Celestia development volunteers?

[ElChristou]

Sorry, cross posting with the above...

Despite Selden's point, still believe the Wiki won't be easy to maintain...

[t00fri]

Fridger,

Well, after all, you would be one of the people contributing to it. As would Vincent and Christophe, both of whom also have updated the CVS archive recently. But if it isn't appropriate for your working methods, and if you guys don't use it, then it won't be useful. I think that's called a "self fulfilling prophesy."

Selden,

I was never asked about my opinion. Certainly I consider the maintaining of another 2 Wikis for our SMALL group of activists a superfluous effort. I think a Wiki is great for what you are doing in the context of an ongoing Celestia documentation project.

As to the other Wikis, Chris has just decided about it. Now lets see what he makes of it Delegating work, I suppose...

But in my opinion, we ( and notably Chris L.) should rather spend our time to fixing those bloody leftover bugs and then move on, AT LAST. In a nutshell, such ideas like Wikis will certainly NOT revive our lame development. The problems in this respect are to be sought elsewhere...


Bye Fridger

[ElChristou]

Instead of people making individual, independent postings saying "I finished working on the GUI's lighting menu", for example, each of them would edit an appropriate GUI documentation page as their task is completed, changing that page's contents to describe the current status of the software.

Despite the point, I think I prefer the nice dynamic interaction between 2 (or more) persons (like recently Fridger/Cham for the binaries) than a nice and cold document...

[ElChristou]

...The problems in this respect are to be sought elsewhere...

Where?

[t00fri]

...The problems in this respect are to be sought elsewhere...

Where?

Well, I don't want to repeat myself anymore. But after ~ 6 years of experience with this community, I definitely remember VERY active phases of development that were a lot of fun and very efficient. That's when actually a lot of the non-trivial Celestia code was written. We ALWAYS were a fairly small group, yet it was very coherent and collaborative at times.

The main point however was: in these phases Chris L. was VERY actively present, producing a lot of interesting new code and inspired everybody else...

That's my simple-minded role model which I have seen to work very well in the past. NO Wiki inflation no other adminsitrative loads...just fun to discuss and try out new things together.

You should not forget that these thousands and thousands of lines of Celestia code must have been written somewhen

Bye Fridger

[hank]

You don't have to wade through a long thread looking for each of the different comments that people have made.

A very important point.

I was never asked about my opinion. Certainly I consider the maintaining of another 2 Wikis for our SMALL group of activists a superfluous effort.

The purpose of this is to grow the development team and make Celestia development sustainable long-term. Of course if you don't want to contribute to that, you certainly don't have to.

But in my opinion, we (and notably Chris L.) should rather spend our time to fixing those bloody leftover bugs and then move on...

But if we had a larger development team we could back up Chris and other senior developers on bugfixes and other release tasks so they could concentrate their efforts on new development.

That's my simple-minded role model which I have seen to work very well in the past. NO Wiki inflation Wink no other adminsitrative loads...just fun to discuss and try out new things together.

And for that approach, there's no need for anything other than prereleases, or personal CVS builds, which is why there have been no official releases of Celestia for nearly two years...

- Hank

[ElChristou]

...self anymore. But after ~ 6 years of experience with this community, I definitely remember VERY active phases of development that were a lot of fun and very efficient. That's when actually a lot of the non-trivial Celestia code was written. We ALWAYS were a fairly small group, yet it was very coherent and collaborative at times.

The main point however was: in these phases Chris L. was VERY actively present, producing a lot of interesting new code and inspired everybody else...

That's my simple-minded role model which I have seen to work very well in the past. NO Wiki inflation no other adminsitrative loads...just fun to discuss and try out new things together.

You should not forget that these thousands and thousands of lines of Celestia code must have been written somewhen

Unfortunately we are forced to accept that these days are gone... (or at least are less and less present...)

I don't think this golden age will exist again, I suppose it's time for more "maturity"...
As we cannot force people to be active again as they were when the baby was young, I suppose our only way is to create a workflow, a synergy in the dev...

[t00fri]

You don't have to wade through a long thread looking for each of the different comments that people have made.

A very important point.

Let me assure you:

Both me AND Selden find everything we want to in the database of this forum VERY quickly . I am quick and I KNOW that Selden is even quicker

Yes I can hear you scream: But what about those "Newbie developers"? (ahem) ... Also I find every sentence that has been written in our developer emails VERY quickly back to 2001... etc. So, as concerns my very personal Celestia database, I am missing NOTHING.

I was never asked about my opinion. Certainly I consider the maintaining of another 2 Wikis for our SMALL group of activists a superfluous effort.

The purpose of this is to grow the development team and make Celestia development sustainable long-term.

So far that aim has failed totally. But there is always hope...

But in my opinion, we (and notably Chris L.) should rather spend our time to fixing those bloody leftover bugs and then move on...

But if we had a larger development team we could back up Chris and other senior developers on bugfixes and other release tasks so they could concentrate their efforts on new development.

Quite a few of us here have demonstrated over and over again that they are able to collaborate most efficiently together, when it comes to beta testing. This is not so long ago. E.g. yesterday, for example, concerning the tests of the binary orbit stuff. Or also not much before Chris L. vanished for 3 months. So I believe, it's still possible.

And for that approach, there's no need for anything other than prereleases, or personal CVS builds, which is why there have been no official releases of Celestia for nearly two years...

But to improve that we don't need to maintain 2 Wikis!!

Bye Fridger

[t00fri]

Fridger,

Well, after all, you would be one of the people contributing to it. As would Vincent and Christophe, both of whom also have updated the CVS archive recently. But if it isn't appropriate for your working methods, and if you guys don't use it, then it won't be useful. I think that's called a "self fulfilling prophesy."

Why should I switch to a Wiki? We used the developer list for years and it was perfectly satisfactory.

But be assured, when I see all of the other dev's write their daily little dev report in the new Wiki, I will not be able to resist and also write a little paragraph here and there.

But surely, I will not be trying to push this idea. That's up to our progressive minds, like Hank and Chris L.

Bye Fridger

[ElChristou]

I'm really tired of this topic because finally seems that most devs are just fine with the actual scheme, so let's wait one or two years more to see what will happen.
For now I'm out...

[rthorvald]

I am amazed that this discussion is actually going on after some rather self-evident points have been made, most notably:

?€? When actively engaged in a project, people simply DO NOT stop to write a page about it. Really, they don??t. That will not change, no matter how useful that would have been. Hence:

?€? A wiki is GREAT for documentation that is intended to be a future reference. But it won??t be maintained by the people that produce the stuff that is to be documented. This simply will not happen in a voluntary effort.

?€? A forum is certainly inferior to a wiki for such documentation, but since it will not be used by someone that is deep into producing whatever he is producing, someone else must do it afterwards. So, a wiki is only useful if you have an archivist that enjoy doing that. Unless someone steps forward, the idea is doomed.

So... A forum is better because it will be _used_. It does not matter at all that a wiki is a superior format, since its usability in an ongoing process sucks.

- rthorvald

[hank]

Returning to the original purpose of this topic, which was to solicit volunteers to assist with Celestia development (programming skills helpful but not required):

So far we've heard from: Cham, rthorvald, phoenix, Hungry4info, yeus, Rassilon, BobHegwood

ElChristou has withdrawn. Anyone else on the list want to do so?

Anyone else out there willing to help?

- Hank

[t00fri]

Hank,

how about trying to spot someone with a /reliable/ C++ know-how and good knowledge in Astromechanics/Astrophysics/Physics?? Perhaps most importantly, we would need another OGL wizzard!

That's what we would really need.

Bye Fridger

[ElChristou]

Returning to the original purpose of this topic, which was to solicit volunteers to assist with Celestia development (programming skills helpful but not required):

So far we've heard from: Cham, rthorvald, phoenix, Hungry4info, yeus, Rassilon, BobHegwood

ElChristou has withdrawn. Anyone else on the list want to do so?

Anyone else out there willing to help?

- Hank

Hep, not too fast, I haven't withdrawn! I'm just out of this topic about the better way to structure the dev...
(you thought you could pulled me aside so easily? )

(BTW, Tx Runar to express so clearly my thoughts!)

[Cham]

[hank]

Here's an example of some of the material Chris and Selden have added to the Celestia WikiBook: Celestia/Trajectories

- Hank

[t00fri]

Here's an example of some of the material Chris has added to the Celestia WikiBook: Celestia/Trajectories

- Hank

Hank,

but that's the running Celestia documentation where also Selden is very active. That's great and noone wants to say anything against such a running user documentation.

Bye Fridger

[ElChristou]

Cham, at least you could explain why you are bored... (that was the idea, no?)

[hank]

but that's the running Celestia documentation where also Selden is very active. That's great and noone wants to say anything against such a running user documentation.

It may look like user documentation. But it is actually a specification that specifies how these Celestia features are supposed to work. It's useful to users, of course, but also to testers (how else do they know if the feature is working properly?) and implementers (how else do they know what they're supposed to implement?).

- Hank

[Cham]

Cham, at least you could explain why you are bored... (that was the idea, no?)

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