Airjoe wrote:

DivineTraveller wrote:

I believe it was mentioned that it is not open source because the source is too messy, or something.

Which is possibly one of the worst reasons ever to not be open source.

It's actually a pretty good reason in a community like this one. But it's not the only reason.

Airjoe wrote:

We haven't had a "Let's make BYOND open source" thread in a while, how about branching this off and discussing a bit if you and/or Lummox have some time?

No thanks. It's not going to happen anytime soon and there's no point debating it. There are a few users here I'd consider recruiting to help out (much the way Lummox JR got involved), so that is a possibility in the future should the interest be mutual.

The time spent "cleaning up" BYOND could be better spent making better games in BYOND. The software has limitations, for sure, but those are hardly the bottleneck here.

Airjoe wrote:

For what it's worth, I think there's a few of us who no longer have an interest in creating games on BYOND but would love to be able to work on a project like BYOND itself. Call me crazy, but I'd rather dig through the depths of BYOND's source than muck around in DM on some project I'll never finish- and there's the other benefit, we can do minor patches that make at least some difference other than increasing the filesize of our "Dead Projects" directory.

I think this is a case of the grass seeming greener. Working on BYOND itself only seems more appealing than your own projects.

If you want something smaller that still benefits the community, work on demos or tutorials. Someone said something somewhere (I forget who and where) about starting a BYOND-related wiki. I think this would be an excellent place for small demos, tutorials, and code snippets. In your free moments you could look over articles and make small changes or suggestions.

Currently it seems like people who contribute, if they do anything, just sit in the code problems or developer how-to forum and answer questions. If their time (and yours) was devoted to a wiki we could create an ever-improving BYOND resource. Any amount of free time, even just an hour a week, spent looking over the wiki and making improvements could make a difference.

Forum_account wrote:

I think this is a case of the grass seeming greener. Working on BYOND itself only seems more appealing than your own projects.

The grass is greener, it doesn't just look that way. I'm actively involved in the open source community at my university and thoroughly enjoy digging through open source projects like Firefox, VLC, and OpenBSD.

I don't want to baby a wiki, nor the forums for that matter. What I want is some experience with a real live project that needs the help, and BYOND is of course most interesting and needy! I see no negatives in opening up the source of BYOND, but I'm not the decision maker around here, nor am I the one with a vested stake in the project.

Tom wrote:

For the record, we have the reference setup to be comment-able but haven't opened that up to the public just yet. I was thinking that might work well as a wiki of sorts since people would add examples to the official documentation, which is rather sparse. But I'd be open to a separate wiki as well.

I don't know if comments would be enough. There are lots of topics related to things in the reference. It would be nice to have examples of all the ways you can use a certain proc, but having these examples as comments could make each page really cluttered. The reader would have to wade through comments, which could be a hassle too.

An official wiki would be nice. Pages could specify which items from the reference they use and the reference could link to those wiki pages. For instance, a page that explains how to create teleporters would be linked to by the reference pages for the Entered and locate procs.

Nadrew wrote:

I (...) worked out the first method of using BYOND keys with PHP

Unless it is a security issue, would you mind to consider releasing your BYOND certification via PHP?
This has been requested a couple of times already, but seems to have a rather low priority for BYOND, if any ;)

I'm hoping when it is comment-able, it is optional to view the comments. That'll take longer for the pages to load.

Kaioken wrote:

Tom wrote:

we have the reference setup to be comment-able but haven't opened that up to the public just yet.

Yeah, it should stay that way. We all know how counter-productive it can be when beginners or kids that think they're experts try to help or teach others.
We already constantly see people picking up bad habits from bad demos, for example. No need to make that worse.

The benefit of a wiki is that anyone can contribute. Some people might not have the time or knowledge to write a complete tutorial or demo. A wiki lets them make whatever contributions they can, whenever they can. If their ideas aren't that great other people can refine them. Starting out by thinking "uh oh, noobs could ruin it" is the worst mindset you could possibly have. It's especially important that people who don't have a good grasp of DM contribute. You have to know what topics they struggle with and what their misunderstandings are to be able to help them.

Heh, shouldn't be a problem. The comments are also in the bottom, so the whole reference entry will load first.

And at any case, you can always simply view the DM Reference in the built-in Dream Maker version. That doesn't require internet access, saves bandwidth, has built-in indexing and search, etc.
The disadvantage is that you won't see official comments added to the entries, which are essentially appendages to the entry - I feel this should be remedied, as people working in Dream Maker and programming while wisely working in-tandem with the built-in reference are missing out. Official comments should be included/viewable from there.

Forum_account wrote:

The benefit of a wiki is that anyone can contribute.

It's not "the benefit", and what works in other environments won't necessarily work in every environment. Please pay attention to my point and don't assume that I just threw my statements out there.

Some people might not have the time or knowledge to write a complete tutorial or demo. A wiki lets them make whatever contributions they can, whenever they can.

If their ideas aren't that great other people can refine them.

You can't always be ideal, hence I spoke practically. Also remember that this has been discussed before. More so, other than logic, there is also past experience taken into account.
If the wiki was to gain any notable popularity (it would if it got running and was then officially endorsed and promoted), we wouldn't have the manpower to constantly keep tabs on every random change made by every random user (while approving helpers is much easier).
You can't just naively say "if there are mistakes, they'll be corrected" and leave it at that. First, even disregarding the sheer amount of "random noobs", there are by far more developers who aren't proficient in the language than those who are. Then there's even a smaller percentage of proficient people who'd be constantly active to do 'the black work' of constantly fixing errors. You aren't at all likely to find that most errors would be corrected within any acceptable time frame. When we had the Bwicki, it had a lot of good, potentially helpful content, but that content also often included improper code and bad habits. These were mostly just left there. Of course, you can't leave it to the reader to know to take the general idea of the article but disregard parts such as the usr abuse in the implementation example or its backwards design.
Then, not to mention miscellaneous issues such as users simply not taking it well when their attempted help is corrected. A beginner trying to help a beginner and then starting to immediately protest, whine and argue (perhaps because "it works so it must be correct"), after being corrected by several veterans, in a stubborn manner is no unseen phenomenon in the forums.
So yes, it's best not to get there.

P.S. A submission approval system is good for comments, but I don't think it'd be sufficiently effective or convenient for wiki changes, neither does it tie in with the essence of a wiki.

Starting out by thinking "uh oh, noobs could ruin it" is the worst mindset you could possibly have.

You need to have a realistic and practical mindset, rather than a "Oh, it'll be fine" one.
Sadly, that is the case in our community. Do you deny that?

"uh oh, noobs could ruin it"

Incidentally, it could be argued that noobs happened to have ruined the games, demos and libraries hubs.

It's especially important that people who don't have a good grasp of DM contribute.

Uh, hell no, because then it's most likely the opposite of 'contributing'.

You have to know what topics they struggle with and what their misunderstandings are to be able to help them.

o_O And a wiki, an information repository, is the place and way to find that out?
You're bringing in something not as relevant as you think it is. And obviously, we can already tell what people are having issues with from the developer forums, there isn't a problem on that front.