Argument Kills Uploads
March 09, 2010 06:06AM
[objects.reprap.org]

What's better: "Argument Kills Uploads" or "Argument Kills Contribution"?

via:
[www.metafilter.com]

"A Few Billion Lines of Code Later: Using Static Analysis to Find Bugs in the Real World - How Coverity built a bug-finding tool, and a business, around the unlimited supply of bugs in software systems."
[cacm.acm.org]


-Sebastien, RepRap.org library gnome.

Remember, you're all RepRap developers (once you've joined the super-secret developer mailing list), and the wiki, RepRap.org, [reprap.org] is for everyone and everything! grinning smiley
VDX
Re: Argument Kills Uploads
March 09, 2010 06:39AM
... "Argument Kills Community" / "... Communication"


Viktor
--------
Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]
Re: Argument Kills Uploads
March 09, 2010 01:18PM
Sebastian,
clear and focused thinking, once again. How about suggestions on where to air the dirty laundry? With such a diverse group of self-motivated(to varying degrees) and quite creative minds, it is inevitable that arguments from the best screw size to use at location X of to who should be leading this group and what they should be doing. The small stuff is not a problem int he frequently seen boards, but the latter needs to be discussed _somewhere_. I agree that it should not be in formums that newcomers like me don't frequent. I would love to show people all the exciting work, ideas, changes for their first week or two, before they begin to worry administering the process. But the people that _have_ been here long enough to have a useful opinion will need some place to discuss these things. Taking them out of general and into Library Administration sounds like a great idea. The last group I was busy with separated logged in users into two categories, contributors who provide money to pay for hosting fees, etc or substantial content, and the rest who are like extended family, fun to hang around with but not share family secrets with.

That would require a two tiered login structure, and I am not sure we are begin enough to require that yet. So maybe just an out-of-the-way corner for the adults to talk smiling smiley

Mike
Re: Argument Kills Uploads
March 09, 2010 11:34PM
Good article, I would say that, "Arguments kill collaboration".

Particularly, because the original quote was in reference to contracts, and the sentiment was that once you stop working on the problem and start discussing internal personal differences, you loose focus of your initial goals. Being human, it can be hard to step back and get on track again.
Re: Argument Kills Uploads
March 10, 2010 05:46AM
How about suggestions on where to air the dirty laundry?

I tend to try to steer it into this forum. Because the implication is that we can make it go away by adding functionality to the server, thereby creating space for people to contribute, and if they want to fork, we create spaces for them at RepRap.org. I'm very keen on technical solutions to political problems.

it is inevitable that arguments from the best screw size to use

Imperial! I mean metric. ... I mean, whatever's handy, as long as it's documented.

to who should be leading this group and what they should be doing.

Oh that's simple. Adrian.

What he should be doing? ... Using blender instead of Art of Illusion. Wait, no, I mean, BRL-CAD, but releasing in BSD. Making Mendel better and doing user support. No. Wait, I mean, developing Post-Mendel.

Honestly, it's the wild west in here. I don't like policing other people's behavior, or trying to get User X to contribute in way Y using toolset Z if User X is happy and creating wiki pages using his or her favorite toolset.

More importantly I prevent user W from trying to police user Y's contributions. This includes folk trying to tell core-dev team what to do. This also includes spamming the dev forum with off topic ranting. Off topic = anything that's not part of the RepRap toolchain. Also, the worst way to get into the secret core-dev cabal is to start picking fights. The best way is to do stunning hardware development, or start contributing to the documentation, or adding functionality to the experimental Reprap.org server.

Frankly, the best way to get people to contribute to RepRap in a positive way is to pick and interesting problem, start working on it, create a wiki page, and then tell people about it.

In terms of politics-type-stuff re what Adrian plus the core group should be doing, that's dirty laundry which needs to be either sterilized with sunlight or politely and discretely dealt with in private*. Or better yet, via a Mediawiki extension, because that's what we do in this forum, is solve things.

I'd go on, but ranting about silly stuff fellow core-devs do has the perverse and unintended effect of a) not solving the problem and b) may dissuade them or distract them from contributing to the wiki.

Also, c) I've got a lot of server work I should be doing right now.

I think "Argument Kills Contribution", but 'Contribution' is a pretty passionless word. Maybe "Argument Kills Content", but Content is corporate speak for art, science, culture, etc.

-Sebastien

* Say, Forrest's self-propelled Mendel with a hand-gun and a web camera bolted on. Took out 3 users before we wrestled the controller away from him. You're not going to find _that_ in the RepRap history books. I decided not to blog that particular incident and he decided it was too early to [Redacted], but aside from that we're all about openness, transparency, and maximizing user contribution and self-actualiztion here. Just ask the secret core-dev team as soon as I bolt the mailing list back onto the forum software.


-Sebastien, RepRap.org library gnome.

Remember, you're all RepRap developers (once you've joined the super-secret developer mailing list), and the wiki, RepRap.org, [reprap.org] is for everyone and everything! grinning smiley
Re: Argument Kills Uploads
March 10, 2010 01:53PM
Greetings all,
I agree -- argument kills both community and contributions.

However, respectful discussion, and organization of information *encourages* both community and contributions.

IMHO, one of the key (perhaps under-appreciated) aspects of these boards is that the volume of discussion regarding possible improvements/variations/problems often overwhelms the basic information that prospective reprappers are interested in. (To say nothing of the flames or "overly spirited discussions" we often see!)

Regarding organization, Sebastian is right, it's not that easy for a newcomer to sift out the info they need from all the rest. I think his re-organization of the forums has significantly improved this situation. Thanks, Sebastian!
The current forum organization makes it easier to sort out what is a variant (e.g. Delta Robot) from more mainline issues (extruders, firmware, buying/selling/sourcing parts.) As the designs evolve, there is a continual need to update the Wiki.

IMHO, one modest proposal re Wiki would be to encourage contributors to *date* their contributions, and indicate what version(s) of the design they correspond to.


Larry Pfeffer,

My blog about building repstrap Cerberus:
[repstrap-cerberus.blogspot.com]
Re: Argument Kills Uploads
March 12, 2010 01:19PM
However, respectful discussion, and organization of information *encourages* both community and contributions.

It's an admonishment to myself to not flame one or two of my colleagues when they start uploading into other spaces as much as anything. And to fix some of the problems this creates, and fix what caused the problems, with the help of yet other colleagues.

Also, someone was going to upload 500 gears and such to the Wiki, but I screwed up the donation by bringing up licenses.

It's a useful saying when people start arguing licenses, or tool sets. Toolsets meaning openscad vs autodesk inventor, or "well, everyone has a lathe/tablesaw/welding kit' vs 'you should be able to build a mendel without any tooling but a dremel!!!". The answer there being "All four of you are right - make stuff, create wiki pages, document, go forth and self-replicate!"

IMHO, one modest proposal re Wiki would be to encourage contributors to *date* their contributions, and indicate what version(s) of the design they correspond to.

Difficult to mandate, easy to automate. Maybe. Want to try tweaking that development template in the upper right of some pages to host date information?
[evelopment" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">objects.reprap.org]
Or see if there's a mediawiki extension or option to show last-edit-time?

Plus we'll soon push metadata, renders, part-counts, etc from the official repository into mediawiki.
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