Community issues

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EternalHarvest
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Community issues

#1 Post by EternalHarvest »

(I'm posting here as I want more people to read this, but still in the private section.)

Data from the old forums was there, but yet it wasn't used to restore forums. Even now there are people who come back and their account doesn't exist.

Archive of the old forums is gone. There was the information I still may be in need of (for example, working code snippets), even not speaking of other users.

Forums are (or, at least, were for a long time) unusable and practically reject possible contributors/developers. Two months of posts being unapproved isn't a joke. When there're moderators around, it's slightly better, but still not perfect. Also many topics left unanswered or answered incorrectly or just with not related to original post answers.

Wiki is the same, and since forums are unusable no random people (excluding really dedicated to using openkore) would ever edit anything.

srcdoc (and some other documentation) from the old site isn't hosted at openkore.com anymore. I think it was hosted before.

No normal bugtracker or task managament or any real planning.

No useful documentation for developers to start with.

Maybe somebody (not as a really dedicated developer, but more like as community - and developer community - manager) would be interested in solving and preventing these and other possible issues. That includes forcing decisions needed on openkore administration too. Otherwise IMO openkore really riscs to fall apart even before RO does. Maybe it already did, as delay since the last "release" is quite big and we still have issues in trunk nobody works at (guess which ones, without normal bugtracker!) which kind of prevent us from releasing the next version.

Sadly, current "project leader" doesn't seem to be organizing anything here. He does many things behind the curtains and contributes a lot of useful stuff, but shouldn't project leader's work be something different? Well, maybe it's all behind the curtains, idk lol.

P.S. Rewrite of openkore (these branches which do exist for a while) isn't very possible with available manpower atm. And bugtracker etc issue arises there as well.

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kLabMouse
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Re: Community issues

#2 Post by kLabMouse »

OK. Well. I have a few Ideas here and There.

For time been, I only have last DB of Forums, not the scripts/files themself.

But Tracker is the nice thing, suggest one.
So We can finally Track Bug's and put MileStones.

Also, I can move the Host now, if isieo agree. But I do not have access to DNS record nor our Corporate Google account.

Also. I have too much of my own "payed" work, and spent too many time on it.
If Developers willing to change the Project Leader, I will not complain.

kali
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Re: Community issues

#3 Post by kali »

I'm not sure who is Project Leader now (I've been through many project leaders lol) but I'm sure whoever he is, he became Project Leader from the good of his heart.

Maybe there's just nobody who wants to step up. Do we have any volunteers?

Moving hosts is fine I think. We can contact VCL because he's the one who owns and pays for the domain. I'm sure he will cooperate.

Right now isieo and I are _very_ busy with our paid work :( I admit, it's been over a year since we last participated meaningfully here.
Got your topic trashed by a mod?

Trashing topics is one click, and moving a topic to its proper forum is a lot harder. You expend the least effort in deciding where to post, mods expend the least effort by trashing.

Have a nice day.

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kLabMouse
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Re: Community issues

#4 Post by kLabMouse »

kali wrote: Moving hosts is fine I think. We can contact VCL because he's the one who owns and pays for the domain. I'm sure he will cooperate.
I have a Host (It's the Server i'm Root on) at Hungary with Fast net and Wery well sandboxed environment. I just don't want the history to repeat itself as it was with Bibian's Hosting.
kali wrote: Right now isieo and I are _very_ busy with our paid work :( I admit, it's been over a year since we last participated meaningfully here.
Same Here. I try my best to get all the information needed to get OpenKore up and Running on various server.

Also. The whole thing, is Because of none (Except EternalHarvest) is willing/have knowlage to fix thus ennumerus bug's keeping Release way out of shedule.

EternalHarvest
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Re: Community issues

#5 Post by EternalHarvest »

kLabMouse wrote:Also. The whole thing, is Because of none (Except EternalHarvest) is willing/have knowlage to fix thus ennumerus bug's keeping Release way out of shedule.
Well, it's not my fault? Also, I probably be soon unavailable (until late 03.2011).

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kLabMouse
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Re: Community issues

#6 Post by kLabMouse »

EternalHarvest wrote:
kLabMouse wrote:Also. The whole thing, is Because of none (Except EternalHarvest) is willing/have knowlage to fix thus ennumerus bug's keeping Release way out of shedule.
Well, it's not my fault? Also, I probably be soon unavailable (until late 03.2011).
not yours. True.
Most of the Error are not "New". They were revealed because of other bugged code was hiding it.
Also, I did not seen any other Developer, who was trying to fix most of them.

DrKN
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Re: Community issues

#7 Post by DrKN »

I think making a organized bug list is necessary..
The Bug's sector is not clear to show what bugs are still there and wt bugs are eliminated..
I will be back on 9th jan and i will continue my buying shop subs :D

Technology
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Re: Community issues

#8 Post by Technology »

We can do a release right now.
Its impossible to have 0 bugs in kore or any other software project for that matter.
So bugs (except critical ones) aren't really an excuse for not releasing imo.

But why release at all?
Releases make no sense to me because RO servers change stuff beyond our control.
If we were to keep up with them, we'd need to do a release each time they change something.
Which made me realize that the users should just use trunk, which we try to keep as stable as possible.
(and do unstable changes in a branch, which we already do afaik)
But feel free to do a release anyways if you really want to though... I just don't see the point.

le wiki
The wiki has reached a certain point of maturity. We did a good job of limiting edits to registered accounts and blocking new user creation, because we were getting more harrasment than real contributions.

le bugtracker
A bugtracker is nice. However, we tried it and it didn't work. Only the devs were submitting bugs there.
What we need is something like rAthena uses. (which we kinda mimick)
Or wait a minute... What about github? You can host code, wiki and have a bugtracker there. (You get lots of cool stuff, like you can autoclose bug-tickets by including a hashtag in your commit there too, commenting on code, post-commit hooks (handy for irc bots), git...)

le userbase hell aka. forums
Most of them make an account and don't bother to remember/keep the credentials, like a trow away account.
They ask a badly formulated question (like only a screenshots of the console, omg), they do or don't get answered the question that was already answered in the manual and they leave. Repeat process. Its horrible, period.

On a totally different note, what about making kore send in bugreports? (like providing all usable information like servertype, unknown packet received, error, warning, etc)

New devs?
We can only hope that there are some sensible people out there that do use the manual and make good bug reports.
And I do believe that they exist, they just don't ask questions and figure out stuff themselves.
We need to lure them in and challenge them with something... (I know this, because I have been there, I pretty much lurked kore but then I believe it was ISIEO who challenged me to fix some xkore2 related thing)

le old forums etc
We lost them, but what can you do? I suppose learn from history and backup the stuff we have now and make sure it doesn't ever happen again.
Do we have a backup of everything now?
If not, I think this should be our priority right now.
Also, we need to limit our bus number (you know, we could all get hit by a bus or something in all of a sudden) and to do this, everyone that is a developer needs access to everything (hosting, passwords, etc you name it).
That should be priority number two.

(Hey that management class I took came in handy, I applied what I learned and only after I realized that I did apply it. Uhm, analyzing risks & opportunities that is...)

le developer documentation
Sadly, this is like always the problem with FOSS projects...

le planning
We have this.

But EternalHarvest, I share your concerns.
I understand kLab too, I myself haven't been able to dedicate actual time to kore as well.

btw, i made a blogpost.
One ST0 to rule them all? One PE viewer to find them!
One ST_kRO to bring them all and in the darkness bind them...

Mount Doom awaits us, fellowship of OpenKore!

EternalHarvest
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Re: Community issues

#9 Post by EternalHarvest »

Technology wrote:So bugs (except critical ones) aren't really an excuse for not releasing imo.
Well, there is a couple of such bugs. Like I already said here, "guess which ones, without normal bugtracker". Maybe you won't consider them as critical.
But why release at all?
Sourceforge offers to download the last release. Our main page too. Other sites (wikipedia etc) may and would refer to it as the "latest" version available (maybe until we really officially say "no more releases", but who knows).
If we were to keep up with them, we'd need to do a release each time they change something.
No problem with minor releases (would it be like, for example, 2.0.7.89 now? Or 2.1.dev89 maybe, any scheme would do) right from the trunk (if it's stable) or from the nonexisting stable branch (if development suddenly becomes very active). If there are active server supporters and servers update each week (but they seem to be more like some updates per year per server), why not? We may still encourage users to use trunk, but there would be:
1. The easy start for new people. They won't download the very outdated version, if they come to any page related to us (sourceforge etc).
2. The easy and obvious way to downgrade in case trunk breaks.
3. It won't look like the project is absolutely stalled from the outside.
4. It can get openkore more visibility. Any news is better than no news.
These aren't going to help developers or already really involved people, yeah.
On a totally different note, what about making kore send in bugreports? (like providing all usable information like servertype, unknown packet received, error, warning, etc)
I had an idea about that for a long time. There are some problems on that way, but it can be done if needed.

EternalHarvest
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Re: Community issues

#10 Post by EternalHarvest »

I can't dedicate much time either now, all I'm doing now is looking through new posts at forums (also the problem when not all new posts are displayed on related page still applies), throwing the topics in the pile of "needs to be checked/answered/fixed", where they stay.

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