Documentation Contests - $25 prizes?

archive documentation-jme2
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I just came by a very interesting site:

http://www.crowdedtext.com/



I had this idea that we could use this to further JME's documentation. Basically I want to try run a contest for quality JME documentation, rewarding the best article with a 25 dollar prize. I am very interested in what everyone thinks of such a contest (which, if well received, might become a reoccurring event) and what you think might be a suitable theme for our pilot contest.



Themes [suggestions please!]



  • JME Art & Asset Pipeline - What's an artmonkey to do?
    Anything about JME's asset & art pipeline, from tools (HottBJ, OgreXML) to techniques (terrain splatting, texturing).

  • The making of ...
    Detail the making of a game or tool based on JME from beginning to end.

  • JME Terrain Creation - Monkeys, to the mountains!
    There are so many ways of making a terrain with JME. How 'bout you pick one, and explain it?



Base rules: [suggestions please!]

- Keep it 2.0 compatible.
- Existing articles may be re-submitted if original author is still responsible for the bulk of the contents.
- Comprehensive rewrites of existing articles are accepted as new entries.
- Articles meant to replace existing ones should make sure to point that out.

I want to get started as quickly as possible, so expect the test run to launch by Sunday night (morning for the North Americans). I am gladly donating the first $25 myself.
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Seems better to me to make it a general documentation contest rather than a single theme. -Less duplication of effort that way.

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bosun said:

Seems better to me to make it a general documentation contest rather than a single theme. -Less duplication of effort that way.

Perhaps, but it would be harder to measure the value of one article to another if they cover two distinctly different topics. Also, themes allow us to center all efforts on whichever field jMonkey docs do not represent strongly at the moment.
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I went ahead and launched the contest, keeping all themes as mere suggestions but keeping the concept open to any and all submissions people might make.



Join the contest and compete for the $25 prize!



I am excited to see if this will work at all… 

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Nice, keep us up-to-date how it is going, submission-wise!



I assume one has to announce the exact chosen topic in advance? It seems okay not to specify one theme for the first run (your examples sound useful). The number of submissions will likely be manageable, so you could easily inform participants in case someone picked the same topic as somebody else.

Let's have targeted, themed contests later, after we got the hang of this crowdedtext.



Some questions I came up with since we last IM'ed:


  • How many submissions per member do you accept? (Or in other words, if the answer is "one per account", what if I "sneakily create eleventeen accounts and submit eleventeen tutorials?" ;) Or do you say, as many as you like, more tutorials for us?) 

  • Do you (or crowdedtext) care whether we submit it as text file, html file, or on the wiki? To whom, when, where?

  • I assume all participants have to get a crowdedtext.com account? What about the the ones who vote?
  • Do we track how often people vote, and can I vote for myself?



I could resubmit the ones I already wrote, in case that helps to get the number over five.  :P If we get more than five, I will remain "noncompetitive" (is that the right word?), I would publish my tutorials even without a contest, so I don't mind.
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Looks good, I guess you weren't joking about getting this one started quickly :slight_smile:

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Erlend, I see you extended the deadline, good idea, since it's over the holidays and people might be distracted.



All: I'm experimenting with different types of terrains from the "Hello Terrain" tutorial, if I get any meaningful results, I can turn them into a terrain comparison article, independent of this contest.



What should I test, any suggestions? My first idea was to collect statistics about the fps when "walking over" different types and sizes of terrains, each initialized with different settings and different textures. Does that make sense? I don't know what jME's scenegraph is optimized for, maybe some tests (e.g. "with textures vs without") don't even make any difference in performance – that's why I'm asking.  :wink:

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I would write a piece about shaders if there would be any interest becuase I needed to learn it anyways for another project.



I actually don't use jme anymore but I study a lot of 3D lately becuase I write my own library for webgl.


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I'd be interested in learning more about shaders. If you write it in a general way that makes it still applicable to jME and not just one particular framework, this could be very useful. Of course it would be best if you even had a bit of jME sample code. :slight_smile:

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Of course, it would be a bit more specialized for jme but I meant that  both java and jme are not the most frequently used tools by me. So I could make really big mistakes in that.

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zathras said:

Erlend, I see you extended the deadline, good idea, since it's over the holidays and people might be distracted.
Indeed they might, I certainly have been :) Oh and I never noticed your other reply above.

zathras said:
(...) Some questions I came up with since we last IM'ed:
- How many submissions per member do you accept? (Or in other words, if the answer is "one per account", what if I "sneakily create eleventeen accounts and submit eleventeen tutorials?" ;) Or do you say, as many as you like, more tutorials for us?)
As many as you like ;) Dedicated writers should feel free to submit any amount of articles they'd like to increase their chances.
Quote:
Do you (or crowdedtext) care whether we submit it as text file, html file, or on the wiki? To whom, when, where?
Ah, good question. Submit all entries to Crowded Text for approved entry.
Quote:
I assume all participants have to get a crowdedtext.com account? What about the the ones who vote?
Contest participants will unfortunately have to register, yes. This just ensures that the entry and payment process is carried through appropriately without too much hassle on the organizer's (hi) part.
Quote:
Do we track how often people vote, and can I vote for myself?
Now when it comes to voting, we would either do that through our own forum or by an online poll service. Crowded Text does not feature poll functionality yet, and I wouldn't want to use it either if it meant forcing more jMonkeys to register there.
Quote:
I could resubmit the ones I already wrote, in case that helps to get the number over five.  :P If we get more than five, I will remain "noncompetitive" (is that the right word?), I would publish my tutorials even without a contest, so I don't mind.
To be honest, there are currently 0 entries. So long as we don't get more than 5 entries, I'm entitled to a refund, which I sure wouldn't mind if the contest fails ;) Feel free to submit one of your best and most relevant articles though, then we'll have a start of sorts.

This first time the due date was automatically postponed. I honestly don't know if it will happen again; they probably do it as a one-time thing, hoping I'll get my 5 articles instead of a refund. We'll just have to wait and see...

(I know a bit more could be done to raise attention to the goings-on for JME right now, but I have never had a better reason to make the best of the holidays with my family, and I will keep doing so until we're all choking on undying Christmas spirit)