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As good as any

Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2006 9:48 pm
by punt
Haven't rambled in ages, and this seemed as good as any.

Ever have something you just loved. Did it make you upset when others were not as enthralled as yourself over it?

What if one need attention, and reinvigarate a community. How would you go about it?

Ever wonder why people associate lengthly devlopment times, with defacto better quality?

What do all these have in common? We are seeing it all play out. First let me be very clear, this is just one interpretation of events. It does not necessarly mean it was the motivation for actions take.


Ok, many know Orbsydia closed down. Well, did it really? First it was closed due to stress. Then it morphed to a farwell. Then onto a reorganization. So no one really knows what the status is.

However, lets look at we have heard.
1. Orbsdyia states it is after the good of its community. Those who are part of the community seem to support that proposition.

2. Revanal made numerous posts on RunUO making it clear that the closing was a "TEAM" decision. He also in posts, has stated he is an "Orbsyida developer". Finally, he stated that the real reason for the closure would only be discloused if Kayhbel wanted it to be.

3. A message was posted by one user on Ryandor that contained what was supposingly a log between Irro and himself. The log closes with esstentially Irro indicating: "Show your love for Orb by posting on Runuo"

Now, lets assume item 1 is true, and wont be questioned for the moment. If one closed due to stress (cost has been clarified not to have been the reason), was there was to mitigate the impact to the community one cares so much? Can it be down in a manner such as to relieve the stress? It seems obvious one could lock the forums, and post a statement the site would be closed in N days. This would have allowed the community access to the information and utilities up there, and time to make other arrangements. At the same time, with no feedback enabled, the stress would be gone. Many variations of this theme could have been choosen.

Yet, the most disruptive approach was choosen. Why might that be. What if, one wanted to reinvigartae a community. Orbsdyia activity was mostly becoming a Runuo Script forum (by this persons observation). Although some development was claimed to be ongoing, no release dates had been established. What if it was to get attention to the site? And inspire an outcoming of attention by the sudden departure.

Yes, this is speculative. But it was very effective if that had been the objective. Now lets look at the some other data. Revanal stated it was a team decision, and the "real" reason would be discoulsed only if Kahybel decided. If a team, why would one member be the deciding factor. More curious, is all the data in the threads that Revanal has posted, has been edited out. Now, on a different thread on the same forum, Revanall states how he was surprised of the closing, and only found out through someone else. A very strange twist of events, that one is left to wonder why the change story.

As if an epedemic, the post on Ryandor's thread has also been edited. No long can one read the log between what was claimed to be Irro and himself. So one can not see the implication for attention, by the closing remarks.

Yet all these changes, there is no public questioning. No posts have been made requesting clarification. In fact, the few posts that where made, indicating the opinon that the closing of Orbsydia would not be too determinal. where quickly challenged, but by little data that was unbiased.

One post by Revanal went so far as to indicate, that only development that took a long time would produce quality products. That was at least my read of it. I have seen no data relating developement cycles with quality. I have seen quality products in short order, and long developement cycles that produced low quality. Time is just a measurement of how long one takes. It gives no one indicating if they are working on it during the "extra time", or the additional time leads to beter design and less bugs. It would seem to vary by individual. But that was not to mentioned.

So, where is this all heading. It goes back to the questions at the begining. One would have been hard pressed to generate more positive attention for a community, then by the sequence of events Orbsydia has taken. Whether the intent, or not. it is the result. There is some data at least , that may one to at least consider that possiblity. The community is quickly becoming easily guided by what is fed to it. Look at the data, and make ones own decision.

The same is true for quality and develoment. Look at all the factors. I think one will find out, that there is little correlation to "quality" (however one defines that) and length of time. To many other variables contribute to it.

Recognize that ones thoughts and feelings of importance of somethings, may not be the same as others. This does not make others wrong. Just as yours are not wrong.

Here, in one major event, we have shades of all the questions, and their motivations.

Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2006 11:35 pm
by xir
I haven't really being keeping up to date lately with UO news. It is a shame orbsydia has decided to ''go to sleep``. It was one of the better neutral sites where one could go to discuss UO development without being moderated capriciously. The orbsydia site seems to now say it is just down for repairs. It seems the orbsydia site is always getting modified or revamped for one reason or another. Perhaps that is the "stress" that is being mentioned. I would think the owner would perhaps employ some reliable volunteers to monitor the site if that is the reason. The reason however was not given so I assume it was something else. I thought that the site had a good community and i don't really understand why it'd be taken down on a whim with no reason to the community. I remember orbsydia a few years ago was an independent group of developers that worked together to provide uo development tools. I think nowadays it is more or less developers working on their own. Another thing I personally didn't like was the over hype of new features, release dates, etc. of new tools. I think it perhaps puts more stress on the individual developer to reach those deadlines than a group of developers, especially since it is only hobby development. I also like the idea of a group of developers working together towards a common goal in their ow time. I haven't really been involved much in shared code but I would think other developers to offer support and help each other would be much more beneficial and interesting than working on your own, especially on large applications.

On another note, it depends what you mean by ''quality``. Quality to the end-user could be different to quality from a software design point of view. A tool could be considered quality if it has loads of features and works well. However it could just be ''hacked`` together without regard to standard engineering methodologies that encourage good modularity, adaptability, extensibility, traceability, etc. etc. Most engineering methodologies attempt to reduce development time however, so I guess that is a mote point. On the other hand I understand the proposition that development time doesn't have any effect on quality. I personally like to develop code that is adaptable which would reduce the time needed perhaps on the next similar application that would be created. For example a reasonable quality .NET application could be designed using the already written UO libraries much quicker than an equivalent C application from scratch. That doesn't mean that one is better quality than another, but one is definitely slower in development. So I guess in conclusion, quality isn't proportional to the amount of development time but rather is dependent, as you say on a number of factors.