Which give you full authority to pick who you want, and kick off who you don't. And since the project are your pets it seems to reason that you'd only want to pick the best for the job. People who you knew would get the job done.
To be brutally honest, I reviewed dozens and dozens of mods for SMF, and I never approved a great many of them, simply because they weren't up to standard, with a large percentage simply not even working in the first place, let alone reasonably tested.
Ah, I see now. Well I guess we can just only hope for those kinds of people who would be a good addition to come along. I'm not sure what a good alternative would be though. Community-centered approval doesn't sound too feasible...
In regards to the badges, there is the possibility of advertising the "Approved" badges in the same way that nightly builds or beta software could: It's not that they are unsafe, they just haven't been tested, so you should test them out yourself before putting them into a production environment
It is absolutely naive. But there is a solid point in there though. It's all about how to address things to the community that will end up swaying their opinion on it. Those that agree or understand will pass it on to newer members. Like how users in SMF reiterate the "never going to be paid" policy they have because it's been drilled into their heads so many times. But I guess if a Wedge Mod Review Squad idea seems like a far away dream then so would this.
Honestly, there is only so much preventative measures you can do though. There is a line where the burden of informing them ends and it ends up being their own fault. IMO, those people who used pre-2.0 Gold on production environments crossed that line.
When you say experience do you mean from the Cust Team? Because if so then there is no reason why you have to follow in the same path. It seems to me that if you were to adopt a rule about eligibility for MotM then you would stick to it, or hell any rule really.
Although I came to regret a great many things that happened during my time with SMF, I'm damned if I'm going to repeat their mistakes, and that's one of the things that I see as a mistake. The phrase at this point is simply, "Who watches the watchers?"
In another related note, there is one issue with people approving mods: who approves them when it's an approver releasing a mod? Another approver?
My thought was that any MotM badge that was given to a mod would stay there invariably. Just pointing that out there right now. So any pre-team badges that were given to a mod would stay there. As for the problem of restricting team participation to any MotM-like contest you have the option of still allowing the community to endorse the good quality of team mods. Sort of like a "Community Recommendation". Mods that get a certain amount of community votes are granted that badge. So while team mods can't get MotM or "Recommended" badges, there are still others available that they can get on the team like my previous example or "Most Downloaded". This way being on the Team doesn't close all of the doors for you, there are still some that are open. From what i've heard you say about being on the Cust team there was a lot of lack of will to write more mods because the joy of writing them was drained out of them. If the ability to be rewarded for good work was still (at least partially) available to them then it might reinforce them to keep writing good mods. Heh, I am ever the optimist.
As for team reviews, there doesn't seem to be any other way to go about it than having another approver to approve the mod. Though maybe it doesn't have to be that much. As long as another approver or the Team Lead can give the "sign off" of the mod then it's good to go. Or just leave it to the Lead to approve the Team's mods, though that might be giving them more work than they can handle.
Just adding on here, it might be better to reward those modders who provide good quality mods than worry about offending those who don't.
If mods are available from the get-go and given the stamp of approval as time goes on then there is no need to worry about this. Modders will have their mods available as soon as they hit the "Submit" button. However, in order to get that shiny "Approved" badge then they need to make sure that their work in up to par. This is where the system of using badges as rewards come into play. Those who want to write a shoddy piece of work (am I using the word 'shoddy' right?) then there is no holding them back. But at the same time you get out what you put in. The more work you put in the greater chance of it being noticed and having other people noticed, the less work you put in the less chance of getting super cool, fancy badges.
I like the idea of advancing from a support topic to a board. Give those the room that need it. Very smart.
What I really like about things like this is simply that they're not huge tasks to implement, meaning that we can actually implement it pretty quickly, and if it turns out that it isn't working that well, we can think about something else. The real success isn't whether something is a success, but how quickly you can move on through failures.
I just naturally assumed that if mods were elevated to their own board that the Author(s) would automatically be given Moderator status,
especially because of what happened with Nao. That was just a clusterf*ck in all the wrong ways.
You guys should remember that if needed you can always just poll the mod authors and ask them if they are comfortable with using topics or if they would prefer another kind of system. But you guys are good with polling the community so it would probably cross your minds if the need arises.
It seems to me that the audience for Wedge would be more capable of handling the occasional mod support here and there. Though I guess the argument could be made that even if they could...would they?
Which means that as much as we might notionally have this minimum tech knowledge level to cope with, the reality is less clear cut, and we are going to end up fielding non technical users' questions and problems, which includes mod support.
You also ask probably the most important question at the end there. Even if they could, would they? The answer is probably not. sm.org is the evidence here: of the people who offer support on mods, those providing support tend to be in the category of offering support on well documented/well known problems, or general functionality issues - not on debugging and cases that actually need support. Sure, there were and are a few people that do actually do support on mods that is a bit more than just helping users who don't bother to read support materials like the mod's page or FAQ, but they're so few and far between it's unreal.
You are probably right. People try to find the easiest ways to go about doing things. So if they find a forum that is simple and easy to use then they are going to find it.
The reason I asked that question though was because it was said somewhere, some time ago, that the people who are capable of supporting the software were off doing their own thing with their own forum/company. I don't see why the same wouldn't happen here. By sticking around and helping with support you either love the software and want to help, or you want to get on the team. Those who try for the latter get burnt out very quickly. Those for the former are, unfortunately, the minority when compared to everyone else.
So it seems that while community support would be great, it would be wise to think of a Plan B or C.
:PSorry about not quoting. I'm just trying to get through this post and then head to bed.
Actually, I didn't. But it was well worth it. Discussing D&D until 2:30 in the morning is loads of fun.
:eheh:Thank you though.
:)The problem was that there was this overriding mentality at sm.org that if one exists, that's good enough, even if it isn't necessarily the best way to do it. But if there is encouragement to build things that work, and work really well, the problem does actually go away for the most part, because normally the only reason for alternatives to crop up is if something actually doesn't work that well to start with.
There is a bad boomerang effect that comes up with allowing alternatives to thrive though. You can end up with
too many alternatives that it becomes a little silly. Case in point: the Portals over at SMF. There are, what is it, 5 different Portals available that all pretty much do the same thing. Yes, i'll agree that it's good that no one, single mod get a monopoly on it's target area. That's the worst that could happen. But with tons of similarly focused mods the users are left sitting at this intersection with 20 different streets that they can go down that all look the same. Which street do they choose to go down? My hope with the reward system is that those who have good quality would be able to stand out more, allowing the user and easier choice. Even with out that though, just be aware that by cutting off one extreme that the other extreme opens up.
