Experiment with dev blog

[Simbax]

Log from Shoutbox:

» Simbax:
I'm wondering... I have a question for all of you (not TT members), if there would be a development blog, what would you like to read there except of announcements of new releases? What would you find interesting and making the dev blog worth following?
04 Mar 09:58
» True Destroyer:
information on current tasks like each month, future update plans, if there's nothing to post a brief description of ideas and encountered problems witha screen or two. Also I didn't notice the facebook profile as I was sure it was not for the refreshed Gold Edition (by just looking at the miniature). Also it doesnt show up as suggestion when searched on fb for me, which is weird i guess?
04 Mar 10:07
» True Destroyer:
nvm it shows just below 3 other random "colobot" fan pages
04 Mar 10:08
» tomaszkax86:
A dev blog would be a cool idea, you could put there what you implemented and how.
04 Mar 13:36
» tomaszkax86:
There's a development blog for Dwarf Fortress, people can follow features implemented and changed so far, but also problems the developer came across.
04 Mar 13:37
» Simbax:
Yeah, many things we tried to do were supposed to be cool... I would like to see a dev blog for Colobot too, however I'm afraid it might be dead before it even begins.
04 Mar 14:08
» Simbax:
I have an idea. Give every TerranovaTeam member a permission to add blog posts on the main page (if someone doesn't have them already) and let's just let the developers write anything they want once in a while. This way we won't have to create a new website just for a blog and also we will see if the idea would take off.
04 Mar 14:13
» Simbax:
And I still can't stand that there is no comment section under news! Am I seriously the only one who hates that?
04 Mar 14:16
» tomaszkax86:
If you give me permission to add blog posts, I can write about what I'm doing and what needs to be done. Just... not right now cause I'm somewhat busy.
04 Mar 14:19
» tomaszkax86:
Next week I should have enough free time to work on graphics
04 Mar 14:19
» Simbax:
Oh, and to encourage more people to this initiative -- I think it's ok to not care about the chosen language in this kind of posts, so feel free to write in Polish if you want and don't worry about translations.
04 Mar 14:19
» tomaszkax86:
I'm fine with English
04 Mar 14:20
» Simbax:
@tomaszkax86 I'm fine too, but I'm pretty sure that some of us would be more comfortable if they could write in Polish. If they don't feel like they want to expose their "bad English" on the main page, then why not let them just write in Polish. These posts will be a little personal any way, everyone has got his own writing style.
04 Mar 14:23
» Simbax:
We'll surely need to add an information about who posted each post and add some tags for that, to distinguish between developer's posts and official announcements.
04 Mar 14:24

To summarise:

• Development blog seems to be something that some people would like to see (I encourage to state your own opinion here).
  
• We should test if this idea would work. I propose using our main page. Give every member of TerranovaTeam the permission to post and then we (TT) shall write whatever, however, whenever we want (of course connected with the Colobot franchise). Good idea or not?
  
• The dev blog would be in real many dev blogs connected by one project. No redaction, no translations (unless someone wants to), no force, no cohesion. If developer wants to write about something, he just writes it and publish it. It doesn't have to be in English.
  
• There should be a separate tags/categories for official news and blog posts and the author's name should be listed below the post's content along with the date of publication and so on.
  

Note from me: who wants feedback from people? Everyone wants feedback from people! Give a life to our empty and dead main page by adding the comment section! Please, say that I'm not the only one who wants that :/

[tomaszkax86]

I like this idea. There's a lot to talk about regarding things we add or change. Official releases are rare, so when someone visits our website and sees that nothing changed, they might think that project is dead or something. There are many commits that change how our game works, so people should know about it. We can write about important commits we recently made. Problems we encounter. Features that wait to be completed. We should totally do it.

[RaptorParkowsky]

I want that. I want my feed-back about models designing and remaking. I thought that GitHub or the ICC forum would be a good place for this but I was wrong. Of course I'm slow and not very talented with preparing models so new posts would be appearing pretty rare, but I think it would be a perfect place to keep the people and other TerranovaTeam members (including me itself too) up to date with all that CGI things I'm going to do in this project.

Renders and screenshots I'll be probably upload at my Imgur so our server shouldn't be rather overloaded with all this stuff I think. But yeah, comments section is the first thing we need.

[tomangelo]

Good idea. It should look better than one release note once per few months. Also it might be good motivation to work more.

[Simbax]

Also it might be good motivation to work more.

Only if there were visible reactions. Comment section is a must in this case. I'd even introduce a like/+1 system.

[krzys_h]

I like this idea. Pretty much every game in active development I can think of has a dev blog. My only concern is that it will probably die really soon, just like our Facebook page currently, which I actually attempted to make a bit like a dev blog.

the author's name should be listed below the post's content along with the date of publication

Blame @Emxx52 for removing it in the first place when he started messing with the main page without telling anyone.

About comments: Those were not really needed for the old style of using the main page, as it was very rarely updated. For a dev blog, we would definetly need some way of commenting. I would really like to see some kind of integration with the forum for that. This would save us the trouble of fighting with spam from anonymous bot accounts, and simplify adding comments for frequent visitors. I'm not sure how that would work yet. I've seen others do a forum thread for each blog entry, but that looks like an overkill for the amount of activity we'll probably be having.

[Simbax]

My only concern is that it will probably die really soon

That is a reason why we should use the main page. If the dev posts die, there is no harm, it's a win-win situation.

[krzys_h]

Renders and screenshots I'll be probably upload at my Imgur so our server shouldn't be rather overloaded with all this stuff I think.

It's better to keep them on our server. It's not currently struggling in any way. Not only does that slightly decrease page loading time (less DNS requests, less connections to be made, etc) but we also have our own guarantined backups in anything goes wrong. If imgur ever gets shut down, we would lose some content from our page. I know this is unlikely, but better be safe than sorry.

[Oblivionburn]

Well, from a user stand-point, I'm definitely in favor of being able to read about progress/struggles/ideas! I'd also agree that the main page would be the ideal location for it, as it would minimize the amount of digging any of us would have to do in order to reach that information.

+1 for comments!

p.s. Facebook in general has been kinda dying off over the last couple years, so no surprise if your facebook page hasn't been receiving much feedback.

[Simbax]

The idea seems to be a success, so I think we can start this little "project".

I ask members of TerranovaTeam who wish to have writing permission on the main page to contact one of the admins in order to create the necessary account.

[Emxx52]

he started messing with the main page without telling anyone

I was going to write this answer earlier, but it didn't matter that much. Don't try to blame me for doing things without consulting them with anyone cuz I obviously did consult my works with at least one of the other administrators. Besides, it's not my fault that you don't even bother to check our Trello page at least once a month. Let's not argue about that too much though, it doesn't really matter, but we should use Trello more often.

The development blog is a really nice idea, I may want to write something there one day but I'm not always that enthusiastic. So, what about the comments plugin, guess that's kinda necessary now that we started to run a blog.

[krzys_h]

Don't try to blame me for doing things without consulting them with anyone cuz I obviously did consult my works with at least one of the other administrators.

Don't be like @RaptorParkowsky . We are a community and changes like this have to be consulted with the whole community, or at least ALL of the administrators, not just one randomly chosen person.

Besides, it's not my fault that you don't even bother to check our Trello page at least once a month. Let's not argue about that too much though, it doesn't really matter, but we should use Trello more often.

I'm not sure how many times I said that already, but I'll say it once more: Trello never officialy exited the testing phase, so if you are doing anything else than organizing things already discussed somewhere else, you need to announce that fact in other communication channels somehow.

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So, what about the comments plugin, guess that's kinda necessary now that we started to run a blog.

We already decided that it's needed. The question now is: how?

• Use Disqus. I'm personally not keen on it, because it's hosted on an external service.
  
• Use Wordpress comment system, anonymous comments - anybody can add a comment without needing an account. This may cause some issues with spam.
  
• Use Wordpress comment system, use forum accounts for authorization. This option requires most work to implement, but should prevent any spam (our current forum security is good enough that we are not getting any)
  
• Use the forum - every blog post gets it's own forum thread, possibly displayed below the post. If we want it to be automated, this will probably a bit more work than the option above. This is a bit of an overkill for the amount of activity we'll probably be getting though.
  

[Simbax]

I've added a poll about the comment system. It will last 7 days. I hope it won't be 50/50 as usually.

[Emxx52]

Don't be like @RaptorParkowsky . We are a community and changes like this have to be consulted with the whole community, or at least ALL of the administrators, not just one randomly chosen person.

I'm not. The major difference is that Raptor didn't notify anyone. I am following the rules we established a long time ago, and our own 'rule-of-two-admins' has always been one of the most important rules here. I don't see a problem with that. Of course, I can see your point here, but it's just a subjective matter of deciding how big the change was, don't you agree? In case of the main page the changes made were not that huge, but nonetheless I asked someone to approve them. How can one even compare those situations.

We already decided that it's needed. The question now is: how?

That's why I'm asking what about the plugin. You know, if it weren't for these new posts this thread would probably just remain dead.

Trello never officialy exited the testing phase, so if you are doing anything else than organizing things already discussed somewhere else, you need to announce that fact in other communication channels somehow.

Is that a fact? I remember that we used to discuss some important things on Trello back in the day... Guess every decision we made there should be reverted - after all, it's just a tool that have never exited the testing phase. Interesting.
So, when is this... 'testing phase' supposed to end? It is going to end one day after all these years I presume...?

[krzys_h]

I am following the rules we established a long time ago, and our own 'rule-of-two-admins' has always been one of the most important rules here.

But you are not following the rule that every decision has to be documented on the forum (I know, I'm sometimes not following this one either) and that every decision has to be made on public channels and not in private messages.

Of course, I can see your point here, but it's just a subjective matter of deciding how big the change was, don't you agree? In case of the main page the changes made were not that huge, but nonetheless I asked someone to approve them. How can one even compare those situations.

I feel like changing the whole design of the main page from rounded to edgy is quite a big change, especially that I remember there was a rather big and unfinished discussion about that.

Trello never officialy exited the testing phase, so if you are doing anything else than organizing things already discussed somewhere else, you need to announce that fact in other communication channels somehow.

Is that a fact? I remember that we used to discuss some important things on Trello back in the day... Guess every decision we made there should be reverted - after all, it's just a tool that have never exited the testing phase. Interesting.

The only official mention of Trello on the forum is in this Polish thread - https://colobot.info/forum/showthread.php?tid=435. And as you can clearly read:

(Jeszcze nie wiadomo, czy będziemy używać tego narzędzia. Jest w tzw. okresie próbnym.)

I don't remember any important decisions being ever made on Trello without mentioning them anywhere else.

So, when is this... 'testing phase' supposed to end? It is going to end one day after all these years I presume...?

This is a good question, but I don't think I'm going to try to answer it.

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How about we stop this offtopic now and focus on the dev blog comment system?

[Simbax]

Since a few days there's been no new votes, so I think it's decided. The winner is Wordpress (w/o anonymous).