Dear Otland members,
For some time we have observed decreasing interest in OpenTibia world in general, Otland forum (as well as other OT-related community boards), Otserv/TFS servers and OpenTibia-hacking in general. It is obvious that Tibia is becoming less popular all the time and the community is expanding(?) slowly. We have few developers on whom OT world almost entirely depends on. Even they are sometimes retiring and there are no new contributors that would continue their efforts (although we always welcome, accept and appreciate new developers!).
However, the number of daily new user registrations is constantly growing (and these are not users we banned ). The problem is what happens to the new users? I believe that the biggest obstackle to entering the OpenTibia world and our great community is the lack of sufficient information. You might notice that most of our users are those who first experienced Tibia some time ago already. There is no easy newcomer guide here. If you haven't heard of OpenTibia before, you'd probably have difficulties with starting up an OTS now. Still, new users can and do post questions on our support board (and other).
The problem is, some users disrespectfuly treat the newcomers and their obviously "newbie" questions. "RTFM", "LMGTFY" and "use the search function" are the most popular answers, often written by many users in one thread. It's obviously not helping much. There is also another frustrating problem with that. As Talaturen pointed out, when you actually search it, you will just find ~10 other thread on the same topic... with the same answers: "RTFM", "LMGTFY" and "use the search function". You can imagine what it leads to. This is also the kind of action that leads to closing the community. If Otland were a business, we would be very successful! This is called "raising barriers for market entry". But we are *NOT* a business and we do *NOT* want that. We want just the opposite.
Obviously, there are users that did not put any effort into looking for an answer and simply want it from us, best on an ornamented sheet of paper, first-class air mail delivered. In most cases you can tell between that type of users and the true newcomers. The first ones are usually "new" because we have already banned them many times. We will keep banning them for trolling our community, but we want to be open for the real new users.
Therefore, we want to introduce a sort of Newcomers Welcome Policy. "One of the most frequent criticisms of the open source community is lack of friendly support for newcomers." (Wikipedia) We want to eliminate that and hopefully let our community grow and increase interest in OpenTibia. It does not depend only on development of TFS, Otserv, OT tools like map editors and AAC scripts (although we know it does). Do not blame it on the developers of most popular examples of these types of software even if they abandoned their work. They have already done something. You CAN and you SHOULD do something too! You can be nice to the new people and don't bite them! You can also start developing your own stuff and share it with us
The Ubuntu Forums and LinuxQuestions.org have introduced "no RTFM" policies to promote a welcoming atmosphere already some time ago.
The most important message is above, but we are also concerned about shaping the community in a right way. We are a relatively small one and we cannot afford splitting into smaller ones (you can probably see what happened to new forums that tried to achieve that). This is why I want to make a side not about Tibia 8.60, private SVN access, "TFS 0.4", "r.3777" and anything connected to that. You know this version is not supported. It's not even released. And there are reasons for that. They are unstable, they do not work. You are having tons of problems with them, and that's understandable - they do not work (you got it now?). We did not invent the private subversion to make money, or make it difficult for your to obtain the latest version. We wanted to limit the amount of problems we knew you will have. Unfortunately, due to inactivity of development in the 0.3 branch, the development versions started to be widely used despite of the bugs (we understand that, how long could you wait!). Fortunately, this is over now. The 0.2 branch is much more advanced, there is a publically released 0.3.7 versions that is supported on our Support Board (as you know that private SVN versions are not!). We do not ban support for these old versions to piss you off. We cannot afford making another branch of a 2 years old piece of software just to fix the bugs that have already been fixed in the new versions of TFS. (This is where the splitting of our community and efforts would occur.) This is why we would like you to move on and use the newest versions of TFS. There are also new version of bots if you players really need to cheat and you want them too (the most popular reason for using 8.60 is that this is the last version that Elfbot/TibiaBot NG supports). And because all of you (old members) love the 8.60 versions so much, newcomers are convinced that it's for some reason better to use it, which is horribly wrong! They won't get any support and will not get anywhere.
There is also another problem I would like to discuss and I am sure you are already aware of that. During past few years Tibia has become deeply "commercialised business". Some or most(?) of you are trying to make money on it. There is a difference between getting donations (even for your work if players want to donate more than the cost of running the server) and making money on it, especially in case of Download'n'Run servers. OpenTibia community is supposed to be "open", Otserv and TFS are "free" (both meanings) software and the whole idea was once non-profit. We cannot force you to change it, but it will crash one day... You cannot keep selling pixels (yes, you are not accepting donations, you're just selling virtual stuff) in a 2D, 15 years old game forever! Especially when you don't add any value yourself (Download'n'Run). You have heard "rumours" (confirmed) that we might/will close the Marketplace board (which creation was controversial in the first place). We cannot control what you do but we won't make it easier for you to destroy the initial idea of opennes.
It's a community, be part of it and respect it. If it's free, it doesn't mean you own the place.
Please respect the newcomers.
Best Regards,
Don Daniello
- on behalf of the Otland Staff
(This was initially a piece of news about the forum rules change, but I used this moment to point out some additonal matters you should think about.)
For some time we have observed decreasing interest in OpenTibia world in general, Otland forum (as well as other OT-related community boards), Otserv/TFS servers and OpenTibia-hacking in general. It is obvious that Tibia is becoming less popular all the time and the community is expanding(?) slowly. We have few developers on whom OT world almost entirely depends on. Even they are sometimes retiring and there are no new contributors that would continue their efforts (although we always welcome, accept and appreciate new developers!).
However, the number of daily new user registrations is constantly growing (and these are not users we banned ). The problem is what happens to the new users? I believe that the biggest obstackle to entering the OpenTibia world and our great community is the lack of sufficient information. You might notice that most of our users are those who first experienced Tibia some time ago already. There is no easy newcomer guide here. If you haven't heard of OpenTibia before, you'd probably have difficulties with starting up an OTS now. Still, new users can and do post questions on our support board (and other).
The problem is, some users disrespectfuly treat the newcomers and their obviously "newbie" questions. "RTFM", "LMGTFY" and "use the search function" are the most popular answers, often written by many users in one thread. It's obviously not helping much. There is also another frustrating problem with that. As Talaturen pointed out, when you actually search it, you will just find ~10 other thread on the same topic... with the same answers: "RTFM", "LMGTFY" and "use the search function". You can imagine what it leads to. This is also the kind of action that leads to closing the community. If Otland were a business, we would be very successful! This is called "raising barriers for market entry". But we are *NOT* a business and we do *NOT* want that. We want just the opposite.
Obviously, there are users that did not put any effort into looking for an answer and simply want it from us, best on an ornamented sheet of paper, first-class air mail delivered. In most cases you can tell between that type of users and the true newcomers. The first ones are usually "new" because we have already banned them many times. We will keep banning them for trolling our community, but we want to be open for the real new users.
Therefore, we want to introduce a sort of Newcomers Welcome Policy. "One of the most frequent criticisms of the open source community is lack of friendly support for newcomers." (Wikipedia) We want to eliminate that and hopefully let our community grow and increase interest in OpenTibia. It does not depend only on development of TFS, Otserv, OT tools like map editors and AAC scripts (although we know it does). Do not blame it on the developers of most popular examples of these types of software even if they abandoned their work. They have already done something. You CAN and you SHOULD do something too! You can be nice to the new people and don't bite them! You can also start developing your own stuff and share it with us
The Ubuntu Forums and LinuxQuestions.org have introduced "no RTFM" policies to promote a welcoming atmosphere already some time ago.
RTFM [and] "Go look on google" are two inappropriate responses to a question. If you don't know the answer or don't wish to help, please say nothing instead of brushing off someone's question. Politely showing someone how you searched or obtained the answer to a question is acceptable, even encouraged.
This is what we introduce as our forum rule as of now. It will be added to the Rules page soon. Basically, if you want to just write one of those unfriendly and unhelpful replies, please do not write anything. They are not nice and will be removed and if abused, all our general warning and punishment rules apply.Ubuntu Forums said:If you wish to remind a user to use search tools or other resources when they have asked a question you feel is basic or common, please be very polite. Any replies for help that contain language disrespectful towards the user asking the question, i.e. "STFU" or "RTFM" are unacceptable and will not be tolerated.
The most important message is above, but we are also concerned about shaping the community in a right way. We are a relatively small one and we cannot afford splitting into smaller ones (you can probably see what happened to new forums that tried to achieve that). This is why I want to make a side not about Tibia 8.60, private SVN access, "TFS 0.4", "r.3777" and anything connected to that. You know this version is not supported. It's not even released. And there are reasons for that. They are unstable, they do not work. You are having tons of problems with them, and that's understandable - they do not work (you got it now?). We did not invent the private subversion to make money, or make it difficult for your to obtain the latest version. We wanted to limit the amount of problems we knew you will have. Unfortunately, due to inactivity of development in the 0.3 branch, the development versions started to be widely used despite of the bugs (we understand that, how long could you wait!). Fortunately, this is over now. The 0.2 branch is much more advanced, there is a publically released 0.3.7 versions that is supported on our Support Board (as you know that private SVN versions are not!). We do not ban support for these old versions to piss you off. We cannot afford making another branch of a 2 years old piece of software just to fix the bugs that have already been fixed in the new versions of TFS. (This is where the splitting of our community and efforts would occur.) This is why we would like you to move on and use the newest versions of TFS. There are also new version of bots if you players really need to cheat and you want them too (the most popular reason for using 8.60 is that this is the last version that Elfbot/TibiaBot NG supports). And because all of you (old members) love the 8.60 versions so much, newcomers are convinced that it's for some reason better to use it, which is horribly wrong! They won't get any support and will not get anywhere.
There is also another problem I would like to discuss and I am sure you are already aware of that. During past few years Tibia has become deeply "commercialised business". Some or most(?) of you are trying to make money on it. There is a difference between getting donations (even for your work if players want to donate more than the cost of running the server) and making money on it, especially in case of Download'n'Run servers. OpenTibia community is supposed to be "open", Otserv and TFS are "free" (both meanings) software and the whole idea was once non-profit. We cannot force you to change it, but it will crash one day... You cannot keep selling pixels (yes, you are not accepting donations, you're just selling virtual stuff) in a 2D, 15 years old game forever! Especially when you don't add any value yourself (Download'n'Run). You have heard "rumours" (confirmed) that we might/will close the Marketplace board (which creation was controversial in the first place). We cannot control what you do but we won't make it easier for you to destroy the initial idea of opennes.
It's a community, be part of it and respect it. If it's free, it doesn't mean you own the place.
Please respect the newcomers.
Best Regards,
Don Daniello
- on behalf of the Otland Staff
(This was initially a piece of news about the forum rules change, but I used this moment to point out some additonal matters you should think about.)