SRL Archive - Senior News and General

I was re-reading a thread.. and there's a couple thoughts that came crossing through my mind.

Effort that goes unnoticed, unappreciated or just simply not put to use, is a waste of effort.

And so the questions that come to my mind are:
- How can we make it more noticeable?
- Can we do something about the appreciation?
- How can we put it to use?

Development that is put to waste is a problem that has come across my mind before.

For this I have found a possible answer with MSI; Just quickly:
At some point in the somewhat near future, it will be possible to incorporate and test any development into MSI, thanks to git's branching and {$DEFINE}s.

But I would also like to address another point:
Projects. Projects such as The Best Autoer competition. Projects such as the Graphics competition and so on. Any project that brings life to the community. These usually die quite fast. They're irregular.

Why this point? Because running this sort of thing is something that takes effort, time, energy and the good of it is undervalued, therefore such things going unnoticed.

For the good to be seen these 'things' would have to happen more often.

And so we have the same questions left:
- How can we make it more noticeable?
- Can we do something about the appreciation?
- How can we put it to use?

And one point that I would like to make.. anyone who stands up to run any sort of project has my support.. I'll argue it far, as I'd want to make sure that it'll be a project with the capability of not dieing, and therefore many things need to be thoroughly thought out.

But my PM box is always open, (usually so would be my msn, but apparently not so much during holidays), and yeah.. I'd think it to be a good initiative if I received PMs by someone trying to take SRL further.

With all this said, if anyone has any answers to the three questions, or would like to point out something more & etc .. :)

~RM

I've noticed this problem too, quite a long time ago. I think we all have.
It's good someone finally brought this up for discussion.

I think it's inactivity of a lot of staff and developers is partially to blame; compared to before, a lot fewer SRL devs, mods and admins are to be seen posting in the forums. These are the same people that used to spot talents and reward these. As an example, As far as I know, I haven't ever been nominated to a cup, yet I have four. Furthermore, I would most likely not have have become a developer as early as I did if it wasn't for Sum and Niels – two great admins who no longer are active, very sadly.

Alongside with the general drop of activity, fewer cups are being rewarded. I try to nominate people I see deserving or fit for cups, using that ability as my only true possibility to award somebody in a significant manner – and on occasions, there might even be a majority of people who disagree with me regarding the awarding of the cup, but I've also stumbled upon members who haven't received the cup(s) they so very, very obviously deserved, and no other form of praise either. In such situations I find myself thinking back about a year ago, and realized that such a thing could never happen back then. There was always someone to reward, someone that would award, and generally damn much productivity in general – put in even greater contrast when compared to the productivity and development status nowadays.

Another thing which I came to notice just today, is the again generally increased standards for definitions of 'good' scripts and bad, 'newbie' and 'pro' techniques, etcetera. Think about it; the only ones of the new registrees that actually stick with SRL, are the ones with former programming experience, or people having an interest in learning about this topic previously to actually finding out about Villavu. If today's standards and requirements had been enforced during my period of registration, I would never have been a developer today.

The highly increased standards are natural due to the fact that active people grow their scripting knowledge during their stay at Villavu, and that they judge others by the standards they know themselves – it's comparable to an economy influx, if that would be correct.


Summary would be that we need to lower membership standards and have more active staff that communicates with the entire community, not only the higher-ranked members. We need talent to be spotted and rewarded in any ways possible and appropriate, and we need more activity gained from new members.

I'm not sure if I'm mentioning any concrete examples here, but I am indeed trying. There are for instance things that need to be done to create more userfriendliness – for instance, what about a collaborative effort to write the ultimate beginner's scripting tutorial? (Hey, maybe it even could replace the SCAR 3.12 tutorial that is listed as the main/best tutorial as referred to in this thread by the oh-so-active Starblaster. We need to reorganize tutorials and outright delete older and outdated works. (Ofcourse mailing the tutorial to the author first; that way there's not even any need for archiving!) We need to step up and finally part from SCAR, and many other things. We need to make a stand.

This is where I make my stand.
This is where we make our stand.
URA!
Link is unrelated, but oh-so-fitting..

Yeah, lots of good code goes to waste, it's sad and shouldn't happen. I can see it bringing down the enthusiasm of scripting when some new JR member proudly posts their first good code, and no-one will ever use it.
But it ain't easy thing to fix. Hopefully we will improve in that in the future.

From: EvilChicken!
I've noticed this problem too, quite a long time ago. I think we all have.
It's good someone finally brought this up for discussion.

I think it's inactivity of a lot of staff and developers is partially to blame; compared to before, a lot fewer SRL devs, mods and admins are to be seen posting in the forums. These are the same people that used to spot talents and reward these. As an example, As far as I know, I haven't ever been nominated to a cup, yet I have four. Furthermore, I would most likely not have have become a developer as early as I did if it wasn't for Sum and Niels – two great admins who no longer are active, very sadly.

Alongside with the general drop of activity, fewer cups are being rewarded. I try to nominate people I see deserving or fit for cups, using that ability as my only true possibility to award somebody in a significant manner – and on occasions, there might even be a majority of people who disagree with me regarding the awarding of the cup, but I've also stumbled upon members who haven't received the cup(s) they so very, very obviously deserved, and no other form of praise either. In such situations I find myself thinking back about a year ago, and realized that such a thing could never happen back then. There was always someone to reward, someone that would award, and generally damn much productivity in general – put in even greater contrast when compared to the productivity and development status nowadays.

Another thing which I came to notice just today, is the again generally increased standards for definitions of 'good' scripts and bad, 'newbie' and 'pro' techniques, etcetera. Think about it; the only ones of the new registrees that actually stick with SRL, are the ones with former programming experience, or people having an interest in learning about this topic previously to actually finding out about Villavu. If today's standards and requirements had been enforced during my period of registration, I would never have been a developer today.

The highly increased standards are natural due to the fact that active people grow their scripting knowledge during their stay at Villavu, and that they judge others by the standards they know themselves – it's comparable to an economy influx, if that would be correct.


Summary would be that we need to lower membership standards and have more active staff that communicates with the entire community, not only the higher-ranked members. We need talent to be spotted and rewarded in any ways possible and appropriate, and we need more activity gained from new members.

I'm not sure if I'm mentioning any concrete examples here, but I am indeed trying. There are for instance things that need to be done to create more userfriendliness – for instance, what about a collaborative effort to write the ultimate beginner's scripting tutorial? (Hey, maybe it even could replace the SCAR 3.12 tutorial that is listed as the main/best tutorial as referred to in this thread by the oh-so-active Starblaster. We need to reorganize tutorials and outright delete older and outdated works. (Ofcourse mailing the tutorial to the author first; that way there's not even any need for archiving!) We need to step up and finally part from SCAR, and many other things. We need to make a stand.

This is where I make my stand.
This is where we make our stand.
URA!
Link is unrelated, but oh-so-fitting..

I don't think there's anything there I don't agree with. Well said.

For the beginner guide you mentioned… I've been wanted to update mine for Simba plus expand everything with the new things I've learned. Maybe it's time I start doing that. Afterall, I'd hate for that guide to be one of the ones that needs deleting. :)

i think its the fault of the people. Compotitions and forum activities die because people are too lazy to do them. There's really not much you can do about that. A new cup would not personally interest me to participate if i had not already planned on participating beforehand. Even some rs related reward would not interest me, though i suspect that other people would disagree with me there. I see the problem being in that once you offer a reward for one thing, people expect a reward for everything and it will get out of hand. I dont really think there's much to be done for such things. You just try and try again until something works because eventually people will lose interest with the reward that they get.

In an ideal world people would participate all the time and there would be no problems, but most people are selfish and looking for something that will benefit them before they contribute to something.

From: Coh3n
I don't think there's anything there I don't agree with. Well said.

I second that.

Keep in mind that contributions will always fall through the cracks, no matter what. Efforts from everyone from registered users to admins will be over and under valued by those of higher ranks, lower ranks, and themselves, for long or short periods of time. Though it will never be perfect, we can continue to improve on this by realizing the power in large numbers.

A lot of people doing a little each is better than a few people doing a lot each. Everyone should help make it easier for others to help. Easier to move up the ranks, to learn, to contribute, to be noticed. There are videos floating around on youtube about the linux kernel development workflow which show how a staggering amount of development from a large group of people can produce stable code (git plays a part in this btw).


As Dan said, don't rely on ranks/titles/cups to incite contributions. People are either going to help or not (and if they are helping just to get something then they probably aren't reliable anyway). The more important thing is making sure the good stuff gets used (whether in a official capacity or by just the people that want it).

Scripting competitions are great, but I think 10 peoples functions/snippets being recognized can go further than 1 script. Bite sized pieces of contributions and appreciations have a bigger reach, but require more infrastructure. Tree type set ups work well for this, but they also need to accommodate communication across a level and skipping a level, as to not be bottle necked by a dependency on the activity of an individual (which you can't do in a community project).

You could give people the opportunity to become code/contribution reviewers or something (not just Devs/Seniors, but also Members and Juniors). People would still post stuff to get tips from everyone, but also get in contact with reviewers (which could be on a sticky with their contact info and maybe areas of expertise), who would then go to other reviewers until it gets to someone with commit access or cup/title granting access.

Experienced scripters can make it dead simple for new scripters to make something useful. I'm not just talking about grabbing colors/coords/IDs and DDTM/BlackList databases, but actual working scripts that they can look at as an accomplishment (of course with a lot of code from others, but this is about activity, not member applications (unless the bar is lowered to allow this)). They won't get a scripters cup from this, but if people are using the script with the same a confidence as a script by a dev, they will feel great and will go on to make scripts with more of their own code.

Across all the ranks, some people have a lot a time and some have hardly any. Those with more time could create ways for people with less time to make effective contributions. However, if that is over done, it would be less efficient than if the people with more time focused on making more contributions to make up for the people with less time. So maybe don't count on the people with hardly any time, but certainly make it easier for people with some time to contribute.

Another angle to the ultimate tutorial thing is that there could be a group of SRL Members that can compile a list of tutorials to be archived. The same group or another one could make a list of subjects that need to be expanded upon. This way there could be a thread or wiki page with an index of current tutorials, perhaps ordered/organized in a way that makes it easier for new scripters to learn (and maybe another one for new script users). Some people know what they want to learn and need to be pointed to the best way to learn it, and some people need to know what they need to learn to be able to do something.

This thread is generating a lot of good feedback… I don't have time to properly reply just yet, but what would you guys think of actually giving the cups some use?

a simple one I see is useful poster or promising newcomer having access to some SRL Member forums. Rewarding the person who made good contributions and granting them more "space to grow up".

Another I would think of, is SRL Tester (JM) getting access to SRL Member scripts. This could go a long way.

~RM

From: Rasta Magician
This thread is generating a lot of good feedback… I don't have time to properly reply just yet, but what would you guys think of actually giving the cups some use?

a simple one I see is useful poster or promising newcomer having access to some SRL Member forums. Rewarding the person who made good contributions and granting them more "space to grow up".

Another I would think of, is SRL Tester (JM) getting access to SRL Member scripts. This could go a long way.

~RM

I like the idea, but then we must be careful as to who we award these cups to. I'm not saying we've done a bad job with this, just stating that a lot of people don't deserve what they have, while others deserve more, which I guess is the point of this thread.

like i said before and what boreas expanded on. Cups aren't a reliable way to get people to contribute, and if that is what's getting them to contribute then you'll probably end up not finding them reliable. I suppose its a little something nice for those that are already doing it anyway; like maybe by a donator type thing, where only the donators are supposed to know what, if any, benefits they receive so that people aren't doing things just for the benefits of it.

i agree with Boreas everywhere else too. Encouraging new people/people with less time, to contribute by things like the barebones script/comprehensive tutorials ( or useful function competitions more on the side of those with little time) or whatever would probably generate a lot more content than simply rewarding the few people that do it for it (because you'll ideally have a lot of people doing little rather than the other way around). Then with that sense of accomplishment for having created something, those new people/disinterested people might start to become those really active people. Its because of the large jump from knowing nothing to being required to do everything yourself to make a script that your active contributors are so few. The easier it is to start and more people are encouraged to do even minor things to help, the easier it will become to gain more people.