[DIS] Ending Trello and Graphics Development Forum

[Wombat]

We may be ending our use of Trello and this forum for graphics. We may be moving to the wiki, which does a better job at project organizing and graphics organizing before they are committed to the repo. Work in Progress [WIP] art can be updated easily and the changes can also be viewed. In the summary, it can be marked as [FND] when the artist is ready to have it reviewed and marked as [RC] and moved to its associated project page just by adding a category tag. Discussions on art can also be had on the image's talk page or at the project page.

There is still much to be done to organize the wiki to get the most out of it, but I feel that trello doesn't work for us during low activity periods. The graphics development trello is cluttered with old incomplete art and also art that isn't dedicated to a project. Art that is for projects is hard to get the big picture if the project is close to do because there are too many cards floating around....overall, it is very confusing for someone that isn't familar with the projects being worked on. It is hard to know where an artist can step in and add a hand.

I feel the forums don't work for us because chatter about art clutters up where art can be located. It doesn't organize projects very well and old stuff gets buried and often lost. Also with the wiki, when uploading art, we can make it more explicit for our present licensing. People often will start a new piece of art that was unrelated, that later makes sense to be in a project.

This move will more than likely happen, but if there is strong reasoning for us not to end both trello and graphics development, I'd like to read it. In the end, we may just have one general development forum for everything content related (graphics, music, mapping, etc.), so new artists still could use the forums until they are trained to use the wiki for art.

[Ablu]

Hi,

I liked trello while we did our LPC entry. But we only worked with it for one month + planning and were really active there (And we did not really do art work there, only idea tracking). However I honestly did not check that trello board since ages now (Well i just did, but (luckily) there was no activity ). It is really annoying not to be able to get mail notifications about everything or at least an RSS feed. Also trello was quite closed for new contributors since they first need to get added by somebody (where it is not really obvious for somebody how they achieve that). But while I do not really like trello for this kind of projects I am sceptical about the idea to use the wiki...

The graphics development trello is cluttered with old incomplete art and also art that isn't dedicated to a project. Art that is for projects is hard to get the big picture if the project is close to do because there are too many cards floating around....overall, it is very confusing for someone that isn't familar with the projects being worked on.
[...]
I feel the forums don't work for us because chatter about art clutters up where art can be located. It doesn't organize projects very well and old stuff gets buried and often lost.

I do not really understand how this differs a lot from the current trello use case. You still upload an image, add a small comment to it. And assign it to a tag (well it is called Category). If you are new to TMW and you do not know which projects are being worked I do not understand how it is easier to understand a bunch of images floating around with categories than a whole bunch of cards floating around with tags (where you also have some kind of discussion in chronological order).
I know that you can track different revisions of files on the wiki and add comments to them. But to read those comments you need to switch to talk pages and read the revision comments (which are on different pages). The new project page would be the old trello card on the "Content Development Board".

To me this all reads like you want to stick to the normal trello workflow, but simulate it via a wiki with worse / more complex user experience and really easier for new contributors.

However I would like to see proper project pages which are not discussions about the project but a description of the project itself (So an edited page, not a chronological list of comments or completely undocumented decisions since it was only discussed on IRC somewhen).

Please do not take this as a "strong reasoning" against ending the development on trello (I hope graphics development still goes on (It reads a bit weird to me in the last paragraph )). I only wanted to share my opinion on this and not to say that "you are doing it all wrong". I did not really work on TMW development and I am not entirely sure about how it could be done better. But at the moment I am very irritated by the cluttered development discussions on the IRC / Trello and forum and atm I am feeling unable to track the development (and therefore unable to contribute to it). So I think it cannot hurt to try it out. If it works out it is great. If not it hopefully helps to understand the problems and to find a maybe better alternative.

Regards and please excuse my bad english (I somehow feel like i already start forgetting everything from school :/),
Ablu

[EJlol]

From the reasons you listed I understand moving away from Trello and the forums is a good move. However I disagree with moving to the wiki. In my opinion the purpose of the wiki is to be a guidebook for the game.

The wiki is making good progress to that goal. I should mention that the "goal", is my personal goal of it. I don't know how others think about it. The way I see the wiki is that contains two parts. The first and most important part is a guidebook for players. It tells about how to play the games, the rules, quests, items, etc. The second part is about the development. It explains how set up a server, how to create maps, quests, etc. But it doesn't tell which maps, quests, etc are being created, it only explains how to do it. simply said it's a guide how to develop things for the mana world.

You could argue that developing graphics fits the second part. In my opinion it does not however. It just doesn't fit with the "guidebook goal". I can understand other people see this differently though.

Also in the past there have been several attempts to do development stuff on the wiki. This (in my opinion) ended in a big mess with lots of proposals, outdated pages, etc. A lot of these pages can still be found here. What will make your attempt different? Why will it stay organized? Why will it stay up to date?

I'm not saying using the wiki is wrong. You could always try it out. I do suggest to use another namespace (different from dev:), and keep it seperate from the guidebook stuff.

[Jaxad0127]

List of project: http://wiki.themanaworld.org/index.php/ ... y:Projects
Crypt is beginning to look like what the projects would be.

We can add more categories for WIP stuff and art not on a larger project to keep track of it

From the reasons you listed I understand moving away from Trello and the forums is a good move. However I disagree with moving to the wiki. In my opinion the purpose of the wiki is to be a guidebook for the game.

Do you have a better suggestion?

Also in the past there have been several attempts to do development stuff on the wiki. This (in my opinion) ended in a big mess with lots of proposals, outdated pages, etc. A lot of these pages can still be found here. What will make your attempt different? Why will it stay organized? Why will it stay up to date?

I'm not saying using the wiki is wrong. You could always try it out. I do suggest to use another namespace (different from dev:), and keep it seperate from the guidebook stuff.

No matter what we choose, we'll need to keep it curated. The wiki was largely ignored for a while, hence the build up. But if we actively use it for development, that should be a lot better. Moving some development work from forums to wiki would help that.

[Wombat]

For the artists that work on their own thing, as well as new artists, they can continue posting pixel art on the forums, though all are encouraged to use the wiki. The trellos might still be useful per project, but we will work towards getting all major official projects their own project page as well as add uncategorized art to the wiki to more properly utilize it. We will most likely move forward with ending both the graphics and sound forums and concentrate our activities in one development forum as this will be easier to keep up with development and show activity.

[Nard]

Wiki is good for documenting, archiving and keeping track of past ideas or work (when correctly and consistently categorized). It is the worst tool to discuss anything.
Forum is the best tool for discussions, but past topics which are not lively get easily buried and forgotten.
Trello is definitely among the best possible tools to manage a project of TMW's size: simplicity, good organization, clear interface, tasks and responsibilities assignment. But, just as Mantis, it requires contributors self-discipline. It should be the main TMW management/development tool except if you find a better one.

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[Cassy]

A week ago I didn't know much about Trello, but now after I started to look at it more closely and work with it (a bit) I really like it and agree completely with Nard.

Trello offers a good overview in my opinion.
Wiki has potential too, yes, but I think it doesn't offer such a nice overview and somehow I enjoy working with Trello much more.

Well, as I said on IRC my only concern is that I believe that the TMW players should get more information about what is going on.
So far I wrote forum posts when I drew something... one of the reasons is that others can also see those.
But again I agree with Nard: "past topics which are not lively get easily buried and forgotten" - I'm not here for a long time but that's just the usual case with forums.

In the end I can work with all of these possibilities.
Just giving my two cents

[Nard]

Additionnally Bertram started the Mana/TMW Development Weekly Summary which is rather useful and synthetic; Jenalya went on and published on a regular basis and introduced developer-player meetings which were appreciated by players I think. This made me suggest that an annual report based on them could be published on wiki (project namespace, thats what a wiki is made for too). It would be a good showcase of TMW activity for outside TMW.

[Crush]

We once tried to do more graphic development on the wiki. Our biggest problem was articles getting outdated too quickly and nobody bothered to keep everything up-to-date and well-linked. Do not underestimate the maintenance work it takes to keep a wiki organized.

Also, make sure that you aren't trying to find a technical solution for a social problem. People starting projects and never finishing them isn't a problem you can fix with a better organization tool. It's a problem which needs to be fixed by leading and motivating people properly.

[Chicka-Maria]

I agree moving away from trello would be nice...

as for the forums can't the forums be a place to discuss and edit pixel art until the finished product?
Once the product is finished it can be moved to the wiki. The forums has always been useful and encouraging to others to do/edit pixel art, removing it would be a total shame.

regards,
Chicka

[Wombat]

Well, the decision seems to be that if people want to work on pixel art, the can post its progress in the forums. When it becomes ready, we can move it to the wiki on its project page. Same thing with trello. If someone works on their project in trello, when it becomes ready, we can move it to the wiki on the projects page.

The only problem is that many times, people still post their pixel art on 3rd party sites, which later the art is lost. In response to this, any time this is done, it is encouraged for anyone to upload the art onto the forum or wiki, even if it is a work in progress. If anyone is showing work, please do it from our forum, not outside it. If it is posted outside, it may be lost.

We need to centralize where art is worked on and use the wiki to organize our projects. It needs to become apparant that we are a strong living game that could use help and not a floundering game with no future in development.

We have several artists for the game right now, as well as several script writers and the game is moving forward. The activity on the forums hardly reflects this reality, but by centralizing all the development forums, this activity is more easily seen, understood and shows a greater amount of what is really going on without a lot of cross referencing.

If we should find this confusing, we can always change it to separate forums again, though if graphics, sound and content continue to be worked on as they have, I've got hopes that there will be no need to return.

[o11c]

Also, make sure that you aren't trying to find a technical solution for a social problem. People starting projects and never finishing them isn't a problem you can fix with a better organization tool. It's a problem which needs to be fixed by leading and motivating people properly.

That's an important point, but we *have* demonstrated an unsurmountable technical problem with trello. Also, the wiki does categories very well, and discussion almost as well as the forum.