nugo
Australia OT Mapper
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- Apr 1, 2009
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Inlight of comments in the below discussion thread i wish to propose an idea:
The reason why tfs is delayed: we let the great programmers goes away (https://otland.net/threads/the-reason-why-tfs-is-delayed-we-let-the-great-programmers-goes-away.274114/page-3)
This is a wall of text but please take the time to read as i think its implications can change this community on a fundamental level. I hardly post so give me the benefit of the doubt on this one. I originally intended for this to be a private message to Don Danellio but i really think having this be public could really help out in fleshing out the idea and get the community talking about it. All that I ask is you be civil and dont turn this post into a shit fest.
It has been mentioned countless times across all manner of posts that some sort of monetary sponsorship/donation method for developers would do a great deal to help the community. I have come up with what i think is a reasonable solution while still staying true to OTlands principles of remaining a free and open source community. I will attempt to do my best to outline the possible system and my justification for it including its pros and cons. I tried to come up with the most simplistic, cost effecting and minimal amount of effort to impliment/maintainin donation/sponsorship system i could think of off the top of my head.
The money is handled by the developer themselves through the use of a paypal subscription/donation method. Maybe the staff approve of a few different donation methods but the best example i can give is having a paypal subscription button/donate embedded in the forum post or maybe even patreon?
2. How do we stop scammers/people trying to abuse the system?
I think all posts needed to be vetted by staff members the same way they review server advertisement posts and there needs to be some criteria to be met before you can ever post in the forum. For example,
3. What happens if a developer doesn't deliver on their projects?
I think the best option here considering OTlands staffing resources not being infinite would be to leave it 100% up to the community. You explain to donors through disclaimers that funds cant be recouped. It's up to you if you risk the donation or not. The idea of this is that developers are "selling" themselves for donations. If people are unsatisfied with their quality of work, progress of work or simply not deliver on their projects people just stop supporting them monetarily - maybe if someone is a serial offender they receive warnings from mods etc.
4. How do we differentiate between donating to a developer and paying for work?
The jobs bored would remain so developers can still sell their services as per normal and as mentioned above the developer in their pitching threads must declare what they intended to work on under the sponsorship. Just a simple "I am making a tibia client", " I am making 25 free hunting spawns". Threads can be updated at moderator discretion as projects are completed/new ones started.
5. How do we stop a mentality of people now only wanting to do big projects under sponsorship?
Well it's up to the community whether you get money or not, i would expect it to be the case that you need to have some reputation for yourself within the fourms/community before people who even know who you are. Eg: Maybe a new developer comes along, releases a bunch of free scripts etc then people notice him and maybe his sponsorship threads get some attention. He would still need to be making stuff for free before he even gets enough traction to expect any monetary gain.
Example 1:
A developer comes along (say edubart from example) saying he's going to create a client. Everyone is skeptical and he starts working on it. 2 months down the line he actually starts having a really early alpha that people can see/use. Community people realise he's the real deal and he makes a sponsorship thread. He starts attracting sponsors and before you know it his client is in beta and he has 100 contributors donating 15$ a month ($1500 a month income) and gets some big one off donations. This now becomes a good side hustle for the developer and he hangs around continually working on his client and making/maintaining modules for it.
Example 2:
A Developer comes along and pitches the idea of maintaining/implementing new features to RME. He makes a few improvements every month or so and adds to it at a slow pace. Attracts maybe 10 contributors at $10 a month and gets some minor donations.
Example 3:
Developer comes along offering sprites to the community, ends up pumping out high tier industry standard sprites every week and attracts 40 contributors at $5 a month and gets the odd donation here and there.
I invite anyone to expand on this idea and add to it, this is a very foundatioional system suggestion so finer points would need to be worked out. Please keep in mind that anything you suggest needs to be within reason as OTland doesnt have a plethora of staff coming out of its ass to create entire systems from the groud up. I intentionally stayed away from things such as custom website scripts with inbuilt donation functionality etc just because its probably to hard.
Im all for vairations of this suggestion, theres probably things i missed that could be done better but i figured i would start somewhere. Thanks for taking the time to read. Im happy to help out with what ever is needed to make this suggestion a reality.
Nugo
The reason why tfs is delayed: we let the great programmers goes away (https://otland.net/threads/the-reason-why-tfs-is-delayed-we-let-the-great-programmers-goes-away.274114/page-3)
This is a wall of text but please take the time to read as i think its implications can change this community on a fundamental level. I hardly post so give me the benefit of the doubt on this one. I originally intended for this to be a private message to Don Danellio but i really think having this be public could really help out in fleshing out the idea and get the community talking about it. All that I ask is you be civil and dont turn this post into a shit fest.
It has been mentioned countless times across all manner of posts that some sort of monetary sponsorship/donation method for developers would do a great deal to help the community. I have come up with what i think is a reasonable solution while still staying true to OTlands principles of remaining a free and open source community. I will attempt to do my best to outline the possible system and my justification for it including its pros and cons. I tried to come up with the most simplistic, cost effecting and minimal amount of effort to impliment/maintainin donation/sponsorship system i could think of off the top of my head.
What's the overall idea?
Creating a subform called "Developer Sponsorships". In this subform people create "pitching" posts similar to how you would advertise a OT server but instead they are advertising themselves as a developer. They can link anything from previous projects worked on, examples of work etc and any other information that assists them in selling themselves to potential supporters. It's important that there is some level of transparency in these posts. They need to declare what they intended to work on under the sponsorship and whatever material that is made must remain open source and free for the community to use. It is then up to the community member to decide if they feel the developer is worth the monetary commitment. Refer some below screenshots of these examples. (excuse my photoshop skills). I want the system to be used as a supportive tool for developers who tackle big and community impactful tasks, a support system like this could assist in people who spend 100s of hours on things like clients, map editors, custom tools, maps & game engines etc. Essentially developers are already posting patreon or paypal links for their projects my suggestion is an attempt to centralise it in one location with a few more rules chucked in and more visiability.
I put very little effort into this post, picture it as a much more structured and better looking lol
FAQ
1. How is the money handled?Creating a subform called "Developer Sponsorships". In this subform people create "pitching" posts similar to how you would advertise a OT server but instead they are advertising themselves as a developer. They can link anything from previous projects worked on, examples of work etc and any other information that assists them in selling themselves to potential supporters. It's important that there is some level of transparency in these posts. They need to declare what they intended to work on under the sponsorship and whatever material that is made must remain open source and free for the community to use. It is then up to the community member to decide if they feel the developer is worth the monetary commitment. Refer some below screenshots of these examples. (excuse my photoshop skills). I want the system to be used as a supportive tool for developers who tackle big and community impactful tasks, a support system like this could assist in people who spend 100s of hours on things like clients, map editors, custom tools, maps & game engines etc. Essentially developers are already posting patreon or paypal links for their projects my suggestion is an attempt to centralise it in one location with a few more rules chucked in and more visiability.
I put very little effort into this post, picture it as a much more structured and better looking lol
FAQ
The money is handled by the developer themselves through the use of a paypal subscription/donation method. Maybe the staff approve of a few different donation methods but the best example i can give is having a paypal subscription button/donate embedded in the forum post or maybe even patreon?
2. How do we stop scammers/people trying to abuse the system?
I think all posts needed to be vetted by staff members the same way they review server advertisement posts and there needs to be some criteria to be met before you can ever post in the forum. For example,
- Have 50 posts
- Otland premium
- whatever other required vetting method people think is required
- Acc needs to be X amount of months old
3. What happens if a developer doesn't deliver on their projects?
I think the best option here considering OTlands staffing resources not being infinite would be to leave it 100% up to the community. You explain to donors through disclaimers that funds cant be recouped. It's up to you if you risk the donation or not. The idea of this is that developers are "selling" themselves for donations. If people are unsatisfied with their quality of work, progress of work or simply not deliver on their projects people just stop supporting them monetarily - maybe if someone is a serial offender they receive warnings from mods etc.
4. How do we differentiate between donating to a developer and paying for work?
The jobs bored would remain so developers can still sell their services as per normal and as mentioned above the developer in their pitching threads must declare what they intended to work on under the sponsorship. Just a simple "I am making a tibia client", " I am making 25 free hunting spawns". Threads can be updated at moderator discretion as projects are completed/new ones started.
5. How do we stop a mentality of people now only wanting to do big projects under sponsorship?
Well it's up to the community whether you get money or not, i would expect it to be the case that you need to have some reputation for yourself within the fourms/community before people who even know who you are. Eg: Maybe a new developer comes along, releases a bunch of free scripts etc then people notice him and maybe his sponsorship threads get some attention. He would still need to be making stuff for free before he even gets enough traction to expect any monetary gain.
Pros
- Developers now have a way to sell themselves and earn some form of income from their work if the community decides what they are working on is important enough to donate to.
- Some of the big fundamental issues in the community that require fixing (fully functioning clients etc) need enormous man hours to even pull off, that extra monetary support could help them work to completion + add extra support going forward instead of dropping projects half finished.
- Potentially retain really skilled developers that come through the forums.
- If developers are creating more open source material, that's more material available on the site and will generate more interest and traffic to the website potentially attractive even more developers, it's a feedback loop.
- Everything still remains open source
- Existing experienced developers already have that reputation built in the community and could almost instantly start attracting sponsorships.
- start incentivising developers to release more of their stuff, i know many are reserved and not wanting to release stuff for free due to the "leecher vs developer" mindse thats present in the community at the moment, i feel this suggestion would bridge that gap.
- It acts as a mechanism to incentivize developers to stay around in the community, especially if they are talking on big projects that require many man hours to do eg: making OTclient.
Cons
- Money, there's always drama with money but in this method its at least not handled by OTland staff but between the developer and the donator so its a case of "donate at your own risk" but with some stopgate checks (eg thread vetting as described above) inplace this can be minimised
- People could try to abuse a loop hole in the system somehow so moderation oversight would be required until the loop holes have been plugged
- My keyboards health after this wall of text
Examples
Example 1:
A developer comes along (say edubart from example) saying he's going to create a client. Everyone is skeptical and he starts working on it. 2 months down the line he actually starts having a really early alpha that people can see/use. Community people realise he's the real deal and he makes a sponsorship thread. He starts attracting sponsors and before you know it his client is in beta and he has 100 contributors donating 15$ a month ($1500 a month income) and gets some big one off donations. This now becomes a good side hustle for the developer and he hangs around continually working on his client and making/maintaining modules for it.
Example 2:
A Developer comes along and pitches the idea of maintaining/implementing new features to RME. He makes a few improvements every month or so and adds to it at a slow pace. Attracts maybe 10 contributors at $10 a month and gets some minor donations.
Example 3:
Developer comes along offering sprites to the community, ends up pumping out high tier industry standard sprites every week and attracts 40 contributors at $5 a month and gets the odd donation here and there.
I invite anyone to expand on this idea and add to it, this is a very foundatioional system suggestion so finer points would need to be worked out. Please keep in mind that anything you suggest needs to be within reason as OTland doesnt have a plethora of staff coming out of its ass to create entire systems from the groud up. I intentionally stayed away from things such as custom website scripts with inbuilt donation functionality etc just because its probably to hard.
Im all for vairations of this suggestion, theres probably things i missed that could be done better but i figured i would start somewhere. Thanks for taking the time to read. Im happy to help out with what ever is needed to make this suggestion a reality.
Nugo
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