bingusdingus had a point

[stairmaster]

perhaps the devs shouldn't throw the baby (legitimate criticism) out with the bathwater just because the guy got a little bit heated. Perhaps this closemindedness is why you guys haven't been able to respond to the declining server pop to any meaningful extent.

[bingusdingus]

Thanks for the support bro. Its even worse that the admins then proceeded to do the "we're gonna repost your opinion like a copypasta to clown it" meme, immediately after locking the thread. Not a good look, but I don't think anyone cares anymore. I need my post to get approved to post here now, so I guess I ruffled someone's feathers.

[Jacquerel]

if you make a topic and say "I will not be reading any replies" it will be closed because you don't want anyone to reply to it
if I didn't want anyone to see it I would have deleted it
he said everything he wanted to say and then said "nobody respond to this I don't want a conversation", you got everything that you wanted

I don't think reposting it as a copypasta was a good idea but I didn't do that so you'll have to see what those guys say about it

[bingusdingus]

if you make a topic and say "I will not be reading any replies" it will be closed because you don't want anyone to reply to it
if I didn't want anyone to see it I would have deleted it
he said everything he wanted to say and then said "nobody respond to this I don't want a conversation", you got everything that you wanted

I don't think reposting it as a copypasta was a good idea but I didn't do that so you'll have to see what those guys say about it

Honestly, I don't blame you for locking the thread. I think that was fair.

[Stabbystab]

I said it in the decap discussion but I’ve lost all faith in not just the coders but tg administration as a whole. I feel like Everytime I come back theirs some new dumb change, the spear change was the most recent burn and even though it’s gone now it should have never happened. I feel like our voices as a community are not listened to and now pop has been murdered.

[mrmelbert]

Thanks for the support bro. Its even worse that the admins then proceeded to do the "we're gonna repost your opinion like a copypasta to clown it" meme, immediately after locking the thread. Not a good look, but I don't think anyone cares anymore. I need my post to get approved to post here now, so I guess I ruffled someone's feathers.

If it makes you feel any better I'd have clowned on it if I wasn't an admin

I said it in the decap discussion but I’ve lost all faith in not just the coders but tg administration as a whole. I feel like Everytime I come back theirs some new dumb change, the spear change was the most recent burn and even though it’s gone now it should have never happened. I feel like our voices as a community are not listened to and now pop has been murdered.

The community is not a monolith, there is no single change which is universally approved by everyone. No matter what you do you're gonna upset someone. The spear change for example, (assuming you're talking about them being unable to break lockers? Not sure which change you mean) that was done by a member of the community.

But ultimately it's like, entirely understandable to lose favor in people if they broadly start to swing another way, I don't blame you. It is what it is

[bingusdingus]

If it makes you feel any better I'd have clowned on it if I wasn't an admin

If you weren't an admin you wouldn't have been able to reply to a locked post in the first place. Which was entirely the issue I had. Clowning on people is well and good unless you're literally stopping someone from responding back, then its just bullying.

[Stabbystab]

Thanks for the support bro. Its even worse that the admins then proceeded to do the "we're gonna repost your opinion like a copypasta to clown it" meme, immediately after locking the thread. Not a good look, but I don't think anyone cares anymore. I need my post to get approved to post here now, so I guess I ruffled someone's feathers.

If it makes you feel any better I'd have clowned on it if I wasn't an admin

I said it in the decap discussion but I’ve lost all faith in not just the coders but tg administration as a whole. I feel like Everytime I come back theirs some new dumb change, the spear change was the most recent burn and even though it’s gone now it should have never happened. I feel like our voices as a community are not listened to and now pop has been murdered.

The community is not a monolith, there is no single change which is universally approved by everyone. No matter what you do you're gonna upset someone. The spear change for example, (assuming you're talking about them being unable to break lockers? Not sure which change you mean) that was done by a member of the community.

But ultimately it's like, entirely understandable to lose favor in people if they broadly start to swing another way, I don't blame you. It is what it is

I don’t necessarily hate anyone it’s just after all the times I’ve been burnt by shitty changes im done with tg and i dont really blame or hate anyone in particular it’s a collective of events. Also yeah the spear losing the skill to break lockers was the change I mentioned.

[Jacquerel]

for the record I think melbert replied before I did and thus got in before the thread was locked and did not have any warning or idea that I was going to close it before you could reply

[Vekter]

Thanks for the support bro. Its even worse that the admins then proceeded to do the "we're gonna repost your opinion like a copypasta to clown it" meme, immediately after locking the thread. Not a good look, but I don't think anyone cares anymore. I need my post to get approved to post here now, so I guess I ruffled someone's feathers.

Clowning aside, he didn't have a point, because coding by consensus introduces all kinds of power dynamic bullshit and results in things like nerfing unpopular antags/events into the ground instead of fixing them properly because "well they voted for this, we have to do it now, right?". At a large scale, players don't have an idea as to what the actual concept or direction of the game should be.

If Overwatch was coded by consensus, there are at least four characters that wouldn't be in the game anymore and the balance would be completely fucked because nobody who plays the game at a casual level has any reasonable concept of how balance should work on the whole because it's all based on their personal experiences, not any actual data.

[bingusdingus]

If Overwatch was coded by consensus, there are at least four characters that wouldn't be in the game anymore and the balance would be completely fucked because nobody who plays the game at a casual level has any reasonable concept of how balance should work on the whole because it's all based on their personal experiences, not any actual data.

Overwatch is a property owned by a company that hires people to work on it for them. This ownership affords them the ability to make executive decisions involving the game that they believe is right because it belongs to them. I don't get how I have to keep bringing up that SS13 is a community project and the coders don't own shit. You're not an enlightened individual for having created things for a project that everyone has access to, the only reason coders have a say is because they are the ones that hold the keys at this particular moment. I'm so fucking tired of this idea of coder exceptionalism that people try to push. Do you really think coders have that much more insight into the game? People care for SS13 on so many different levels, you don't need to actively contribute to be able to understand things like code and statistics, its even borderline manipulative to push the narrative that you need to be a coder to be informed. It's absolutely arrogant to believe that one particular group knows what's right above all by providence of their subjective experience and not others.

[Vekter]

Overwatch is a property owned by a company that hires people to work on it for them. This ownership affords them the ability to make executive decisions involving the game that they believe is right because it belongs to them. I don't get how I have to keep bringing up that SS13 is a community project and the coders don't own shit. You're not an enlightened individual for having created things for a project that everyone has access to, the only reason coders have a say is because they are the ones that hold the keys at this particular moment. I'm so fucking tired of this idea of coder exceptionalism that people try to push. Do you really think coders have that much more insight into the game? People care for SS13 on so many different levels, its absolutely arrogant to believe that one particular group knows what's right above all by providence of their subjective experience and not others.

The problem is that you're seeing people say "A project needs a group of people who generally know what's going on and what direction they think is correct to keep things on course or it turns into a nightmare shitshow" and think they're saying "Coders are just better than you, cope and seethe". I can't really blame you for having that mindset, because there have been coders before who said something similar, but I (and the majority of the rest of the coders) are saying the latter.

I never said "you need to be a coder to be informed", I said that the maintainers have a better idea of where they and the head coders want the project to go than you do. You are limited in the scope of what you can experience by virtue of being a single person who can only ever really experience one limited view of the game at a time, whereas the people who are selected as maintainers have been around long enough and demonstrated enough knowledge of the code and understanding of what the head coders want out of the project that they were given authority over the project. Nobody here is saying that your opinion isn't valid or important or worth listening to. We're saying that your opinion is not the only opinion and may not line up with what the project's leads want the game to be.

We don't do votes because players, as a whole, are not responsible for leading the project or determining what direction things go in. The benefit of having a small group of people determine the game's direction is that we stay consistent on what we're doing and we have a generally stable product as a result. People can usually expect that they can wake up tomorrow and not see huge swaths of the game change because a group of people didn't like them. The downside is that sometimes things you want to happen aren't going to happen and vice versa. If it makes you feel any better, I've been trying to get cryo pods re-added for years but haven't been able to convince the maintainers that they're worth adding.

If you'd like to see if you can make code by consensus work...



This button exists. Learn how to use it.

To be fair to you, I think what you probably want more than hard-set "code is law" code by consensus voting is for your feedback to be listened to more, which is a reasonable concern but one that we've generally beaten to death over the years. The basic way it shakes out is "Your feedback will be listened to, but whether or not it's acted on is a different story". If you don't like that, I have nothing that I can really do for you in the long run other than reassure you that coders do actually listen to feedback, it's just that feedback that boils down to "Add this" or "Don't add this" is not very good feedback.

[GPeckman]

To be fair to you, I think what you probably want more than hard-set "code is law" code by consensus voting is for your feedback to be listened to more, which is a reasonable concern but one that we've generally beaten to death over the years. The basic way it shakes out is "Your feedback will be listened to, but whether or not it's acted on is a different story". If you don't like that, I have nothing that I can really do for you in the long run other than reassure you that coders do actually listen to feedback, it's just that feedback that boils down to "Add this" or "Don't add this" is not very good feedback.

There's plenty of middle ground between the status quo and code by consensus. As an example, take the headmin elections. Players are allowed to vote for 1 of the 3 headmins each term, granting them a valuable say in how policy is designed, but without turning it into rules by consensus. A similar system could be implemented with headcoders; doesn't that sound like a much better situation that what we have now?

[Vekter]

To be fair to you, I think what you probably want more than hard-set "code is law" code by consensus voting is for your feedback to be listened to more, which is a reasonable concern but one that we've generally beaten to death over the years. The basic way it shakes out is "Your feedback will be listened to, but whether or not it's acted on is a different story". If you don't like that, I have nothing that I can really do for you in the long run other than reassure you that coders do actually listen to feedback, it's just that feedback that boils down to "Add this" or "Don't add this" is not very good feedback.

There's plenty of middle ground between the status quo and code by consensus. As an example, take the headmin elections. Players are allowed to vote for 1 of the 3 headmins each term, granting them a valuable say in how policy is designed, but without turning it into rules by consensus. A similar system could be implemented with headcoders; doesn't that sound like a much better situation that what we have now?

Not really, because I feel like we already have a lot of people who vote for headmins based on general vibes and promises they may or may not even be capable of fulfilling, which would be even more of a headache with electable head coders. Imagine if anyone could run as head coder and we got someone who promised to re-add cloning or decapitations but knew jack all about actually coding. They would do the one thing they wanted and be completely useless for six months because they don't know how any of this works.

It works better for head admins because being a head admin doesn't really require any technical knowledge that can't be taught in a few days' time. Head coders need to be able to understand how DM code works at a pretty high level to understand whether or not something being merged might break something else.

[GPeckman]

There's plenty of middle ground between the status quo and code by consensus. As an example, take the headmin elections. Players are allowed to vote for 1 of the 3 headmins each term, granting them a valuable say in how policy is designed, but without turning it into rules by consensus. A similar system could be implemented with headcoders; doesn't that sound like a much better situation that what we have now?

Not really, because I feel like we already have a lot of people who vote for headmins based on general vibes and promises they may or may not even be capable of fulfilling, which would be even more of a headache with electable head coders. Imagine if anyone could run as head coder and we got someone who promised to re-add cloning or decapitations but knew jack all about actually coding. They would do the one thing they wanted and be completely useless for six months because they don't know how any of this works.

It works better for head admins because being a head admin doesn't really require any technical knowledge that can't be taught in a few days' time. Head coders need to be able to understand how DM code works at a pretty high level to understand whether or not something being merged might break something else.

I don't see why the elected headcoder couldn't give input on other PRs. Not even technical input, just things like "I think this is good/bad for the game." Even if the elected headcoder didn't know anything about how to code, I still don't think it would make a big difference. If the headmin election system was copied exactly, there'd be two other headcoders, one appointed by the host and one voted on by the maintainer team, and those ones would certainly know how to code. Hell, 2 out of 3 headcoders would still be an improvement over some periods in TG's history; didn't have a long period where Oranges was basically the only active headcoder?

Edit: I'm not actually sure we have 3 active headcoders right now. It looks like Ninjanomnom hasn't sent any messages in discord or opened any PRs since October.

[Vekter]

I don't see why the elected headcoder couldn't give input on other PRs. Not even technical input, just things like "I think this is good/bad for the game." Even if the elected headcoder didn't know anything about how to code, I still don't think it would make a big difference. If the headmin election system was copied exactly, there'd be two other headcoders, one appointed by the host and one voted on by the maintainer team, and those ones would certainly know how to code. Hell, 2 out of 3 headcoders would still be an improvement over some periods in TG's history; didn't have a long period where Oranges was basically the only active headcoder?

Edit: I'm not actually sure we have 3 active headcoders right now. It looks like Ninjanomnom hasn't sent any messages in discord or opened any PRs since October.

It wouldn't really change anything in practice because the elected headcoder would just kind of exist and be overruled by the other two on most things. I guess it would look good for optics but otherwise it wouldn't really be that effective.

Hot take but I think the system we have now is fine? Wallening was an issue but not for the reasons that having elected head coders would fix (it was because it was rushed out the door when not ready, not because it sucked as an idea).

[GPeckman]

It wouldn't really change anything in practice because the elected headcoder would just kind of exist and be overruled by the other two on most things. I guess it would look good for optics but otherwise it wouldn't really be that effective.

That's a rather cynical take, and even if its true the maintainer team could really use some help when it comes to optics.

Hot take but I think the system we have now is fine? Wallening was an issue but not for the reasons that having elected head coders would fix (it was because it was rushed out the door when not ready, not because it sucked as an idea).

The core issue with wallening itself is that it was unfinished. But that's not the same as the issue with the maintainer team's handling of wallening; the issue there is that they completely ignored how unpopular wallening was with the playerbase until someone forked the server and it was impossible to keep ignoring. Its good that they reverted it eventually, but it shouldn't have been merged in the first place, and it shouldn't have taken a fork to get them to revert it.

[Vekter]

The core issue with wallening itself is that it was unfinished. But that's not the same as the issue with the maintainer team's handling of wallening; the issue there is that they completely ignored how unpopular wallening was with the playerbase until someone forked the server and it was impossible to keep ignoring. Its good that they reverted it eventually, but it shouldn't have been merged in the first place, and it shouldn't have taken a fork to get them to revert it.

Fair, but I'm not really sure what "let people elect a head coder" will do to fix that, nor am I certain it's worth fixing it if it creates a bunch of other problems like "the game changing direction every six months".

[GPeckman]

It's possible that it wouldn't fix anything, but I can't really see it being any worse than what we have now. I also don't think the "changing design direction" would become more of a problem, but thats because its already pretty bad. As an example, Oranges has had a whole design document written for an RCD replacement for I don't even know how long, and nobody has coded it yet.

[iamgoofball]

It's possible that it wouldn't fix anything, but I can't really see it being any worse than what we have now. I also don't think the "changing design direction" would become more of a problem, but thats because its already pretty bad. As an example, Oranges has had a whole design document written for an RCD replacement for I don't even know how long, and nobody has coded it yet.

i coded it

[GPeckman]

It's possible that it wouldn't fix anything, but I can't really see it being any worse than what we have now. I also don't think the "changing design direction" would become more of a problem, but thats because its already pretty bad. As an example, Oranges has had a whole design document written for an RCD replacement for I don't even know how long, and nobody has coded it yet.

i coded it

Then why isn't it in the game yet?

[SpaceInaba]

how do you guys like live in real life with your "RETURN 2 TRADITION" brain parasite like things change. you're playing a game that has an open source repository. sometimes things are different, sometimes you like it sometimes you dont, but if the game received 0 changes for the past 20 years nobody would be playing it.

[TheFinalPotato]

There's plenty of middle ground between the status quo and code by consensus. As an example, take the headmin elections. Players are allowed to vote for 1 of the 3 headmins each term, granting them a valuable say in how policy is designed, but without turning it into rules by consensus. A similar system could be implemented with headcoders; doesn't that sound like a much better situation that what we have now?

I don't see why the elected headcoder couldn't give input on other PRs. Not even technical input, just things like "I think this is good/bad for the game." Even if the elected headcoder didn't know anything about how to code, I still don't think it would make a big difference. If the headmin election system was copied exactly, there'd be two other headcoders, one appointed by the host and one voted on by the maintainer team, and those ones would certainly know how to code. Hell, 2 out of 3 headcoders would still be an improvement over some periods in TG's history; didn't have a long period where Oranges was basically the only active headcoder?

Edit: I'm not actually sure we have 3 active headcoders right now. It looks like Ninjanomnom hasn't sent any messages in discord or opened any PRs since October.

Briefly:
People place too much stock in headcoder as a decisionmaking position, we exist to break ties between maintainers, hold keys to the repo, and to some extent provide a design direction (depends on the person, just like it does for maintainers). It isn't like headmin where you're the One GuyTM in charge of making decisions formally. Both because the decisions you get to make are predicated on people making prs to fill them (which is why some design directions end up stalled) and because that responsibility is split up into the rest of the maintainer team. We are not nearly as centralized as the admin team. (See: that time I made a pr removing the swag outfit and it got closed, etc).

I am not interested in giving someone who doesn't have experience with or interest in working on the game power over denying the work of others (most of the job since most prs are merged). Similarly I am not interested in restructuring our organization to reduce individual flexibility, introduce further politics and destabilize our contributors in the name of giving more power to the voice of people who can already make theirs heard.

This lack of formal power is why headcoders going inactive isn't the worst thing in the world, it doesn't really impact the day to day all that much.

Also this system gives me power and I have no reason to change it, that's the other part. I don't think that's my motivation here but I'm me right.

[GPeckman]

Briefly:
People place too much stock in headcoder as a decisionmaking position, we exist to break ties between maintainers, hold keys to the repo, and to some extent provide a design direction (depends on the person, just like it does for maintainers). It isn't like headmin where you're the One GuyTM in charge of making decisions formally. Both because the decisions you get to make are predicated on people making prs to fill them (which is why some design directions end up stalled) and because that responsibility is split up into the rest of the maintainer team. We are not nearly as centralized as the admin team. (See: that time I made a pr removing the swag outfit and it got closed, etc).

Honestly, I don't really believe that the maintainer team is more decentralized than the admin team. The headmins may make the rules, sure, but it's totally impossible for the headmins to review each and every administrative action taken by someone on the admin team. With the maintainer team, all the PRs are publicly available, so it's at least theoretically possible (albeit not necessarily feasible) for a headcoder to look at every PR.

I'm not sure what the swag outfit example is supposed to prove, either. It's entirely possible for headmins to get overruled on policy issues by the other two headmins, and in any event Mothblock's beheading removal PR serves as a great counterexample. There's at least one maintainer who does seem to want it reverted (Timberpoes), but Mothblocks was still able to block the revert by dint of being a headcoder.

I am not interested in giving someone who doesn't have experience with or interest in working on the game power over denying the work of others (most of the job since most prs are merged). Similarly I am not interested in restructuring our organization to reduce individual flexibility, introduce further politics and destabilize our contributors in the name of giving more power to the voice of people who can already make theirs heard.

Do you really think the current system can avoid drama and politics, after how wallening ended up?

[TheFinalPotato]

Honestly, I don't really believe that the maintainer team is more decentralized than the admin team. The headmins may make the rules, sure, but it's totally impossible for the headmins to review each and every administrative action taken by someone on the admin team. With the maintainer team, all the PRs are publicly available, so it's at least theoretically possible (albeit not necessarily feasible) for a headcoder to look at every PR.

Your lines are drawn wrong. The delineation of responsibility is blurrier.

I'm not sure what the swag outfit example is supposed to prove, either. It's entirely possible for headmins to get overruled on policy issues by the other two headmins, and in any event Mothblock's beheading removal PR serves as a great counterexample. There's at least one maintainer who does seem to want it reverted (Timberpoes), but Mothblocks was still able to block the revert by dint of being a headcoder.

Again, lines (which was my point). It is partially headcoder but this isn't exclusive to them, there's plenty I'd change if no other maints existed.

Do you really think the current system can avoid drama and politics, after how wallening ended up?

Yep, better then cycling the heads of the org every 6 months and giving whoever wins a popularity contest merge perms. We are not the admin team.

[GPeckman]

Your lines are drawn wrong. The delineation of responsibility is blurrier.

Again, I don't see how this is different from how the admin team works. Sure, the headcoders will defer to maintainers on certain topics like atmos, mining/economy, and so on. But the headmins often seem to do the same thing, like deferring to Timberpoes when it comes to silipol. You may need to explain these lines in a little more detail, or provide an example of how the maintainer team and admin team function differently.

Again, lines (which was my point). It is partially headcoder but this isn't exclusive to them, there's plenty I'd change if no other maints existed.

It seems to me like this is more because you don't want to make these changes than because you can't. Mothblocks has had no issues enforcing her own design goals reagarding beheading and stun batons.

Yep, better then cycling the heads of the org every 6 months and giving whoever wins a popularity contest merge perms. We are not the admin team.

Seems to be working just fine for the headmin team. And like I said, it doesn't even have to be all 3 headcoders. Even a single elected headcoder would go a long way towards making the playerbase feel more like their voices are heard.

[TheFinalPotato]

Again, I don't see how this is different from how the admin team works. Sure, the headcoders will defer to maintainers on certain topics like atmos, mining/economy, and so on. But the headmins often seem to do the same thing, like deferring to Timberpoes when it comes to silipol. You may need to explain these lines in a little more detail, or provide an example of how the maintainer team and admin team function differently.

One of these has a triad who control policy and a group who operate on that policy, the other has a group who controls code direction with a triad with theoretically more say at its top. It isn't that headcoders defer, it's that there are different maintainers (headcoders included) with more or less experience in different parts of the game and codebase. The power structure is/should be flatter.

It seems to me like this is more because you don't want to make these changes than because you can't. Mothblocks has had no issues enforcing her own design goals reagarding beheading and stun batons.

A headcoder who bulldozes the greater maintainer team leads to no team to operate the repo. Your comparison to moth's balance changes is a false equivalency.
I don't want to because I cannot, not without creating better justification at the very least. Just being a headcoder means nothing if I cannot convince my peers or at least get them to trust me, there will be none to merge the pr.
What it does mean is I have social capital to resolve disputes and in theory set a larger design direction, though I'm not too interested in that at this time. Design direction is a function of trust and argument, not purely having the greener name.
Being a maintainer means I can merge and close prs. This is I think the control you want for the playerbase, and it is a level of control I will never give them.

Seems to be working just fine for the headmin team. And like I said, it doesn't even have to be all 3 headcoders. Even a single elected headcoder would go a long way towards making the playerbase feel more like their voices are heard.

This isn't gonna happen. I'm explaining why for the sake of clarity, you are not going to convince me for reasons both in this post and not.

[GPeckman]

One of these has a triad who control policy and a group who operate on that policy, the other has a group who controls code direction with a triad with theoretically more say at its top. It isn't that headcoders defer, it's that there are different maintainers (headcoders included) with more or less experience in different parts of the game and codebase. The power structure is/should be flatter.

Like I said, similar dynamics exist with the admin team (albeit to a lesser degree), like how Timberpoes is the de-facto expert on silicon policy.

A headcoder who bulldozes the greater maintainer team leads to no team to operate the repo. Your comparison to moth's balance changes is a false equivalency.
I don't want to because I cannot, not without creating better justification at the very least. Just being a headcoder means nothing if I cannot convince my peers or at least get them to trust me, there will be none to merge the pr.
What it does mean is I have social capital to resolve disputes and in theory set a larger design direction, though I'm not too interested in that at this time. Design direction is a function of trust and argument, not purely having the greener name.

Given some of the stuff I've seen, I'm still pretty skeptical of that. As an example, during the wallening there were even maintainers who had reservations about it (e.g. Melbert with his alternative to the offset), but no maintainers resigned over it. What kind of changes could possibly be more controversial for the maintainer team?

Being a maintainer means I can merge and close prs. This is I think the control you want for the playerbase, and it is a level of control I will never give them.

Then for the sake of this community I hope you won't make the same mistakes you did during the wallening.

This isn't gonna happen. I'm explaining why for the sake of clarity, you are not going to convince me for reasons both in this post and not.

I'm aware that I won't be able to convince you, but you're not the only other person in this thread.

[oranges]

ss13 isn't owned, but tg sure is, and so is the codebase