While browsing the Wiki today I couldn't help but notice there is a lot of "ownership".
By that I mean there are numerous pages marked as being by user_xyz or references to I and personal experiences.
The reason I bring this up is I see there being two problems with such ownership.
Professionalism, jME has matured so much even since I've been hanging around. As it approaches version 1.0 it needs to start presenting itself more professionally to be taken seriously. Regardless of how helpful a tutorial is when it's got "for the total noob" at the end it just doesn't come across as a serious (sorry for singling that tutorial out).
Editing, this is perhaps the bigger problem. People are much less likely to update the wiki if they know who originally wrote it. Even more so if the person is a regular visitor to the site still. The best example of this is the fact I'm writing this post instead of just removing such ownership as I don't ant to offend people!
You can view all the old revisions and the usernames of who wrote them, so if you really wanted to know who wrote what (perhaps to ask them something) you can still find out.
I would tend to disagree. One of the advantages to a wiki is personalized tutorials. Besides, I think the idea of "professionalism" is a different entity entirely when you're talking about an open-source project as opposed to a project that intends to sell its product. An open-source project can still be professional while still maintaining a very personal feel…I believe this is one of the reasons open-source projects are so successful.
"for the total noob" I would equate to "for dummies"…they tend to sell alright.
i actually like "for the total noob" and don't find it unprofessional.
but i don't like seeing edits such as "added by Sf3Ra" or such crap as that doesn't help anyone.
as long as the content remains clear, helpful and free of such useless statements i don't have anything to object.
i don't think it's bad if someone uses 'I' because not everyone(including myself) has the language skills for writing a clear technical text/article in english. such texts can be corrected. it's not such a big deal.
so as far as i'm concerned, you can go ahead and correct the texts and remove the "by XXX" notes.
Hal, I agree with you on point 2 that editing can sometimes be hindered if someone has already marked it theirs, but I feel like point 1 is only valid for the “core” wiki documentation.
By “core” wiki documentation, I mean sections like the Users Guide.
I feel like the jME articles and tutorial section are more for a place where people create their own “personal” tutorials based on whatever they want to discuss.
Maybe there should be a push to get more “core” documentation in the wiki now that it’s going to a 1.0 release, maybe some of the core developer (or anyone really) could list an outline or any ideas of what topics they think needs to be covered. Then we could stub out the documentation on the wiki and have volunteers come in and fill it out.
I definitely want to volunteer in that effort, but I’m finding free time impossible to come by when working 70+ hours a week…hopefully by the end of May things will calm down at work.
interesting topic, I wrote a couple wiki articles recently and at first didnt sign them, but then I thought someone might want to contact me to update or fix some part of the tutorial so I signed them. I can see the reasoning why this might discourage someone else from editing it though and since its not helping anyone Im going to remove my signatures. Also Im going to agree with sfera I like the "for the total noob" articles.
@mud2005: don't get me wrong about those "by XXX". i don't want by any mean to depreciate your or anyone's else contribution to the wiki.
if you think it's necessary we could set up a "two pass" system with a user article sandbox which mature in a "final" knowledge base. what i mean is that it would be cool to have a clear, explicit, manual-like wiki section where you can read without asking yourself who user XXX is and what he has to do with let's say TextureState. maintaining the wiki is the responsibility of all jme users (i have to admit that i'm not a good example with respect to that :P)
please don't get me wrong. i didn't contribute even a single wiki article until now and i'm grateful for each one of them (it's time the devs and jme users don't have to spend explaining stuff - they can spend the same time improving jme).
I'm looking back on some of the articles I contributed and realized I didn't sign any of them with my name…I guess I do prefer to write wiki/read articles semi-anonymously I guess it would make it easier for people to contribute, when they don't feel like they're mangling someone else's work…
I don't have any problem with people saying "By: FooBar Von Snizer" after the title of the article they started, kind of like @author in source code, because that makes it easier to ask questions later.
First I'll start by pointing out I'm grateful for all the people who've put the time and effort into writing wiki articles for us all and I certainly don't want to detract from anyone.
@darkfrog: That's true I didn't really think about it from that point of view
@sfera: I think you do understand what I meant by point 2
But just in case the first paragraph in dougnukem's last post was the kind of thing I was getting at. That someone is more likely to seek out the original author to update the tutorial than update it themselves.
@mud2005: I think this is the reason most people signed the articles they wrote, I certainly don't think anyone was "glory hunting". But I think if anyone has a question about a wiki article they can just post there question on the forum allowing anyone who knows (including the original author) to answer. This also solved problems with original authors leaving (:-o) jME. Or if they must contact the original author for some reason they can just use the history to see who did what.
Really I think I've over looked this whole core (user guide) part which is where the professionalism should shine. So I think you've voided my first point, but I still think the second point is valid.
I do not want to start a "flame" but I feel I have to say what I think, even if my contribute to the wiki is a very small article. I hope I will explain it in a understandable English and I am sorry for any error (ask me if there is something hard to interpret).
I firmly beliebe in ownership, more preciselly in paternity of work. I also firmly believe in Open Source software, documentation or art (no matter what license) and in this period almost all my efforts in development are becoming, one by one, Open Source. Moreover, I firmly believe in the "nopatents" movement, that is fighting from years against "out of control" patents laws here in Europe.
But I am mainly an author and an artist first than a developer. May be for this reason or for any else (I do not know), I believe that an author always have to sign its work. And I think that adding the "by Someone" phrase next to the title of an article is very, very professional.
imho a comparison between an artwork and documentation is quite odd. usually if you write open source code and documentation you expect others to change it and use it somewhere else (and this usually happens quite fast and often - not only 2-3 changes all of them derived from the original). imho it's not the same what you expect to be done with your artwork, even if you publish it under some "open" license.
so to get back to the wiki stuff, as soon as the article undergoes a few changes, you're not the only author anymore. all the people who changed the article "sign" the work if they want to or not (the version history).
usually signing something has a meaning. if by that you mean "this is mine", then you shouldn't use a wiki. if you want others to be able to contact you, well, they will anyways because to every change one can see the (nick)name of the author.
don't get me wrong, i think that if you create some artistic content of any kind or write a non-wiki article one should sign it and if it's reused the original author should be at least credited. but this aleardy happens in the wiki and there's no need to put name tags near each paragraph.
As I supposed you do not fully understand what I mean.
sfera said: imho it's not the same what you expect to be done with your artwork, even if you publish it under some "open" license.
This is not true. For example vector/bezier artworks can be changed as like as source code.
sfera said: so to get back to the wiki stuff, as soon as the article undergoes a few changes, you're not the only author anymore.
This is not exactly true. You misunderstood the meaning of "paternity of a work". For the Copyright laws in many countries (and there is also a unified Copyright law for all countries) you always remain the author. Moreover many Open Source licenses (like GPL) do not affect Copyright paternity but introduce the concept of Copyleft that is quite a different thing.
sfera said: usually signing something has a meaning. if by that you mean "this is mine", then you shouldn't use a wiki. if you want others to be able to contact you, well, they will anyways because to every change one can see the (nick)name of the author.
No I mean "this is my creation". It is different. One thing is owning an object, other thing is owning the paternity of that object. For example, if you buy the "Gioconda" you become the phisical owner of that picture, puth the author remains Leonardo Da Vinci.
sfera said: don't get me wrong, i think that if you create some artistic content of any kind or write a non-wiki article one should sign it and if it's reused the original author should be at least credited. but this _aleardy_ happens in the wiki and there's no need to put name tags near each paragraph.
That's the fact. When I published my little article I did not know that wiki logs authors history. At the same time, I also think that near the title could exist something like "by Aaaaa" or "original author Aaaaa" and suddenly next: "last modification by Bbbbb". Consider it as a suggestion. What I say is not becouse I am involved (it does not matter to me what anyone will do with my little, stupid article); I just think that it is right.
