GoW neighbourhood in MOUL:Again

[diafero]

Ultimately, Cyan will have to decide IMHO. Explorers can do technical testing and make sure the age does not break anything. That has to happen in public, without any tester being required to sign up to any formal group. Since actual technical issues are something rather objective, one would quickly find out if so-called issues are just attempts to block an age.
If Cyan actually can not have a rough look at the story of an age itself, I doubt they can actually run and administrate a Shard - uploading and integrating the age also takes some effort.
And one more point, there is a fine line between Cyan saying "this guild is going to decide whether the age abides the IC rules" and "explorers (anyone who wants to, though they might want to organize in a guild-like structure) should sum up the frame of the story in a few sentences, and we will decide whether the age abides our rules". The first is moving of the responsibility to some fan group, the 2nd is having the support of the fans to more easily decide yourself (EDIT: also see Chacal's reply below, basically the same idea).

The whole situation will be much less problematic if Cyan allows completely independent fan-run Shards. In that case, there will be Shards accepting everything technical possible, just like UAM will accept every age and there are people willing to aid in fixing a broken age.

[Chacal]

Right. But then again Cyan will want some form of control on the Ages that are published, and they don't have the ressources to check all the Ages themselves. So, if you don't want a fan group to do it, and Cyan can't do it either.. Then what do you suggest?

1- A standard testing protocol by GoW and/or GoMa.
A detailed testing procedure applied to the Age on the test server.
Tests include useability, stability, performance, multi-user compatibility, linking rules, code review.
Tests do NOT include such qualitative evaluation as canon, IP, etc, which are Cyan's business only.
Testing procedure is publicly available.
Results published and sent to Cyan.

2- Also, a qualitative evaluation similar to what was done for RAD contests could be done by a panel of judges, on such aspects as textures, lighting, music, sounds, atmosphere, originality, cleverness, etc.
Also published and sent to Cyan.

[Branan]

To me, the "published" is very important. It will encourage consistency in the rulings, and show the artists that the judges are impartial.

I would add one more step, though.

3. A preliminary non-binding overview by the guild of archivists. This would look for glaring continuity/IP issues. Any concerns would be published and sent to cyan, who would have final say on all IP-related issues. This would allow the fans to adopt a better-safe-then-sorry attitude towards protecting Cyan's IP, while still giving Cyan the opportunity to say "No, that's OK. You can do that."

[semplerfi]

RAID 0 (striping) is awesome.

Sorry but,

RAID0 3xSSD ROCKS...

My wallet does not agree.

The full race Ferrari are expensive and are not for everyone but, man do they go way faster...

I understand Yugo is making a four door. They are going to call it a Wego.

"The Need for Speed"

[Aloys]

Tests do NOT include such qualitative evaluation as canon, IP, etc, which are Cyan's business only.

Again, Cyan's goal with this whole procedure is to be the less implied possible. I'm pretty sure they'll want canon/continuity matters to be handled by the archivists. At least Alahmnat has pushed hard enough for that.

2- Also, a qualitative evaluation similar to what was done for RAD contests could be done by a panel of judges, on such aspects as textures, lighting, music, sounds, atmosphere, originality, cleverness, etc.

I see your point but I don't agree. This whole procedure is just to judge 'technically' whether the Age is good enough to be published. I don't think there's any kind qualitative judging implied. This is not a contest. Then again Cyan may want to filter some stuff. I fear that a refusal of publishing for some Ages may hurt their authors, and it wouldn't encourage them to keep on honning their writing skills.

Also, shouldn't we continue this discussion on OpenUru.org or some other neutral/common place to discuss this with the other Guilds?

[Tsar Hoikas]

Also, shouldn't we continue this discussion on OpenUru.org or some other neutral/common place to discuss this with the other Guilds?

I think this forum is common and neutral enough. With a few minor exceptions, everyone interested in these subjects is registered here.

[Chacal]

ANother way of seeing this would be to put the responsibility on the Writer.
Before submitting his Age to Cyan, he should seek a "seal of approval" by the Guilds mentioned above, otherwise Cyan might decide to reject the submission. Kinda like a building permit

EDIT:

I see your point but I don't agree. This whole procedure is just to judge 'technically' whether the Age is good enough to be published. I don't think there's any kind qualitative judging implied. This is not a contest. Then again Cyan may want to filter some stuff. I fear that a refusal of publishing for some Ages may hurt their authors, and it wouldn't encourage them to keep on honning their writing skills.

We certainly don't agree on this. Only the best Ages, those with near-Cyan quality, should make it to any "official" shard.
I think this would encourage Writers to put the extra effort (or to seek help) to hone their writing skills. This is what happened with the RAD contests. I am sure contestants put in extra hours because they knew there were judges.

This is not in contradiction with my statement about no fan group controlling what Writers do. Anyone would still be free to submit an Age, and the final decision stays with the owner of the shard.

Otherwise explorers won't bother with checking new fan Ages anymore. It has become quite easy to complete and publish a huge, ugly Age in a few days. We have seen examples of this in the last year. Even I can do that (I actually did).

I don't subscribe to the "no competition because it hurts people's feelings" theory. As a teacher, I have seen how devastating this theory can be. This is like qualifying everyone for the Olympics regardless of talent.

[Aloys]

Whatever solution we might envision it all comes down to a big question mark: Cyan's level of implication in all this.. Denpending how they can (or want) to spend on this will determine everything else.
IMHO, whatever schemes ends up being chosen, the goal should be to alleviates Cyan's workload as much as possible.
Many people would be highly annoyed if only a couple Ages can be published each month when there's another dozen who are complete and waiting.. (now, I don't think we will have 12 Ages ready each month, but we'd rather aim high..)

[diafero]

Also, shouldn't we continue this discussion on OpenUru.org or some other neutral/common place to discuss this with the other Guilds?

I think this forum is common and neutral enough. With a few minor exceptions, everyone interested in these subjects is registered here.

Agreed. Age writers and tool creators are already collected here. This includes most of the people who will actually make open-source Uru work. I already have like 9 or 10 Uru board accounts, so if I create a new one, I want to know it's worth it - OpenUru is (currently) not. YMMV.

[ddb174]

I don't subscribe to the "no competition because it hurts people's feelings" theory. As a teacher, I have seen how devastating this theory can be. This is like qualifying everyone for the Olympics regardless of talent.

I know what you're getting at, and if some people want to compete with others for "prestige" or whatever, then let them. But some people just want to share their work and visit it together with friends. The only real solution is to allow different shards to run things as they see fit. An official shard will *never* have all the Ages for legal reasons in addition to other reasons. And I will *never* be very interested in an official shard. And furthermore, Ages cannot be placed on some meaningful total ordering: any notion of "this Age is better than this Age" will always fail to capture a meaningful notion of "better". There are Ages that most people would think are ugly, that are amongst my favourites. Again, the only solution is for everyone to be free to join a shard that matches what they want, or create their own if none already exists.