Announcement of forum closure (revoked)

[michelle]

Dear members,

I initiated this forum in order to create a place where users could discuss the development process of openBVE - a discussion which basically never took place as I continue to be the only one who actively pushes forward anything. In the early months, the forum served the purpose of reporting existing problems as well, which speeded up the development process significantly. However, this purpose has served long ago, and I instead tried to adapt to the needs of the members by converting the forum into a place to discuss the aspects of developing for openBVE - discussions which take place on other forums more often than they do here. What is left today is a place where people ask common questions on installation, basic operation and technical issues, most of them which are answered on the homepage if people would only read it. I have tried in the past year to encourage people and to help them, was straight and honest in the process, and was often perceived as hostile and unfriendly in return. In my humble opinion, I can spend my time more efficiently by programming instead of playing the role of a moderator which I am obviously not fitting. I therefore announce the likely closure of this forum, which could occur somewhere in the next few weeks, likely by the time v1.2 gets released. This gives you the chance to look up any information here you still might find useful and want to archive somehow, or to present alternatives.

In case of actual closure, there are a number of forums out there which are both active and are officially targeting openBVE. My suggestion would be to join them eventually. As in the past, I would continue reading them, thus I would not be unaware of any emerging issues or indirect suggestions.

• http://www.trainsimcentral.co.uk/phpBB3 (English)
• http://forums.uktrainsim.com/ (English)
• http://forum.bvefrance.fr/ (French)
• http://lnx.trenomania.it/forum/ (Italian)

I thank everyone gratefully who made openBVE into something better and wish you farewell in case of closure.

[lezzloco]

I agree completely, you should have done it a while ago

You are Kool as always michelle, all the best.

[tof63]

Although I am very sorry (the visit to new posts of this forum has become a daily habit for me), Michelle, I understand your decision and I find it correct.
Moreover during last 8 years, we never could have direct contacts with Mackoy, like with you on this forum...

[Northern Line]

I still have my openbvechat forum here: http://openbvechat/freeforums.org

[joeyfjj]

I'm sure there will be someone who is willing to maintain the forum (like me...?). So why don't you assign someone (me again...?) to admin/maintain it?

[Sacro]

I can understand your reasoning michelle, will you be continuing with the blog style system? It's quite a handy way to get the message of new features out.

Also, some kind of public accessible version control system would be nice so would-be-developers are able to get the latest version and make patches against it, I'd be up for doing some coding over summer but working from a slightly old zip of the source is not as nice as having a DVCS to reference against.

Addition: also, any chance of an RSS/Atom feed for the blog? Would be nice to shove it into a reader/aggregater.

[rlazur]

Also, some kind of public accessible version control system would be nice so would-be-developers are able to get the latest version and make patches against it, I'd be up for doing some coding over summer but working from a slightly old zip of the source is not as nice as having a DVCS to reference against.

Echoing this request.

Also, any recommendations about how to improve the multi-platform support (specifically OS X)? Tao seems like a dead end right now as there's little active development, and I didn't see any response to using OpenTK instead in the Source Code forum.

[michelle]

Additional background information on the subject

Every forum needs a unique purpose. If there are already forums existing in the same language that cover the same topic, you would not need another forum. That is basically forum rule #1. There are quite some forums covering BVE Trainsim or openBVE whose purpose is not any different than similar forums, and they - for a good reason - end up with having 3 members and 5 posts, if at all.

1) By the time the first pre-alpha versions of openBVE were released to the public, there was not yet a place to talk about the new simulator. Surely, people used forums about BVE Trainsim as a form of substitute, but that did not suffice to cover the unique needs of the openBVE design process. It was quite surprising how many people joined the forum in the initial days, supporting that there was a need for this forum at that time. Nowadays, some forums target openBVE, and announcements of new projects and questions about developing for openBVE most often take place there.

2) About a dozen people over the time offered their programming assistance and liked to join the "team". Yet without a plan, without a design goal, without a specification of the things to come, what would such people wanted to program? That is what the initial purpose of this forum was - to take part of the design process. Executing it was never an issue as the complexity of the program is relatively low. Yet that design process is basically what never took place here and I do not see that this will radically change.

3) For most of the time, members have used this forum to talk to me, instead of talking to each other. I can name about a handful of members only who actually engage in conversations with others, while the majority of others just starts threads and expects my personal attention, mostly tutoring or summarizing homepage content.

For these reasons, I see no purpose in continuing this forum in its current form. Of course there might be alternatives to closure - so if you can think of something, you can still voice so.

[tof63]

Other then local language forums, aimed to help newbyes about installation and general troubleshooting, I think that an "international" openBVE forum is needed to help users from all the world to become potential developers.

You could cut-off from this forum the general troubleshooting thing (dedicated pages on the official site are good enough for people willing to read) and other local forums listed in the first post of the thread could help people "unable" (or unwilling) to read the official site.

In my opinion, if this forum will be closed, the openBVE community itself will elect the Trainsimcentral forum (where you announced the program the first time) to become a sort of "unofficial" international openBVE forum.

[velaro]

It would be nice if the reports of suspected bugs and the suggestions/discussion regarding future development of the program could be maintained in one centralized location. We might add the source code section to this. The other parts of this forum, while often welcome, could probably be handled by the other forums out there (and to some extent already are).

It would also be a shame if the information in this forum were no longer available. Would it be possible to lock the individual sections (or only some of them, perhaps with the excpeptions listed above), so that the forum could still be browsed and searched?

In any case, I want to say that no matter what the future of this forum may turn out to be, it has been a very valuable resource over the past year.

[ipaclansite]

Its sad to see the forums close, however, like many people suggested, keep the forums open for informational purposes if possible. I did like the idea that we could communicate directly, but I do see the reason why you are closing them down. I do suggest that we as average users of OpenBVE have a way to report bugs to you though.

[UCR683]

I'm also sad for the forum closure.
As I'm a railfan in Hong Kong, China, I should tell my voice of the BVE Communities in the Greater China region and Asia:

By the freedom environment and the aid of relationship from railway corporation staffs, Hong Kong had a leading position in developing BVE routes and trains since 2002, the next-best from Japan. The BVE community members are mainly used in Chinese for communicate each other.

In the early years, the Hong Kong BVE developers showed off their talent of developing those files, and they used their own "copyright measures and actions" to reject other new comers and maintain their small field position. This made a large conflict on BVE developers in 2006 due to the "copyright measures and actions" carried from a leading Hong Kong BVE community.

On the other hands, the Asian BVE communities are mainly come from China and Japan, only a few members can talk their own voice in English to Western BVE communities for their needs where Asian railway used. So I think the openBVE official forum should be maintained for Asian BVE developers and users, to share their opinions and voices.

[michelle]

I have received some mails in the past days in which alternatives to closing the forum were presented. As I am not currently certain about what to do, I will not rush out any information prematurely.

It would be interesting, however, to get a feeling of what you as the members would like this forum to be, what your expectations are, how you would like this forum to change. I invite everyone to continue commenting.

@tof63:
An international forum would require that people who cannot speak English are also welcome. This is not currently the case, yet many new members make one post of non-understandable English, are not responding to further requests (likely because they don't understand them), and then just leave without coming back. An international forum would require dedicated subforums for particular languages. Given that the international BVE Trainsim community is scattered across many localized forums and not a central one, this is hard for me to see as a realistic possibility. Of course, we could always make the attempt, yet it would require at least one member who can moderate that subforum. I think we had this already in the past and didn't come to a conclusion.

@velaro:
Theoretically, I would also welcome a central repository for suggestions. However, it occurs to me that at least 90% of all such suggestions are just useless, e.g. option for customizable colors in the main menu, and the rest which might bear some potential is not discussed at all, just presented. It might be a solution to set up two forums for suggestions - one in which users can post - and another one in which ideas with potential are sorted out to by a moderator, which could make it easier for valuable suggestions to track.

@ipaclansite:
Informational purpose is somewhat strange for a forum - ideally, the homepage should provide all kind of permanent information, not the forum. After all, people not even find information if it's just two or three posts below their own. Bugs is another thing - most of the entries nowadays are just about blaming coding mistakes to the program, or don't describe the problem even though there is a guideline for this. Having a place to communicate with me personally - well, mail suffices for that. There is no need to archive personal requests on a public forum.

---

I'd say that if this forum still had a future, it would require some radical changes. I guess we could throw all of the erroneously called "The future" forums back into a single suggestion forum (or, see above) if at all, merge or abandon the "Developers" forums, while I am not so sure what should happen with the rest.

I don't feel up for managing all of the newbie things any longer, nor am I willing I oversee this forum on a daily basis. If the forum was not closed, it becomes inevitable to introduce moderators. I would say that the job of a moderator is to jump in whenever regular members are not, or cannot be of assistance (of course along with moving posts or deleting spam occasionally). Unfortunately, just "feeling up for it" is not enough. On an Official openBVE forum, you would expect founded answers instead of wild guesses from people who don't know the program. I can think of some current members who could be suitable for this job, and I might just ask them directly.

Currently, at least from my perspective, this forum has lost its purpose. If I cannot give it one, then it's up to you to do so. If there is a working solution, the forum might stay, otherwise, it will go.

[tof63]

@tof63:
An international forum would require that people who cannot speak English are also welcome.

You are right, but to allow easily a greater dissemination of ideas and informations between potential developers it's essential, in my opinion, to use a single language, and English is the most widely spoken language, especially on the internet.

I am moderator on Trenomania's Italian BVE and openBVE forums and my mission actually is (or at least is intended to be), other then to help Italian newbyes, also to spread interesting informations found here between Italians not speaking English.

[VICTOR]

It is understandable, although I am a bit sad. Thank you for being here, to help us with your project. Some good posts (with some bug solutions) should be somehow saved or moved to the homepage. OpenBVE is accepted worldwide (although I still say that it is equal in quality as BVE, but not better) so I guess your presence is welcome but you could spent that time more on developing. If I put away my personal opinion about openBVE, I do admire your work and deducation. Sometimes your reactions were, shall i say, "loud", but it is also understandable. Forum also helped you and your project, it gave feedback.