A Nexuiz development blog

[PinkRobot]

I think you have to keep your audience in mind. If you want more involvement of the regular Nexuiz player then you need something along the lines Doku is proposing. Instead of everyone having to dig through the different sources of info you could have 2 or 3 people doing that, put that into a blog of some sort and have that as the general Nexuiz development/community info 'booth'.

Concerning changes in the engine, it does not even have to be a dev, just somebody who knows where to look and how to interpret what he reads.

So, in short, I think this is a good idea :}

[esteel]

Thanks to divVerent:
http://svn.icculus.org/nexuiz/trunk/cha ... iew=markup

A start..

[Dokujisan]

ok, raise your hands if you knew this little piece was in development:

http://www.leela.org.uk/nexuiz/?action= ... 000029.jpg

I only found out about it from hanging out in IRC.

This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. This could have been mentioned on a Nexuiz developer blog.

[ai]

ok, raise your hands if you knew this little piece was in development:

http://www.leela.org.uk/nexuiz/?action= ... 000029.jpg

I only found out about it from hanging out in IRC.

This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. This could have been mentioned on a Nexuiz developer blog.

Or the forum, either in 'Pics of what your doing' or 'vids of what your doing' or just start a new thread in the Nexuiz - Development, or Nexuiz - Editing categories. See how easy :p No extra work creating a blog and wasting time.

[Dokujisan]

ai, you've got to be intentionally ignoring my responses to your comments. You've mentioned this point half a dozen times on this thread and I've responded to it.

There is nothing easy about having to dig through a forum to stay updated on development stuff. It is quite obvious that using the forum to stay updated on development projects just doesn't work. The information specific to development needs to be summarized and funneled into one location. This is to improve communication. It would be a little bit of effort on the part of a handful of people in the community and the resulting increase in communication efficiency could be dramatic. No more sorting through 5 different sources to find information. No more having to scan IRC logs, or SVN logs, or Forum threads. Those systems are not designed as quick update mechanisms. That is what blogs are used for. Fast, efficient updates. Short summaries. Hand-selected content. To-the-point. No sorting needed.

I frequent the forums multiple times per day and I didn't know about this chat interface project until yesterday. Can you point out where it was mentioned on the forum? If it was posted, then I missed it.

Esteel didn't know about it. He thought that screenshot was only a mockup when it turns out that it's actually a functioning chat interface.

Did you catch that? I'm talking about esteel. You can't dismiss that. It's not like he's a misinformed casual nexer. He is the author of a lot of the sticky threads on the forum. He is one of the most informed people in the Nexuiz community on Nexuiz development, or just about anything Nexuiz related, and he didn't even know about this project.

[Dokujisan]

Developer Blog = funnel and filter

Funnel - Grabbing stuff from multiple sources and bringing it into one location

Filter - Translating into something more understandable, removing unnecessary information, summarizing, editing.

Those two functions are why it is an improvement over existing methods of getting updates on development activity.

[Dokujisan]

Here's an example of how this would work, with the example project that I just mentioned (that chat interface thing).


1) In IRC, a user named "under_wraps" posts a link and says "hey everybody, this is something that I'm working on and it has some bugs but it's close to being done." He explains some of the bugs, and also mentions that Div is working on the project with him. He provides a screenshot of the chat interface.

2) Someone (perhaps me, perhaps esteel, perhaps c.brutail...) collects this information from IRC and summarizes it into a short paragraph and submits a blog entry.

3) Various people in the community who want to stay updated on Nexuiz development (many of which don't hang out in IRC or scan IRC logs everyday) are see the blog entry appear on their RSS feed reader and go "wow, that's neat".

[ai]

Yes my dear Doku, I do read your comments. But you have to understand mine.
So first off.
You don't really need to dig through many threads in the forums and search them if they are sticky. Basically, making a sticky thread that would serve as a blog, lock it so no one can post in it (if they want to comment feel free to create a new discussion thread), and then just post a new post whenever you have something to say. Then it WILL be funnled, it WILL be in one location, no need to go to IRC or SVN or logs, see?

Second, no that guy who made that made that stuff on the screenshot didn't post it anywhere as far as I can recall, but so what? He probably wouldn't post it in a blog either, and I believe he posted in on IRC is so that he could get feedback realtime. I don't know, maybe he just felt like sharing that who knows. The point is, if he didn't post it anywhere, be it in a forum or blog, then of course no one would know about it. Don't give me flac for his doings.

And thirdly, you basically described the ordeal of what I've been saying before. I'm not particularly against this blog (voted for the 'Sounds useful but I doubt it could be maintained' option), but what I said is that if this blog would come to life it should not be maintained by the devs nor should the devs blog about these things (unless they of course wanted to). But the ones who should blog are the Nexuiz reporters, volunteers from the community who knows something about the stuff that the devs bring up i.e. translating the SVN logs to understandable and easily read English, explaining technical terms and possibly explaining some rcon commands if they are new and whatnot. Stuff like that.

And basically, the third statement I do (above) is what you practically have just explained how this blog would work. So, what's the argument? Anyway, possible name for the blog and the Nexuiz reporters are 'Nexuiz Frontier'

[Dokujisan]

You don't really need to dig through many threads in the forums and search them if they are sticky. Basically, making a sticky thread that would serve as a blog, lock it so no one can post in it (if they want to comment feel free to create a new discussion thread), and then just post a new post whenever you have something to say. Then it WILL be funnled, it WILL be in one location, no need to go to IRC or SVN or logs, see?

You're talking about having one sticky thread instead of having a blog?
What would be the point of that? It would then just be a less-functional replacement for a blog but with the same amount of effort needed to maintain it. Why not just have a blog? Forums are for discussion. Blogs are for updates.

Second, no that guy who made that made that stuff on the screenshot didn't post it anywhere as far as I can recall

Case in point. This one slipped past you, me and esteel.

http://www.forums.alientrap.local/viewtopic.php?t=3415

but so what? He probably wouldn't post it in a blog either

He wouldn't need to.

Don't give me flac for his doings.

I'm not giving you flac for his doings. I'm giving you flac for ignoring obvious flaws in the current communication process and shooting down an idea before fully understanding what is being proposed. I've always thought this community has a bad habit of shooting down ideas very quickly instead of trying to look for potential in new ideas and helping to develop them. This is the biggest difference that I see between the alientrap forum and the nexuiz ninjaz forum.

I'm not particularly against this blog

You could have fooled me.

You've been pointing out reasons why you think the blog is a wasted effort throughout this thread, and why it is beneficial to have half a dozen places to gather information instead of one.

[Dokujisan]

You know another great feature about blogs?

Keyword tags.

So if I wanted to find all of the CSQC projects, I could click on that tag within the tag cloud to see the entries tagged with "CSQC".