How do machines get on the reprap.org front page?

nophead Wrote:
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> Perhaps you
> just were more lucky with your Prusa.

That is very possible. I'm building another Prusa as we speak, and we'll see how well that one works out.

But having only built one of each design, I don't have that much experience to back up my claims up really.

C. Cecil Wrote:
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> I have no issues with the Sells...
> Granted I
> have never built a Prusa. I believe when I switch
> to a new design it will probably be the Mendel90
> or Mendelmax.

I think you should build a newer design before you make up your mind the old one is superior, then. If not your arguments are invalid. I was very sceptical when I built my Prusa, but was pleasantly surprised in the end.

I'm not saying "build a Prusa", mind you. The main issue I have against the triangle frame of Sells and Prusa, is x-wobble, which both Mendel90 and Mendelmax seems to address.

The voices against Sells usually comes from people like me, who have spent a fair deal of time helping out, and even sending out free spare (Prusa) parts to poor botmill customers to make up for (in my view) design flaws.

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-Nudel
Blog with RepRap Comic

I never said it was superior just that I have no issues with it...I don't have the same complaints as others. I mainly just believe it should not be considered obsolete. All of the printers seem to get about the same quality prints from the pictures I have seen.


Also, I have a Botmill kit...I purchased before reading up too much. Live and learn.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/05/2012 07:29AM by C. Cecil.

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www.Robosprout.com RepRap Mendel parts and accessories.
Message if there is anything you need...I have more than what is listed on my site.
Located in the Spokane, WA / Coeur d'Alene, ID area.
Contact: Robosprout@gmail.com Flickr: [www.flickr.com]

hey guys,

just wanted to give my opinion.

i am still newbie to this and the reprap wiki isn't that helpful because of the navigation and the deep links and poor tagging to different pages.
i think the whole homepage should be changed and we should probably give it a great makeover.

i strongly believe that showing other deravatives or other 3d printer , which may be commercial or not,should be open source with proper docs to make a newbie figure out the design aspect and different stuffs.so,it would be great to show them atleast in different sections of the main page and not having deep links inside the parent branch.

i love the idea of the family tree,just wish that if each of the printers would have been linked to a specific sites,would had been great help to a newbie,who just jumps into the variety of printers and their ecosystem.

the incomplete reprap guide is the best section according to me,because it tells everything and links various useful sites for building a printer.there's videos,blogs and many other great stuffs.

lastly i like the new hompage!!! than the older one

warm regards,
shakerobo

I understand the concerns, but it's all a slippery slope.

Maxbot sells Mendelmax kit so it is commercial? I sell Prusa rp parts, so is it commercial? Botmill still sells Sells Mendel, so is it commercial?

Why should we force people to document in the reprap wiki when it's a pain in the ass? As long as they have documentation of some kind why be picky?

Any reprap front page that does not have Prusa, Mendelmax, Printrbot/Wallace, and RepRapPro Huxley is a total failure. But IF you include 3 which are 100% commercial open source designs how can you deny the others?

As far as the difference between bots. Mendelmax uses Prusa 2 Y/X axis almost unchanged, and it's Z is mechanically the same I idea as Prusa. Makergear kit has a redesigned x/z axis but keeps the frame. If you can make an argument against one it hits the other one also.

Really we have a choice, LOTS of reprap on the front page or no page guiding anyone to a Cartesian bot. Anything less and it's going to involve editorial judgment.

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repraplogphase.blogspot.com

Just my $0.02 worth.

Anyone searching for a DIY 3D printer should arrive at a totally open source non-commercial list of choices. All files should be on the wiki, as other links disappear all often. We also need a minimum documentation standard for it to be listed on the front page, as that is where most people will land. Any design there should be able to be built by the average person searching for the page (completeness, documentation, tools, etc.). We survived with Prusa off the main page until the documentation was useable, and then it moved. That was a very good policy. Also, if a link is only to an open source commercial version, I worry it reflects badly on the organization. I recently completed a Mendel variant, and did not put it on the WIki until the documentaation was useable, even though it has printed many generations. People are too quick to post designs that may lead the inexperienced to much frustration, I know all too well...

john

All RepRap are commerical. SOMEONE is selling it.

All the ones on the front page curerntly have documentaion. Who get's to determine good enough documentation?

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repraplogphase.blogspot.com

Speaking of the Mendel90 .. when are we going to see that Nophead? You teased that when you built it it was spot on calibration wise! I want to build one.

Back to the topic at hand .. I started this thread wondering what the criteria is to get on the front page. I think this is a good debate on the purpose of the front page.

I tend to agree we want the front page to be a friendly place for people who look for a DIY 3D printer by searching Bing or Google. I would like to see variety on the front page .. but also have guidance for Noobs.

My suggestion would be to take a subjective view of what is the easiest to build and run for the noob. If that ends up being the Printrbot, or the Mendel90 or the Prusa Iteration 2 .. so be it. Put a variety on the front page but offer some guidance. Like the line that is there now "If you are new build the Prusa".

Once some of the new designs are doc complete we may need to reevaluate that advice and feature it prominantly. I also agree we should have a big button for the forum. The forums are under utilized IMHO. I LOVE the IRC and it is ever so helpful, but we are not capturing the great advice from the IRC. More support and discussion should go through the fourm so that others can read and search on it. We can reduce much redundancy with questions in the IRC.

It is pointless bickering about the term "Commercial".
The simple criteria for what is valid and useful to the prospective new recruit, looking at the front page, have been laid out and reiterated in this thread :
To whit, that it is open-source with sufficient information linked for someone like me to build it from the ground up,
and that it has been "validated" by several "known" persons in the wider group (through personal experience, or knowledge of others who have), so the newbie shouldn't run into any minefields of design problems, or disappearance of linked resources.
Given that - then so what if someone is making some return on the design - it is more likely (not guaranteed, but more likely) that innovations and simplifications will come from wanting to please a customer base. If the DIY'er benefits from that - then give the vendor a medal!

It seems to me that suggesting discriminating based on the Commercial tag somewhat goes against the definition of open source - IF they fulfil the criteria.

And the inevitable question - "Who are these 'known persons' to validate"?
In another organisation we had a closed forum for "Pioneers".
The initial members of that forum nominated new members as they became "known" through useful contributions - either by regular responses to peoples questions, and/or "material" contributions. (design work, h/w or s/w )
Once a level of agreement to a nomination was reached - the board mod added the new member.
In like manner, a level of agreement would then be reached on such a question as "does this design sufficiently meet the criteria to go on the front page"

(ps: the "more likely ... innovations" comment above is as related to the context of the discussion - I acknowledge that a number of totally non-commercial design contributors deserve a *big* medal )

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/05/2012 06:24PM by nb99.

spacexula Wrote:
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> All RepRap are commerical. SOMEONE is selling
> it.
>
> All the ones on the front page curerntly have
> documentaion. Who get's to determine good enough
> documentation?

"Commercial" should not matter. As you say, someone sells every kit, so eliminating kits that are being sold by their creator only penalizes people who create new designs and rewards people selling other people's designs.

What does matter is the license. It should be truly open. Not NC or ND.Something like CC-BY-SA would be fine with me, but adding any restrictions other than those should probably eliminate it from consideration.

Otherwise I really don't see much of a slippery slope with saying variants are not listed on the home page. It should be fairly easy to decide what constitutes a variant. There certainly should be some appeal process, so if you are the main person making the decisions, you decide whether it is a variant or not, and if they are not happy with that decision they can appeal to the whole reprap admin board. A simple vote there would decide.

I got enough nasty emails and conversations questioning my character that I am really not intersted in continuing the update of the front page any further. If someone else wants to take up the project have at it. I am done.

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repraplogphase.blogspot.com

Spacexula - it is very sad that you were personally attacked. The community has lost a deal due to this. I hope you reconsider working on the front page in spite of the trolls. Sadly, in any open community like this, the trolls often drive out very good people. It is especially difficult with private emails as the community does not have a chance to make it known that the unreasonable opinion is not a majority or even a significant one.

--Jim

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/06/2012 12:38AM by madscifi.

Spacexula, don't believe everything people send you.
nothing as stupid as a mad nerd behind a PC ;-)

No mather what you do, someone will always hate it. it's life.

as for me personal, i would just put the prusa on the front page,
with a big link under it, "maybe you would also want to build one of the other printers"
and then put ALL printers behind the link.
but this is what i would do, and my own advice is, never listen to me.

spacexula Wrote:
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> I got enough nasty emails and conversations
> questioning my character

:-O

Don't let them get to you, the opinion of those not willing to discuss this (in all fairness rather trivial case) in an open forum, are not to be listened to.

It truly is sad that a few (?) loud voices time and time again manage to discourage core members of RepRap who have nothing but the best intentions.

The frontpage of reprap.org will die and dwindle into obscurity unless it gets updated from time to time, and this will not benefit anyone.

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-Nudel
Blog with RepRap Comic

In the absence of an established procedure to decide about the rules of inclusion (and other major stuff), there is a high risk of this happening again and again. Burnout, ad personam attacks (and people are taking things personally) etc.

So, to reformulate a question I have been quietly asking in another thread in the librarians forum:

What procedure will we, the people of reprap, agree on to set the contents of the first pages, the stated priorities, etc.?

It is not just about "roll up your sleeves" but rather "how willl we determine and take account of the general interest"?

I would say keep the frontpage showing the basic repraps, with no company tie. Then have alink either to the list of options or the suppliers page.

This is an interesting discussion. From a newcomer's perspective, I can see two themes emerge:

One seems to be the merit and establishment of a particular RepRap design; I don't know enough to comment about all the variants and communities involved, but I can the potential for vested interest. This looks like its becoming more political, which would dissuade some people.

The other seems to highlight the problems of documentation. I believe the reason Adrian chose the wiki format to encourage growth of documentation, yet the links can get deep and inconsistent. I was struck by kludgineer decision to host the MendelMax documentation offsite.

Does this push the need to generally clean up the RepRap wiki and make it easier to maintain?

@ spacexula. I'm also saddened when people can't discuss problems in a reasonable way, please don't let the trolls put off your contributions.

Printers shown on the front page should at least have a nearly complete documentation. If anyone (company or not) wants to promote their design, i think that writing a documentation is not too much to ask. Showing printers with no documentation does not make any sense to me.

Furthermore i think it is important to have links to more than one supplier for all of the parts. Sourcing parts is a difficult task and often ordering parts on a different continent does not make a lot of sense money-wise (import and duties).

What about a discussion+poll/competition to decide as a community which printer or if a printer will be showcased on the frontpage?

Reprap started with the idea to make a machine that can self-replicate. Should this idea/target be a consideration to decide if a new printer will be shown on the frontpage ?

@ spacexula. You did a lot of great work, please don't be discouraged by people who don't want to discuss matters in a public and normal way.

Another discusion we've been having in the developers sub-forum is "What is the purpose of the reprap project now?" At the heart of the discussion is that there are now, and will continue to be, infinite minor variations coming from all corners. With the flood of new machine designs, what is the role of reprap.org?

The consensus seems to be that reprap.org and it's members (us) should be setting standards based around machine capabilities. Anything with open sourced, compatible parts to the standard is essentially a reprap, be it a "Darwin standard based" or "Mendel Standard based". (and then you have sub-standards, etc.)

So, The front page should reflect this: provide a definition of the standard, not a particular machine (or, if a particular machine, then the ideal machine) "A Mendel is a 3d printer with a x by y by z build area with 8mm ..." Below the standard definition, you can list all conforming models.

However, Top billing should be given to machines with build instructions (on the wiki) that conform to a style guide (another reprap.org standard we should define). Anything not on the wiki is a fork, really.

To add to what Buback says, we might aim to develop a form with point scales for the submitted models

Maybe adapting some of these criteria for evaluation might be useful:
and since it is reprap, adding/substituting special criteria for DIY-ability (at the core of "self-reproductibility"), fully open-source being a fundamental precondition.

----------------------

Factor Criteria
Functionality completeness
correctness
security
compatibility
interoperability

Maintainability consistency
correctness
modularity
traceability
expandability

Efficiency time economy
hardware resource economy
software resource economy
communication economy

Completeness ratio of the number of completed documents to total number of documents
ratio of number of implemented functions to total number of functions
...

Traceability ...

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... remembering to keep it simple...

taken from [l1.lamsade.dauphine.fr]

In my mind there are really three main classifications of active printer designs that could be grouped into three columns: Mendel, Huxley, and Wallace. Mendel are all semi-triangular frame based printers and include the Prusa Mendel, Mendel Max, and Mendel 90. 200^2+ mm build areas are common in this category and printers in this group are the most likely to develop dual printheads. These printers are also more or less derivatives from one or the other. The Huxley represents the smaller chasis with 140^2 mm or less print beds with currently the only design in active development being the eMaker/RepRapPro Huxley. The last group is the youngest of the bunch being the Wallace and similar and future pseudo-frameless designs. Love it or hate it this design seems to be driving a lot of creative work and represents a very strong direction of the reprap platform.

Key criteria for publication could include:

• Current and active community-driven and community-inclusive development of the platform
• Files published in open source friendly formats either through the wiki, github, or thingiverse, preferably in a format that encourages continued development
• CC-BY-SA or similar license published no later than the ship date of the product, preferably as soon as possible, and is compatible with the OSHW definition

I think the mantra of publish quickly and often is essential to the growth of the reprap and this approach has been taken recently by whosawhatsis with the Wallace and who should be commended for actively taking feedback from the community while he develops the design. This seems like a good model to me.

Designs no longer in active development which includes the Sells Mendel, Huxley, and Darwin should maybe be placed in a fourth category for Legacy devices with the understanding that does not make them inferior machines simply that the current design interests of the community have moved on.

In the end, I thought this was the reason for Adrian keeping the home page locked because there is no way the entire community will agree so someone has to make the decision and I thank Neil for stepping up and taking a stab at updating the front page to begin with.

B

bwevans Wrote:
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> In the end, I thought this was the reason for
> Adrian keeping the home page locked because there
> is no way the entire community will agree so
> someone has to make the decision and I thank Neil
> for stepping up and taking a stab at updating the
> front page to begin with.

So very, very true. Sadly not many people seem to understand this. When a community reaches a certain size, it's impossible to try and take everyone's opinion into account. RepRap have by far exceeded this threshold, and if we tried we wouldn't even be able to all agree on which frame vertex to use.

We could spend a lot of time and effort to make a system where everybody can vote and rate different designs, but it would only add bureaucracy and take time away from what we're trying to do here, namely building RepRaps. That's why we should rather nod in agreement to the new front page, accept the job Neil have done as far better than what we had before, and get back to our printers to improve them. Neil has commitment and a down-to-earth view on RepRap that I'd say is quite unique even for our crowd, and from what I've spoken with him, I can't think of anyone better suited and less biased to do this job.

The future of RepRap is interesting, I for one look forward to the day when we can find a RepRap lasercutter, a RepRap cnc and a RepRap lathe on the front page of reprap.org.

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-Nudel
Blog with RepRap Comic

Very well said Nudel, lets just get on with whatever we all can, good things and Ideas will always rise to the top and people will get on-board.

Just one general comment on the 'publish quickly and often' view - this is not for everyone, it can add a lot of extra pressure when you show a thought or idea at concept stage, if people feel happier to work on their own and at their own pace before releasing it, that should not be discouraged. This hobby has to fit into peoples lives after all and the added pressure and attention on initial concepts can kill many things (enthusiasm, interest, focus, motivation) just as easy as it can evolve or improve them. Each to their own way of working.

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[richrap.blogspot.com]

In summary, you are mostly for "keeping it organic" and hoping that the mass effect will automagically sort out the chaff from the valuable improvements.
This virtuous process may or may not happen. Actually, unfortunately, things do not seem to going this way in western societies.
But yeah, it is much in the spirit of the project. And reprap might be an exception.

You're right, so more unsound and plain weirdo solutions parading on first page should be expected.

Newbies, beware, you _are_ the bottom of the food chain of a complex jungle.

Lanthan Wrote:
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> In summary, you are mostly for "keeping it
> organic" and hoping that the mass effect will
> automagically sort out the chaff from the valuable
> improvements.

Yes, For ideas, design and innovation. Not just random dithering.
I still want a survey and list of things that 'we' / 'everyone' likes, is interested in and can focus on - Just as we were discussing on the other Development Topic

> This virtuous process may or may not happen.

It happens all the time, That's how the Prusa Mendel came about, and then almost all it's ongoing improvements.

> Actually, unfortunately, things do not seem to
> going this way in western societies.
> But yeah, it is much in the spirit of the project.
> And reprap might be an exception.

RepRap is an exception, it has a completely solid foundation, and endless opportunity, people aren't just going to get bored of it.

> You're right, so more unsound and plain weirdo
> solutions parading on first page should be
> expected.

I don't see any unsound solutions on the front page?, maybe we could split into two sections 'Stable' and 'Development' then it's easier for people to explore what a wide range of machine that fly the RepRap flag. We also have 1000x more information and instructions than we had 2 years ago, choice and options can't be a bad thing in this project.

> Newbies, beware, you _are_ the bottom of the food
> chain of a complex jungle.

Everyone is a newbie at something, the learning curve for RepRap is as steep as you want it to be, 'someone' is always willing to help.

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[richrap.blogspot.com]

It's too bad that there was such an uproar that spacexula was discouraged from the great work he was doing. I think those who want their designs on the front page should take him up on his offer to edit his sandbox page, and document that they have satisfied the stated requirements then PM him. There's no reason he should take all the heat for front page changes and the ones who want front page billing should really have the responsibility of doing the work. A very rough page outlining the requirements spacexula suggested is here.

[reprap.org]

I tried the link to the sandbox front page and couldn't get it to work. I don't have a design for the front page, I was just going to make a "How do I get my design on the front page?" page and then add a link to that. Anyone know how to get to that page spacexula mentioned?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/12/2012 12:58PM by bryanandaimee.