Qubits or Bits ? Humans or Bots ? Realism or Utopia ? 42.

[Chiantos]

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[Dokimi]

These topics always get awkward but here we go...! ;-)

It does make sense that as a community grows from a one-man-band, to a few dozen people, to a few hundred and beyond, the needs of that community will change. Growing pains.

Too many people become involved for one-on-one relationships to solve everything.

Perhaps Minetest has gotten large enough that structures and institutions may be needed? (e.g. for dispute resolution, selecting 'leadership' positions ...whatever). I have no idea if the above ideas would work or not. But it makes sense that as Minetest grows we will require more formal structures for this community to work.

I don't know much about how things are currently being run. I am curious: what rules, structures etc do we already have?

[Linuxdirk]

NO! No, no no, oh my god, please NO!

This looks like it could be the beginning of the end. Do not force divisive politics on communities.

There is only one universal rule: Do not be an asshole.

If you want to use this CoC-esque stuff, please feel free to host an own server/forum or build a community where this applies. But do not force your lifestyle on others. Especially not on coders and FOSS aficionados.

This behavior already ruined a shit-ton of great software and communities and is currently ruining Linux beyond repair.

[TenPlus1]

Well said Linuxdirt, a little respect and politeness goes a long way in a community.

[Linuxdirk]

a little respect and politeness goes a long way in a community.

Politeness has nothing to do with code.

Saying "the interface is rotten, especially for the menu" is absolutely fine when the interface is rotten (which it is because it uses Irrlicht's UI functionality which is rotten by design). And naming Games Subgames was a mistake from beginning an that shouldn't ever made it to the public like it did. Same with "minetest_game" being showed like that in the client and not as "Minetest Game" wich was a coding accident.

"This implementation might not be the optimal one. I am sure you had good reason to do it that way for having it in the code before the deadline" is lovely and nice, and warm, and welcoming, but it is a lie. "This implementation is shit and you know that, you only rushed it in the code before deadline" is honest and the most efficient answer. "It hurts your feelings, aww, to bad for you, then why not stop purposely coding shit one day before the deadline but instead do it properly within the time frame?"

Don't be polite, be honest and make clear what you want to say.

[Andrey01]

... And naming Games Subgames was a mistake ...

On my opinion naming Subgames as Games is tough mistake because on the logic ones games can not be contained in other game. However, subgames can.

[Linuxdirk]

[...] because on the logic ones games can not be contained in other game. However, subgames can.

That is correct. But that is not how Minetest's games work since you do not create games for another game (=subgames) but games for an engine (=games).

But let's not derail this actually pretty important and relevant topic that NEEDS to be discussed in detail because it could change the project forever.

[Chiantos]

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[sofar]

In a drastic turn of events, I agree with Linuxdirk.

[Skulls]

Minetest is (near) dead?
Long live Minetest.

Where is this toxic, disrespectful, and confrontational environment? You can pop into the IRC room and actually get good answers whoever you are. For me that shows more respect between the devs and the users than any polite answers. Folks are literally giving up minutes or hours of their lives to help others out.

[Linuxdirk]

A radical change of times can save a project of death,

Minetest isn’t broken. If it ain't broke don't fix it.

Spoiler

I have a very specific example: OpenOffice.

Actually a pretty good example. Because what you describe with “had several pretty big problems, having had a fork and starting on a more solid base” was actually done because OpenOffice was literally beaten to death so hard that LibreOffice just HAD to pop up.

Sun Microsystems pretty much owned OpenOffice.org because it was the largest sponsor in code and money. Perople who wanted to contribute to OpenOffice.org had to sign a very controversial Contributor Agreement basically making all code irrevocable Sun’s property. When Oracle joined the party and ignored OpenOffice.org completely most of the developers left the boat to form the The Document Foundation.

In the mean time Oracle stopped the whole project and fired all coders working on it because no-one cared for Oracle Open Office which it was named then. They later gave the trademark to The Apache Software Foundation who renamed it to Apache OpenOffice but even if it is/was a top-level project, no-one cared anymore. The curent 4.1.x branch was released 2014 while the current 6.x branch of LibreOffice was released beginning of this year.

LibreOffice now is more stable, more capable, more compatible and in general just much better than Apache OpenOffice.

in my view and according to maybe my ideology to allow a real community project and would allow precisely to break its divisions between main developers and members of the community.

You simply can’t just slap a “Code of Conduct” on it and make all personal and personell issues magically disappear. It simply does not work like this. It didn’t work for node.js, it does not work for the Linux kernel, and it won’t work for Minetest. Any forced rules on how people have to behave simply. Do. Not. Work. At. All.

Even if a framework was needed, the community could more easily participate and decide on its representatives or even change them.

So you basically want to install some sort of regulatory committee that has the power to kick people out of the project based on how those people behave?

It would not kill Minetest

It will. This nonsense did this before with even larger projects.

Look Ubuntu and Debian (And not problem, i think.)

Ubuntu is property of Canonical Ltd. They have to maintain it and sell support and advertisement to make money. They simply cannot let it die. And Debian, well, it’s Debian :) They always were like this.

It is important to avoid a framework that is too confrontational and toxic, to be rather constructive and really free.

Please, just stop it. Any type of CoC is 100 percent the wrong approach. Implementing a CoC causes confrontations and division. Plus: everyone refuses if someone else wants to force their behavioral ideology on them.

[TheReaperKing]

I think one of the great things about open source software is if you do want to try a community based approach, you can! You can fork it, create your own version and your own community and see how things go. It has already been done before too with projects like Freeminer and I'm sure many others. The possibilities are nearly endless!! Except, you do have to obey the licenses, but that's it!

[Shara]

Hi Chiantos,

Just some thoughts:

Here the problem is that there are developers who are despised by their community

Every similar community I was part of had people who hated developers. An "us and them" mentality is sadly very common, and often seems inflated far beyond what has been earned. I see something similar on my server sometimes. A while back a player joined to swear at and insult me. This player really seemed to despise me. The reason? One of my moderators banned them for griefing and bad language. I wasn't online at the time and wasn't the one who banned this player, but because there are some players that despise me, should we decide I'm a problem and should no longer be a server owner?

Or maybe some parts of the community also need to show some/more respect to those who give time/resources for their enjoyment?

The issue is two ways.

... a community that does not necessarily feel listened to by the main developers.

Yet I see the active devs in the IRC channels pretty much every day, answering questions and trying to help people. Some of them actively provide help on the forums. Many of them actively review PRs on Github and respond to suggestions and questions there.

I have also seen members of the community act like and say they are not listened to, but they don't seem to listen to what the devs say to them. Could it be that some, often(but not always) younger, community members might have unrealistic expectations of what devs can do and of how much time they have? Could it be some of the community members don't listen?

To give another server related parallel, there are players who got mad at me because I can't be in game all the time to help them, and when I tried to explain I don't always have time, they started to say "Shara doesn't listen to me" and "Shara is a bad admin". Am I a bad admin for having a job and family that also need my attention? Am I a bad admin if I don't want to spend all my time helping one person?

Is it my fault if that player then joins another server and tells people there that I am bad and don't listen?

Again, the issue is two ways.

Things about "subgame" vs. "game".

A lot of non-developers were asked for and gave opinions. Go here and look at the thumbs. Lots of non-developers voted for this change. There were also discussions on IRC with many modders and community members.

You compare this change to imposing changes like a dictatorship would. It was a one word change. How much more should have been done? If more than this is needed to change a word, how much do you think is needed for the changes you suggest?


So in closing, several developers have acted in ways I don't agree with. But so have modders and players and human beings in general. No one agrees on everything all the time, but I've found most of them will look for a middle ground if you stop and have a conversation (unless they are annoyingly unreasonable children - regardless of their age).

Declaring "everything is wrong so everything must change" is just ignoring all the good here. Things can always be better, but introducing overly complicated systems based on your personal preferences, while calling those who worked hard "robots"... This seems more likely to widen any divides.

[Chiantos]

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[Shara]

I'm not sure I understand your logic.

You start by saying: the problem is the developers are despised.

But now you want to change MT development so it is like a wiki and so everyone can contribute without needing approval? This would be a very special form of madness. On a wiki, someone adding a few sentences doesn't change the operation of the wiki as a whole. When we are talking game code, changing one line of code could completely change or break the engine or game. How would server owners (who invest huge time and money into MT) feel about the next update having zero quality control? How would they feel about it almost certainly breaking compatibility with existing game worlds? What about players who update and then have worlds full of unknown nodes because someone decided to remove things from the game?

So why, Minet is in the middle of comparing itself to another project that locks in a logic that becomes quite closed and common.

Not sure what you mean by this.

This post was not to denigrate community or devellopers

Then perhaps you should not say the developers are despised robots?

Make the code easily free to modify, distribute and create

It already is. Go and clone the Github repo. So long as you keep the license terms, do what you want with it. It is free to modify. It is free to distribute. What is the problem? You can make a fork of MT today if you want to. If your approach is better, no doubt people will come and contribute and you will be a success.

Even I think the players count

I don't know a single person involved in MT who believes otherwise. Of course players count. Many of the people involved in running MT run servers and speak to players every day. You probably don't realise this.

You seem to think there isn't much of a community spirit in MT, but maybe you're just not taking part in it?

[Shara]

And this gets a special post all to itself:

and yes, if necessary to impose a regulation of good behavior

The rules here already say how people should conduct themselves. These rules are not a code of conduct, but they explain expected conduct and behaviour quite well.

Maybe you think we need more rules? But the more rules you have enforcing behaviour, the more people you might need to exclude. This seems to be the exact opposite of your wish to allow absolutely everyone to directly contribute to MT.

[Pyrollo]

When you participate in a free project, do you do it for others or for yourself?

For both yourself AND others.

And I guess you develop because you have fun doing it. And being told what to do probably removes a lot of fun. So, developping only what the comunity asks for may lead to stop developping.

[Chiantos]

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[Chiantos]

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[Linuxdirk]

This post was not to denigrate community or devellopers, but simply to remind you that it is important for a project to listen and respect each other, even if you feel that the work of one and the other is not As you wish.

What happens if people don't obey the "CoC" you suggest? Are they removed from the project because you don't like how they behave regardless of code quality they produce like it currently happens in Linux kernel development and happened before in other project communities?

We already obey the license rules, we do not question the freedom, so to call into question a simple basis of respect ? I think, not understand ... Respect other is a problem ?

But you DO see the difference between a license that grants freedom of code and a code of conduct that enforces some kind of ideology? You simply can't change people by forcing behavioral rules on them.

Make the code easily free to modify, distribute and create by simply finding a collaborative system of code. It seems impossible, but why not?

Because the Wikipedia, you reference to is something completely different than a game engine code. One single line and the appliction is broken or does malicious things. It's good that we have the core developers who check and verify the code that will go into the project.

It will also facilitate the integration of newcomers into a freer and more open framework

Newcomers have to prove their knowledge. Becoming a core developer is not done by vote or inclusion but by providing good work for the project.

[Shara]

I knew there would necessarily be a negative approach to this topic

If you find my response negative (I must assume this, since it's me you seem to be replying to), you seem to be the one locked into seeing negatives.

Everything is not black or white

No, it's not. I don't think anyone involved in running Minetest has such a simple view.

I spoke not a logic

This is becoming obvious.

If you want a "constructive discussion", then please be constructive. So far you have insulted the developers and now imply people are not open-minded. This doesn't really help constructive discussion.

[Chiantos]

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[Shara]

If you think I insulted you

Incorrect. (I said you have insulted the developers.)

I especially think that you have been hurt

Incorrect.

But I also said that the community needed to focus on this vision of collaboration and positive.

It already does.

use bad words maybe

Probably this. Trying to discuss things via translation is not easy.

To say that I do not contribute to minetest or that I do not have a community vision ... could be considered insulting.

Who said this? I didn't. (I said something very different - that you don't seem to feel there is much community spirit in Minetest... and I think this might be because you are not seeing what is here. The language barrier could be part of this.)

you compare me to a contrary person just for having ideas or suggestions in a respectful way

Incorrect.

[Pyrollo]

We should all go Esperanto, Volapuk or Kobaian :p

I don't really understand what is the starting point of your thoughts Chiantos.

Was there some sort of fact that is actually an issue?

EDIT: About language barrier, it would be very nice to have the native language in the forum user profile.

[Chiantos]

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