuser centric design/friendly (which at times is really ironic concerning this is a very user centric software), but good documentation can alleviate that, no one person is going to do it all themselves, little stuff such as reporting what options are not listed in the manual to listing out support status of private servers. Those are simple stuff that everyone can just contribute 5 minutes of their time. Pity no one responded to my request.

I understand people just want it "to work". But as sli said, I think there is a limit on how much it can be applied. OK works within an acceptable level for most servers, there are quite a few kinks but nothing major. OK isnt CLI(command line interface) linux but neither it is trying to be windows either. Totally dumb proofing software isnt good software engineering practices and consequently there is an element of learning involved but it isnt out of anyone's reach.

Not to mention is that many private servers have stepped up their anti botting methods, as a community it is not possible for us to stay still, it never was and never will be. I cant deny the community is largely ignorant teens and once OK become largely mature and workable, I dont think they'd care more but it can be a platform for learning and for the rest of you, who are aware, bear in mind this is in the end an opensource community, a small one at and that cant function without a close tie. This is not linux/open office w/e that you'd expect it to "just work". It isnt our ethos. Many devs dont play RO, they improve the software due to other interests be it cracking or programming and they need you.

Openkore is lagging behind RO's features, what was once the pinacle of efficiency in RO is now delegated to mere grinding tool. Let's revive this before it is too late.

[sli]

[Krai]

I'v had serious thoughts about just making openkore private, just to root out the fucking idiots that piss me off on a daily basis, but meh....

that would help a lot imo and make it harder for anti-bot programming

[Silence]

One of our problems is that we have a lot of people who do not have English as a main language so it hard for them to understand fully. I am not making excuses why they ask stupid questions but that could have an effect on the number of bad posts.

I still think we should put up a form for newbies to ask their dumb questions and help each other while the rest of the more experienced people can choose to go in there to help or not and completely avoid over trashing and develop more of a community instead being rude to them and turning them away.

I do have to say that you guys also should change the way you approach people because having a negative aptitude, calling people names or making fun of something they post or say does not build a better community and turns people away. This in essence can lower our chances to gain new members who have skills or time to help with the project.

[Kafka]

It's okay buddies. Kafka is here. I'll handle all your problems.

[isieo]

Reminds me of:
http://www.openkore.com/wiki/index.php/About_OpenKore