Motherlode Peer Group Review

[Reiko]

Only if you want to reduce the ML to a handful of addons.

Are you certain that you understand what I'm proposing here? Not the deletion of add-ons using other people's textures, but the
addition of the appropriate credits for the textures which were modified for inclusion in an add-on. I would delete an add-on
only if the appropriate credits were not applied to a package in this category.

You shouldn't be deleting anything unless it's a fake file or it doesn't work for some reason.

[BobHegwood]

You shouldn't be deleting anything unless it's a fake file or it doesn't work for some reason.

You are quite mistaken here. Ask around.
END OF TOPIC as far as I'm concerned.

[Reiko]

You shouldn't be deleting anything unless it's a fake file or it doesn't work for some reason.

You are quite mistaken here. Ask around.
END OF TOPIC as far as I'm concerned.

Ask around about what? What the popular opinion is? I'm all for people giving credit when reusing textures but if they don't then so what? Celestia is a free open source program and so are the textures people use. As long as no one is making money off of another's work then why get so upset about it?
Certainly encourage people to credit work they use but if they don't, I wouldn't delete their addon. That is going a bit far for a free program don't you think?
If the original author of the textures objects then go ahead but if not then just leave it be.
I see textures reused in several addons from different people and have no way of telling who the original author is. Also, some of these original works are not really that original when they are cut and paste jobs from sat photos or reworked jupiters.
I understand the need for quality control but if you implement many of these ideas the ML will become a ghost town.
I'm sorry many celestia lovers like myself are not as smart as you guys but please don't turn it into an elitist only club.

[John Van Vliet]

NOT FREE - BUT GPL

GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
Version 3, 29 June 2007

Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc. <http://fsf.org/>
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

Preamble

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0-standalone.html
---- edit posting the whole thing is to long -----
--------- an Example : not an image but code ------------
Dr. Fridger Schrempp script VirtualTexture, on my box ( because of image magick ) took 2:30 hours to cut a 16k map .So I ported it to use the vips im lib ( now 6 min )

#! /bin/bash

function min () {
if(( $1 < $2 )); then
echo $1
else
echo $2
fi
}
if [ $# -lt 2 -o "$1" = "--help" ]; then
echo
echo 'Usage: vips_vt [--help | <texture name> <tile size> <tile format>] [e|E|w|W]'
echo

echo Orig.Author: Dr. Fridger Schrempp, fridger.schrempp( at )desy.de

echo converted to vips be John Van Vliet at h??p://johnscelestiapage.no-ip.com

else

block_width=$2;
block_height=$2;



# split to directory name and filename
dir=`dirname $1`
file=`basename $1`
fileformat=$3
# make a copy of the image in VIPS format ... this will make the loop much,
# much faster
copy=$$_$file.v
echo taking local copy of image as $copy ...
vips im_copy $1 $copy

width=`vips im_header_int Xsize $copy`
height=`vips im_header_int Ysize $copy`
j=0

the orig. author IS GIVEN credit and i added myself to the list
This is how things are done !!!

[t00fri]

...
Certainly encourage people to credit work they use but if they don't, I wouldn't delete their addon. That is going a bit far for a free program don't you think?
...

Reiko,

as John noted already, Celestia is free of charge, BUT not a "free" Program! It is published under the GPL2 license the rules of which must be strictly followed. The case of add-ons is more complex, since many add-on creators might not even know a thing about the various possible licenses... This is again part of the general confusion around the ML.

All scientific work, for example, is also free of charge. But it is surely considered a "death sin" if one author misses to carefully cite previous work by others. In such case, the non-cited previous work along with the good ideas contained therein would erroneously be attributed to the latter author!

This should not happen and testifies a VERY bad moral of the author in question.
In the Celestia community we don't want to support that sort of behaviour either, do we?

Moreover, --and this IS important-- many (most?) texture creators ultimately publish (modified) textures that took their origin from some scientific texture released by one of the major Space Agencies. These DO request citation, whether you like it or not. Just go to their pages and have a look.

"Free of charge" does NOT imply "free of citation"!.

Citing previous work acknowledges/honors the effort of previous workers, who also sacrificed a lot of their spare time to produce their work "free of charge". This general attitude of fairness has absolutely NOTHING to do with elitist views. It merely implies that add-on creators just take a little time to educate themselves from whom they took the material they will be using for their forthcoming add-on.


Fridger

[bdm]

Does the Motherlode have a rating system for addons?

On many sites, users can rate content, say from 1 (awful) to 5 (superb) or from 1 to 10. If the ML could do that with addons, it would allow the ML users to show us what they like, rather than relying on the assessment of the ML administrators, who are relatively few in number.

[selden]

The ML provides for user ratings. Click on the magnifying glass icon. It's next to the brief description. It'll show the Addon's long description, rating menu and a link to a comment addition form.

Unfortunately the magnifying glass icon isn't very large. A lot of people overlook it.

[ANDREA]

The ML provides for user ratings. Unfortunately the magnifying glass icon isn't very large. A lot of people overlook it.

I agree, Selden, it's truly too small.
Moreover, and this is a suggestion, it could be very useful, IMHO, not only for newbyes but for old geezers like me too, to have in the group main page the date of issue of the addon, or texture, or script, and not, as actually is, in the single addon page.
This because,mainly for the Solar System, there are many textures of any kind, but not knowing their age we have not an immediate idea of what is the most recent (and so the most upgraded) one.
E.g. what happens with Saturn moons:
Titan (2)
Hyperion (2)
Tethys (3)
Iapetus (4)
Rhea (4)
Mimas (4)
Enceladus (5)
Dione (5)
or with
Mercury (4) and
Venus (5).
I think that the issuing date for each of them on the group main page (and for main page I mean the Saturn, or Mercury, or Venus one) could avoid the waste of a lot of time.
Just an opinion.
Bye

Andrea

[Adirondack]

Does the Motherlode have a rating system for addons?

FYI:
In addition the start page reads in the third paragraph:

"If you want to leave a comment about the add-on or rate the add-on's quality,
just click on the magnifying glass in the info column of each add-on."

Adirondack

[Adirondack]

Moreover, and this is a suggestion, it could be very useful, IMHO, not only for newbyes but for old geezers like me too, to have in the group main page the date of issue of the addon, or texture, or script, and not, as actually is, in the single addon page.

Andrea,

this sounds good but isn't that easy as it sounds.

Added date:
This is the date when a new add on was added. So far so good.
But when somebody did upload a newer version (let's say version 2.0) we will add this newer add on
to the existing entry and the "added date" don't change (but the "Last modified date" will).

Last modified date:
This is the date when an entry (not the add on itself) was modified. So far so good.
But when we add a new screen shot or modify the description, the "Last modified date" changes too.

So neither the "added date" nor "Last modified date" on the main pages will help.

Adirondack

[ANDREA]

Andrea, this sounds good but isn't that easy as it sounds.
Added date:
This is the date when a new add on was added. So far so good. But when somebody did upload a newer version (let's say version 2.0) we will add this newer add on to the existing entry and the "added date" don't change (but the "Last modified date" will).
Last modified date:
This is the date when an entry (not the add on itself) was modified. So far so good. But when we add a new screen shot or modify the description, the "Last modified date" changes too. Adirondack

Ulrich, even if the "last modified date" gives information on what has been modified (from the full addon itself to a single word in the readme.txt file), I think that the revisions are many times due to “side” changes (I mean not the body addon itself, but mainly it's explanation, or licensing, and so on), while the first issuing date is "normally" the date in which that addon has been issued, AS ACTUALLY IT IS.
I know that most or all of the addons in ML have been patiently modified by Bob, checking and correcting missing information, explanations on how to load the addons, and so on, but the textures themselves most (all?) of times have not been changed anyway, at least for what is the Solar System.
Therefore I think that the “ISSUING DATE” is the most important evaluation tool to decide if choose it or another one, IMHO.
Let me make an example, regarding Saturn moon Dione, whose we have 5 different versions:
------Added------Last modified
1- 2008/05/22 -- 2008/05/24
2- 2004/11/04 -- 2008/02/02
3- 2006/07/06 -- 2008/02/02
4- 2007/06/08 -- 2008/06/21
5- 2007/06/19 -- 2008/06/20
As you see the “Added dates” are the ones giving the exact “affordability” of the textures, i.e. the most recent one is probably the most upgraded after Cassini’s fly-byes of the Saturn moons.
After this everyone will add to his decision:
1- the availability of the dimension that’s right for him and, later on
2- the “aesthetical” impact.
It may happen, or at least it occurred to me, that the latest one, moreover with the right dimension, had an overall appearance not on line with my preferences (too bright, too dim, too much yellow, not well detailed, and so on), so I discarded it.
This is what I normally do.
Just an opinion, as always, and I would like to read more on the matter from other Celestians too because, please remember,
Motherlode is a common patrimony.
Bye

Andrea

[BobHegwood]

Andrea,

I believe that I agree with you here...
If there was any way to do it, I think that the original date and a "truly-last-modified" date would be in order.
In other words, just because someone modifies the add-on's description, this doesn't mean that the add-on itself
has been modified. I don't have any idea how this could be accomplished, but I am of this opinion.

By the way, thanks very much for updating those VT's.

[Guckytos]

Hmm,

dumb question: Can't you change the correlations in the database in the way that the "Added" date is only changed when the data file(s) is (are) changed/replaced? I mean those files placed under "Download?

And yes I see the problem there also, if someone just changes something in the file (description or something else). But it would really be nice to see on the overview, how old the addon is. (Perhaps version management?)

Also seeing the rating on the overview page would be usefull. You don't have to have a rating button there, just put the result from the details page there.

Just my 2 cents.

Best regards,

Christian

[bdm]

Unfortunately the magnifying glass icon isn't very large. A lot of people overlook it.

As I did ...

[BobHegwood]

Well, here's another way to start a flame war on the forum I suppose...

Is there any reason to keep the Galaxies portion of the ML in existence? From what I have looked at recently,
only Frank's Ultra Deep Field add-on looks as if it can be used any more with the latest releases of Celestia.
By "latest releases" I mean anything after 1.4.1. Do we wish to keep this stuff around for some reason?

I'm not trying to say that I will be deleting these, but are they really needed any more?

Thanks, Bob

[Kolano]

Ulrich, even if the "last modified date" gives information on what has been modified (from the full addon itself to a single word in the readme.txt file), I think that the revisions are many times due to “side” changes (I mean not the body addon itself, but mainly it's explanation, or licensing, and so on), while the first issuing date is "normally" the date in which that addon has been issued, AS ACTUALLY IT IS.
I know that most or all of the addons in ML have been patiently modified by Bob, checking and correcting missing information, explanations on how to load the addons, and so on, but the textures themselves most (all?) of times have not been changed anyway, at least for what is the Solar System.
Therefore I think that the “ISSUING DATE” is the most important evaluation tool to decide if choose it or another one, IMHO.

...

Just an opinion, as always, and I would like to read more on the matter from other Celestians too because, please remember,
Motherlode is a common patrimony.
Bye

Andrea

I think "submission" date would be what we would want to show. This is what can be seen by pursuing the creators directory directly, but perhaps not if Bob has been making edits outside the meta-data associated with submissions. Tracking changes in the meta-data might be important in some cases, but likely not as useful to users.

Though submission dates are useful, they can be misleading. Submission date may not relate to the age of the source data (i.e. something submitted today might use old sources where newer better ones exist). It might help with that to cite sources, though that can be problematic as as many ML images are based on multiple merged sources and tracking their full histories is difficult.

Hrm, one other thing it would be nice to see would be a repository of source materials (or links there to), which could cut down on some problematic texture recycling.

[Kolano]

Well, here's another way to start a flame war on the forum I suppose...

Is there any reason to keep the Galaxies portion of the ML in existence? From what I have looked at recently,
only Frank's Ultra Deep Field add-on looks as if it can be used any more with the latest releases of Celestia.
By "latest releases" I mean anything after 1.4.1. Do we wish to keep this stuff around for some reason?

I'm not trying to say that I will be deleting these, but are they really needed any more?

Thanks, Bob

Do they not work, or are they merely extraneous given the new galaxy renderer? Some users may prefer the older billboard images to the new galaxy rendering.

Might adding some meta-data regarding versions an add-on is appropriate for or was available at submission help with this?

[BobHegwood]

Do they not work, or are they merely extraneous given the new galaxy renderer? Some users may prefer the older billboard images to the new galaxy rendering.
Might adding some meta-data regarding versions an add-on is appropriate for or was available at submission help with this?

No, it's just that they cause duplicate and/or merging galaxies when viewed in versions of Celestia after 1.4.1. since Celestia also
now draws its own galaxies. I have already added notes to each and every galaxy add-on, but was just curious to know why we even kept them?
But that's why I'm asking here. Thanks very much for the calm, rational answer to a question.

Also, in regard to your modification date post, I really have absolutely no control over what the system does with the dates. If I do modify the
text and/or the content of an add-on though, I believe that this does cause the problem referred to by others here.

Thanks, Bob

[Kolano]

Thanks very much for the calm, rational answer to a question.

No, Bob, thank you, for taking the time to ask.

One other thing, part of your concern seemed to be lacking content for the galaxies section. Is there a reason not to add Selden's galaxy survey add-ons there? They work with current versions, and can give a much better feel for the immensity of space than Celestia's defaults. Their rendering does leave somewhat to be desired (i.e. galaxies are simple points without labels that don't fade appropriately), which I guess may be the answer to my own question.

[BobHegwood]

Is there a reason not to add Selden's galaxy survey add-ons there?

I think that we'd be very happy to host any kind of new galactic add-ons. If Selden had wished to upload his add-ons though,
I'm certain that he would have done this already.