[FUSION] Merge TMW with Evol or not?

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Merge TMW with Evol or not?

Yes, I want TMW and Evol Online to be merged.
34
74%
No, I want TMW to go its own way without Evol Online.
12
26%
 
Total votes: 46
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bcs86
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Re: Merge TMW with Evol or not?

Post by bcs86 »

You mean ad-hoc. I don't need a dictionary to know what that means.
I want to know if you are serious.
Do you feel threatened?
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Re: Merge TMW with Evol or not?

Post by wushin »

bcs86 wrote:You mean ad-hoc. I don't need a dictionary to know what that means.
I want to know if you are serious.
Do you feel threatened?
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Derailment

Derailment occurs when discussion of one issue is diverted into discussion of another issue, often by the group who were being called out about their bad behavior in the first place.
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Re: Merge TMW with Evol or not?

Post by bcs86 »

So you do. So you do. :arrow:
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Re: Merge TMW with Evol or not?

Post by mistergrey »

Right, because flinging insulting statements and feeling superior always gets the best results ;).

This does bring up a good relevant issue to this topic though. Evol is an impressive project, but it is not nearly as old as TMW. Old doesn't mean better, but it remains a fact that TMW's community has a long history.

It makes sense that Evol's community would be more on board with the idea of the merge - hercules offers new possibilities, and merging potentially results in a bigger dev team. I won't say Evol's players "have less to lose", but rather that they "have a lot less time and memories invested". And much as some may think of TMW as an outdated "rust-bucket" with internal consistency issues, kindly remember that this rust-bucket was the base for many fork projects, and that regardless of who was in charge or what drama was ongoing.... it has always had a strangely devoted community.

As much as a lot of the Evol enthusiasts posting here have a disparaging view of TMW, which they share at every chance, that goes both ways as well. Not everyone is enthusiastic about merging with Evol, and not just because we might lose sentimental items and huge gp stashes - frankly, many don't know what to expect if such a merge goes through. I'm not going to list disparaging opinions about Evol, because I don't really have any myself... but there are a lot of unknowns that aren't really addressed. I'll bring up one of those now.

Some are concerned that the new project will be run with Evol's team basically making all big decisions. Wushin responded to me asking about this with a link summarizing how the TMWC is organized, assuring me that the structure would remain the same, and current members would retain their positions in the new project. The question this leads me to is: How many of the current team will be remaining if the merge goes through? And more importantly, who will the head admins/decision makers be? Because let's say the merge happens, and one of our team's admins quits. I don't know how many devs/admins Evol has, but surely enough to outvote a single admin pushing for things the TMW side of the community wants. It would be nice to get some more detail on this, or even opinions of the current TMW devs/admins on whether they will be staying through the merge.

People get scared of unknowns, that's why the more knowledge we have of what this merge would really mean, the better able to make an informed decision we will be.
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Re: Merge TMW with Evol or not?

Post by wushin »

Mistergrey, To answer your own question; I plan to use the same tool I always do, The Community.

First this https://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtop ... 38#p132138 is not the same as https://beta.etherpad.org/p/r.ebcdfd369 ... c17490fda7

Improvements where made to remove the ability to control the project as a single person nigh unattainable. As SPI is always going to go with the community sentiment and board over a smaller fork/faction. It now includes a fail-over clause where if the project becomes abandoned & dead non-staff can self-appoint themselves. Since TMW's hosting is paid for by staff and players, TMW has to listen to it's community.

The TMWC can now add or remove members only by vote.
Any member can also revoke their own membership.

As a whole they only vote on a narrow range of items:
  • Changes to TMWC governance and/or Organization
  • Changes to Game, Forum, Etiquette and Wiki rule changes. (not guidelines)
  • Voting a member into TMWC or to advisor status or to revoke membership or ban a member.
The charter now defines:
  • Someone can hold part or all of a role and not be a TMWC member, but they need to have the required knowledge or experience to fulfill that role.
  • It no longer removes anyone from the TMWC unless they vote, as Inactivity moves you to advisor status (Which is still a full TMWC member)
  • Advisors can regain their title via recent activity.
  • Duties and Governance of those duties have been left to the various groups to work out themselves. (i.e. GMs can't tell Developers what to develop & Developers can't police the server, etc.) Each stays within it's sphere of influence.
  • Each group is to inform the others groups as to their activities & future plans via forum posts and interaction with the community.
  • Each group will be held accountable by the other groups and the board to do what they said they would.
Feel free to give it a complete read. IMO, it's quite good at holding everyone accountable without giving them GODLIKE powers, but enough for each to get their jobs done.
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Re: Merge TMW with Evol or not?

Post by bcs86 »

The wushin who makes the rules changes them to suit his needs.
We are not your personal army.
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Re: Merge TMW with Evol or not?

Post by bcs86 »

I am for the merger but not for Wushin.
The things that made Evol greater than TMW will be lost to his secretive committee with a history of debauchery and back-stabbing.
Reid was able to give me an assignment and make it clear what I need to do to progress.
TMW is a mediocrity of dried preserves maintaining a scrap heap of materials left behind by contributors who could not find the required leadership to make progress.
Reid will be left with a knife in her back thanks to this 'merge' that you fooled me into voting for.
Her work will be lost to your bureaucracy!
I went with Evol because it was _superior_ to TMW.
Now Wushin will use his sick committee to discriminate against what made us better than armchair anarchy.
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Re: Merge TMW with Evol or not?

Post by wushin »

bcs86 wrote:The wushin who makes the rules changes them to suit his needs.
We are not your personal army.
I haven't changed them. It clearly states the new charter needs to be voted in by a majority of the TMWC. The TMWC are the staff and volunteers who develop this project.
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Re: Merge TMW with Evol or not?

Post by bcs86 »

Then let bcs86 have a stake in your committee. Let him join the gang.
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Re: Merge TMW with Evol or not?

Post by deepthought »

bc86,
Let's not get diverted and make it personal. Please talk about merge and it's issues. Wushin or any of other developers doesn't make rules. Rules and decissions are made according to player consensus. What qualifies you to be invited in TMWC ? Yeah, let's put all players in TMWC. Lol. Also anyone can contribute to game. Write code, get votes on forums to implement your quest/item or anything, pull an git request. Done, that's it.

Dear TMWC/developers,
Don't feed trolls. Ignore them and only answer questions related to merge. You are just feeding them.
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Re: Merge TMW with Evol or not?

Post by WildX »

I'd like to just point out that the notion that Evol is made up of TMW haters is untrue. The teams has undeniably had a phase of contempt for TMW for various reasons, but most have grown out of it already. And even in the past, the dislike was for the direction that TMW had taken, not for any individual people or even the game itself.

As for the issue of Evol devs running things, you need to keep in mind that all current active Evol devs were at some point TMW devs. These are people that could easily well be TMW admins if they had stuck with the project. In a not-so-different universe, these people are already your admins and senior developers. When you add them to your actual currently active devs, who truly have this project's best interests at heart, what you get is the best team you could possibly wish for. There is no us and them mentality from the people who are actually working on this; the only place in which this mentality still exists is right here with a community who has misunderstood the true intentions of this union.

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Re: Merge TMW with Evol or not?

Post by Reid »

mistergrey wrote:This does bring up a good relevant issue to this topic though. Evol is an impressive project, but it is not nearly as old as TMW. Old doesn't mean better, but it remains a fact that TMW's community has a long history.
Evol is actually born in the summer of 2006, so the main idea behind the Evol online project is nearly as old as TMW. https://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtop ... 552#p20552
mistergrey wrote: I won't say Evol's players "have less to lose", but rather that they "have a lot less time and memories invested".
Who are these "Evol's players"? I believe over 90% of Evol's players are from TMW.
mistergrey wrote:And much as some may think of TMW as an outdated "rust-bucket" with internal consistency issues, kindly remember that this rust-bucket was the base for many fork projects, and that regardless of who was in charge or what drama was ongoing.... it has always had a strangely devoted community.
You are adapting the truth. The reason why most (non language specific-)forks happened is that they loose hope to change the game internally because of people that were so attached to their in game treasures. Maybe I am adapting the truth too, but I know that UFB and (my revive of) Evol forked for this reason.
mistergrey wrote:How many of the current team will be remaining if the merge goes through?
What team are you talking about? The committee or active contributors? If you mean the committee: how many of this current team is actually active? I only count one from TMWC that is helping (wushin). People like Gumi, Micksha and Omatt are already helping so the current contributor team is already merged.
bcs86 wrote:I am for the merger but not for Wushin.
You have some wrong opinions about Wushin, I believe it will change overtime. Evol devs will be part of the committee and they will have equal chances to lead TMW-Evol as TMW staffs.
If you are worried about anything for this merge, don't hesitate to query me in IRC.
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Re: Merge TMW with Evol or not?

Post by mistergrey »

WildX: I don't fear that the Evol team are made up of "TMW haters" so much... but clearly, as you even stated, many left for Evol for one reason or another and found it more suitable to them. You've not refuted that Evol devs will likely run things and, while you can say that there are no teams in this matter, it seems obvious that the Evol side has certain pet peeves about TMW that they intend to change. I don't think it's "misunderstanding" to hope that somebody with some say will still be present who thinks of the TMW community first, and ideally can't just be outvoted on every issue by a majority. Because, as selfish as that may sound to some, there will already be plenty thinking of Evol first, even within this unified team. As time passes that line may blur of course..

I'd like to see this merge work, because the potential is high... but it feels like every time I try to ask about this particular thing, it gets deflected in some way. I'm not misunderstanding, or trying to further a divide; I was asking for some transparency on how this merge would go, to know what to expect if and when it happens.
The reason why most (non language specific-)forks happened is that they loose hope to change the game internally because of people that were so attached to their in game treasures. Maybe I am adapting the truth too, but I know that UFB and (my revive of) Evol forked for this reason.
Reid: This is part of my problem. You had a particular issue, so you revived a fork to make a game without that thing you don't like. The problem is, not everyone in TMW dislikes the same thing as you do. So, if this merge goes through, and we have barely anyone active from the tmwc left to be part of big decisions... The new project will reflect what you wanted, because there will be nobody left to say otherwise.

I'm not saying that would be terrible, or that you're trying to ruin the game lol. But if the tmwc is really inactive besides wushin, that would leave only one person with any authority to challenge your decisions, provided he never leaves. This is why I ask these questions, because I think it's a relevant factor to this topic.
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Re: Merge TMW with Evol or not?

Post by Reid »

mistergrey wrote:WildX: I don't fear that the Evol team are made up of "TMW haters" so much... but clearly, as you even stated, many left for Evol for one reason or another and found it more suitable to them. You've not refuted that Evol devs will likely run things and, while you can say that there are no teams in this matter, it seems obvious that the Evol side has certain pet peeves about TMW that they intend to change. I don't think it's "misunderstanding" to hope that somebody with some say will still be present who thinks of the TMW community first, and ideally can't just be outvoted on every issue by a majority. Because, as selfish as that may sound to some, there will already be plenty thinking of Evol first, even within this unified team. As time passes that line may blur of course..

I'd like to see this merge work, because the potential is high... but it feels like every time I try to ask about this particular thing, it gets deflected in some way. I'm not misunderstanding, or trying to further a divide; I was asking for some transparency on how this merge would go, to know what to expect if and when it happens.
The reason why most (non language specific-)forks happened is that they loose hope to change the game internally because of people that were so attached to their in game treasures. Maybe I am adapting the truth too, but I know that UFB and (my revive of) Evol forked for this reason.
Reid: This is part of my problem. You had a particular issue, so you revived a fork to make a game without that thing you don't like. The problem is, not everyone in TMW dislikes the same thing as you do. So, if this merge goes through, and we have barely anyone active from the tmwc left to be part of big decisions... The new project will reflect what you wanted, because there will be nobody left to say otherwise.

I'm not saying that would be terrible, or that you're trying to ruin the game lol. But if the tmwc is really inactive besides wushin, that would leave only one person with any authority to challenge your decisions, provided he never leaves. This is why I ask these questions, because I think it's a relevant factor to this topic.
Have you read the current plan draft?
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Re: Merge TMW with Evol or not?

Post by WildX »

mistergrey wrote:WildX: I don't fear that the Evol team are made up of "TMW haters" so much... but clearly, as you even stated, many left for Evol for one reason or another and found it more suitable to them. You've not refuted that Evol devs will likely run things and, while you can say that there are no teams in this matter, it seems obvious that the Evol side has certain pet peeves about TMW that they intend to change. I don't think it's "misunderstanding" to hope that somebody with some say will still be present who thinks of the TMW community first, and ideally can't just be outvoted on every issue by a majority. Because, as selfish as that may sound to some, there will already be plenty thinking of Evol first, even within this unified team. As time passes that line may blur of course..
I think you're giving to much absolute power to "votes" here. So far what I see is a friendly dev team who discuss things with each other and more often than not reach a consensus. If anybody yields to any other dev's ideas its because they come to believe in them too. I have yet to see an instance of anyone "voting out" any other dev.

Also keep in mind that Evol devs are more than happy to preserve some aspects of old TMW. You'd be surprised how much nostaliga and love for classic TMW areas there is.

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