Jump to content

We need a Steering committee


Duion

Recommended Posts

In case anyone has not noticed yet, we have almost no steering committee left, see here: https://forums.torque3d.org/memberlist.php?mode=team


The only one active from the steering committee I have seen is JeffR, so I guess we need to remove the inactive people and get a new team, so we hopefully can get more things done on the engine, like creating a better roadmap.


I think we should nominate people for the steering committee and I start with nominating @Azaezel, @Steve_Yorkshire and @Johxz


Before anyone of you complains, no it does not mean you have to do work on the engine, the steering committees job was always just meant for guiding the development of the engine, like making decissions, creating roadmaps, managing pull requests etc.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yep, that's correct, me and Lukas talked about it briefly in the discord, but it'll definitely be much easier for people to help out if the expected tasks are more narrow focused.


So we were talking about breaking down responsibility into various groups, and give 'em a fancy name. Examples of what we were talking about would be something like:

 

  • DEVGRU - primary development group. Would have repo access, and emphasize on new developmental code as well as validating/merging PRs
  • WEBGRU - Work on web-facing stuff. The forums, wiki, landingpage
  • MODGRU - Moderators for the forums
  • TESTGRU - Just go over various PRs and test them, maybe also could be relied upon to do beatups on WIP builds for community members and act as a good starting point for feedback/issues.

 

Not a final list, but I think the basic idea holds merit in that it lets people better focus on what they're comfortable with if they want to directly contribute to the community without having to worry about all associated baggage. We have some obvious community leaders who have a heavy say in the ongoing direction of the engine, but outside that, I like to try and keep it more flexible and less rigid with a YOU MUST SUBMIT AN IDEA TO THE GRAND COUNCIL.


Obviously people like Az, Lukas, Mango, Timmy and others with our old, grizzled, knowledgable butts have the largest input on the future path of the engine because they make a lot of direct contributions to the progress of the engine(and would be the sort of people likely to end up on DEVGRU).


So I guess if you were talking SPECIFICALLY about "people to dictate the roadmap" that'd probably largely fall to the people that make direct contributions to the engine since, you know, they're contributing to the roadmap. In the suggested new setup, that'd be the DEVGRU.


I could see a handful of people having ultimate say beyond that like me, obviously and people like Az who have a good head about necessary features for getting games produced and the like. If that should get it's own separate group to better define the expectation of duty there, then we can look into that.


But as-is, being a "Steering Committe" member has a lot of weird baggage between the written expectations and then having to also specifically be a community face(which some people are uncomfortable with) and also having to be the ones that test and merge PRs, do a lot of core development, etc. It ultimately became pretty muddied overtime which is why I think reorganizing and better establishing who-do-what is better than just slapping a few people with the SC label and not changing anything else.


It's not like we have had a lack of people helping move things forward(steering, so to speak :P ) - far from it - but it's be weird and vague for people not in the know, and this is what will be corrected :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

But as-is, being a "Steering Committe" member has a lot of weird baggage between the written expectations and then having to also specifically be a community face(which some people are uncomfortable with) and also having to be the ones that test and merge PRs, do a lot of core development, etc. It ultimately became pretty muddied overtime which is why I think reorganizing and better establishing who-do-what is better than just slapping a few people with the SC label and not changing anything else.

 

I want to remind you again that my point was, that almot all the members of the steering commitee we had before did do absolutely nothing ever, not only that, they were not even active at all anywhere, therefore I conclude having an existing steering commitee is in any case better than having a nonexistent one.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 months later...

An existing non-active committee vs a non-existing active committee... this one could be too close to call.


I think that jeffs comments above are as close to how a project of this type can be managed, with the smallish group of dedicated commiters being the driving force of innovation, should in all probability be the drivers of the direction.


The next part that I think works well is that the top table group have always seemed to favour (whether i think some of them are worthy or not :p ) those who have actually released a game when applying fixes and new features, this shows, in my opinion, a reasonable level of commitment to the people who have stuck by the engine enough to release.


I also like to think that the long-standing and ancient lurkers like myself and artists etc who offer sage advice occasionally, but honestly, I think the engine is in pretty good hands with the current top table group who have a technical knowledge far beyond mine, the steady stream of devs that fix all manner of small bugs and features that most of us miss or wouldn't know how to fix.


I think if anything is in short supply it is level designers and artists that have time to invest in the torque project as well as their own to fix the only thing that's really missing and that's demonstration contents, while I understand there are bits and pieces out there, remastered pacific, and other demos, they are scattered and in many cases not really very well presented to the people looking for inspiration.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...