What If: User Support Intermediary Organization

[Greys]

Before we get this going let me lay down some terms of participation.

Number Zero, This is not a fight. Do Not Start A Fight.

Number One, You are welcome to think this is a perfect idea, or a terrible idea, and dismiss it without reason; and you are welcome to state that, but please do not try to argue without reasons. If you dislike it, that's valuable, but if you think I should dislike it too, you'll have to convince me with reasons.

Number Two, All points are valid until invalidated by reasons. Do not dismiss what other people say unless you can support doing so.

Number Three, This conversation must start under the assumption that this is a bad idea which must be examined, supported, validated, and proven to be not a bad idea, anything else is worthless.

I would very much appreciate any administrative action to keep this civil, coherent, and friendly.

There was recently a thread attempting to discuss flaws with how modders mod, and among the few things that anybody managed to agree on is the fact that modders of successful mods spend an undesireable portion of the time they can dedicate to their volunteer effort supporting user having what is sadly by-in-large user caused errors, and for their effort they don't get much in return, and the cost is time spent developing the mod and fixing actual errors.

So What If modders could choose to offload supporting their users to a group of volunteers who would make themselves familiar with the mod's source and personally assist users in solving user-error situations, and aid in the creation and curation of useful bug reports to be passed to the author, as well as helping the author to seek down where bugs may exist in the source and include that information in reports.

The goal is to alleviate the modder of dealing with users who've installed the mod wrong, have an old version, are using version X of this with version B of that even though it's clearly stated that version X only works with version F and how did you even find version B that's like two years old bro I mean really.

The major drawback that I see is that it's difficult to quantify if the support group is trustworthy while also staying out of their hair, and if things go bad it reflects negatively on the modder 'employing' them, but surely there are more ways it could go wrong, and hopefully ways to account for that, as well as ways to make it go right.

So, anybody think this can be made workable?

[technicalfool]

So What If modders could choose to offload supporting their users to a group of volunteers who would make themselves familiar with the mod's source...

Unsure about this part. Considering people might be dealing with 20, 30, 40 or more of the most popular mods, that's a heck of a lot of source code to get bamboozled by.

That said, a sort of "first line" support group that can give users instructions on how to properly unzip into %KSP_HOME%/GameData or perform mod-specific setup steps might be a nice idea.

[Greys]

Yea, I was doubtful as I typed that, if they can understand the source they're also capable of writing their own plugins or even pull requests for the mod in question; but I left it in so that it could be debated

[NathanKell]

Aside from technicalfool's objection, which I think is quite valid, I strongly support this idea. Example: Starwaster has been invaluable in basically doing this for me on a number of threads (most importantly Deadly Reentry) and it has made my life a *ton* easier.

[TMS]

There was recently a thread attempting to discuss flaws with how modders mod, and among the few things that anybody managed to agree on is the fact that modders of successful mods spend an undesireable portion of the time they can dedicate to their volunteer effort supporting user having what is sadly by-in-large user caused errors, and for their effort they don't get much in return, and the cost is time spent developing the mod and fixing actual errors.

So What If modders could choose to offload supporting their users to a group of volunteers who would make themselves familiar with the mod's source and personally assist users in solving user-error situations, and aid in the creation and curation of useful bug reports to be passed to the author, as well as helping the author to seek down where bugs may exist in the source and include that information in reports.

Nice thread idea.

But doesn't this happen already, to some extent? Albeit in a less formalised fashion?

When I look through many threads, the existing users of that mod tend to pick up a lot of installation queries (which directory do I put this in?), tweaks (is there a way to make it do this?) and end-user errors (I superglued my fingers together, halp!).

On a large number of occasions, some of those queries could have been prevented by proper documentation in the thread OP - particularly around file structure for installation and the editing of configs, textures. etc. Many has been the time when I've wanted to take ownership of the OP and tidy it up with information scattered through the thread so I don't keep reading the same damn questions. Admittedly, there's a similarly-large number of occasions when the OP instructions are completely ignored.

Nonetheless, I have always wondered whether the community (or a designated single curator) would be a better guardian for a mod's FAQ/wiki. One simple-ish way would be for a mod author to request that the second post in a thread have it's ownership transferred to a person of their choice (there's ways to do this in vB without destroying anybody's post). That second post in thread could then be actively maintained by the interested party.

Other than that, I reckon the number of people who are intimately familiar with code (who aren't already managing their own mod) may be limited.

[DasValdez]

I thought this same thing while reading the previous thread, until I realized...

But doesn't this happen already, to some extent? Albeit in a less formalised fashion?

...this.

It's probably not a bad idea to remind *everyone* this is an option although by and large, looking at the forums, good mods tend to get followers who already do exactly what you're recommending. Some of us like a mod so much that we want to help out so we try to investigate bugs, help new users with basic install info, etc. I guess we realize it frees up the modder to make the mod *cooler* for us, so really everyone wins.

[OtherBarry]

As someone who already kind of does this (for Procedural Parts) and who's seen many similar people helping out, particularly in complicated to use/install mods like the RSS/RO suite, this seems like a great idea. Though maybe something slightly less formal, like a note in the OP of the thread detailing the non-modder supporters, and a note in each supporters signature explaining their role.

[Greys]

For mods hosted or using github, there are a lot of add-on services available. For one, there is a built in wiki system, users must have a GitHub account to edit, and it can optionally be restricted to collaborators on the repo. It's also well known that Git has a built in bug tracker, Issues, I find it's quite good though it could certainly be more powerful, I'd like to see it have mandatory custom fields and (mandatory) file attachment to reports. Lastly, it has a wiki-style site builder, which for anyone interested does support custom URLs, you have to own them but it's there. These are rarely taken advantage of and there's no real reason for that. A lot of mods, whether they're hosted on github, or just use github as a repo, have access to this. Have at thee?

Also as a note to any github hosters, nowhere on the site will it give you download stats, but as long as you provide a download package when creating the release, instead of just offering the whole repo as an automatic zip package, it does give that stat in the API, https://api.github.com/repos/Greys0/Virgin-Kalactic/releases That's api.github.com/repos/username/reponame/releases; you can look at a specific release by then taking it's ID and adding /ID to the url, such as https://api.github.com/repos/Greys0/Virgin-Kalactic/releases/436795

The difference is critically the formality of it. I'm sure there's a lot of people who want to be helpful, but until it's been stated those people can only be the helpful people who were already there, they can't speak authoritatively on anything, and the modder is unlikely to just step back from assisting because people disappear some times, but most critically, there needs to be an active relationship between the modder and the support precisely so that the support can act as a funnel for the good info and a filter against the time consuming confusion

[KerbMav]

Maybe not 100% on topic, but certainly related.

What I think would be very helpful is a modder support group authorized to:

a. recompile source for a new version of KSP

b. reupload should the original link vanish

Authorization could be given along with the license, though not limited to users X and Y, but members of this group, whoever they might be in a few months/years.

More on topic, I think the basic help is already almost always available and* given by the community (correct installation, workarounds, links to pieces of information lost in long threads etc.)

(Achievement unlocked: Five Words with "A" in a row!)

[ferram4]

@Greys: I think the idea has merit, but it can't become too organized and official. If it does, then we're looking at users perceiving this support group as a bunch of gatekeepers, there to keep them from reaching the modder. If it's organized enough that that becomes the perception, users will become far more hostile towards both the support group (who the user will believe is wasting time) and the modder (who the user will believe simply doesn't care to listen). Support volunteers will burn out, and the modder will have to handle even more work and hostility when it's done. Ultimately, this is a worst-case scenario under this idea, so I'm not too worried about it, but it's a possibility.

A more concerning possibility is that users don't accept any of this group's word as good as the modder's. It'll turn into the constant problem of people telling them that they want to "speak to [their] manager" as it were, though that would basically amount to dismissing what any of them say and instead demanding an answer from the modder. So this raises the question of how we avoid this happening, since then it turns into more demands on the modder, and given how some users can get, this is something that needs to be considered. Especially if it's a situation where it's the user's own fault, and they might take talking to someone who isn't the modder as reason to dismiss the answers as "obviously wrong, they don't know what they're talking about."

@KerbMav: That is a completely different subject. This topic started to discuss how some competent users can help modders more, and how some informal already-existing systems can be made slightly more formal so that we can focus on more important things. Your suggestion has nothing to do with that, and your "modder support group" doesn't even support modders; it exists only to support users. Please don't derail the topic by shifting its focus away from Greys' idea.

[Greys]

Maybe not 100% on topic, but certainly related.

What I think would be very helpful is a modder support group authorized to:

a. recompile source for a new version of KSP

b. reupload should the original link vanish

Authorization could be given along with the license, though not limited to users X and Y, but members of this group, whoever they might be in a few months/years.

More on topic, I think the basic help is already almost always available and* given by the community (correct installation, workarounds, links to pieces of information lost in long threads etc.)

(Achievement unlocked: Five Words with "A" in a row!)

I'm not gonna judge the topicity of this, but it's certainly possible and I feel that for a lot of mods it's probably a really enticing choice with little obvious downfall, that being that the support pushes a recompile which isn't stable because either they aren't familiar with the code, or aren't familiar enough and the testing they did didn't find an issue. And that's not so much a problem with the idea as something that they'll just have to strive to not let happen. And of course they could make it very clear that the support pushed version is a holdover until the modder can step up (because life yo), and may be buggy so back up your save file.

@Greys: I think the idea has merit, but it can't become too organized and official. If it does, then we're looking at users perceiving this support group as a bunch of gatekeepers, there to keep them from reaching the modder. If it's organized enough that that becomes the perception, users will become far more hostile towards both the support group (who the user will believe is wasting time) and the modder (who the user will believe simply doesn't care to listen). Support volunteers will burn out, and the modder will have to handle even more work and hostility when it's done. Ultimately, this is a worst-case scenario under this idea, so I'm not too worried about it, but it's a possibility.

I fully accept this potentiality, unfortunately I don't at the moment have any real response for it except 'well hopefully that wont happen'

A more concerning possibility is that users don't accept any of this group's word as good as the modder's. It'll turn into the constant problem of people telling them that they want to "speak to [their] manager" as it were, though that would basically amount to dismissing what any of them say and instead demanding an answer from the modder. So this raises the question of how we avoid this happening, since then it turns into more demands on the modder, and given how some users can get, this is something that needs to be considered. Especially if it's a situation where it's the user's own fault, and they might take talking to someone who isn't the modder as reason to dismiss the answers as "obviously wrong, they don't know what they're talking about."

Again, that is certainly a thing to be very very concerned with and I don't have a solution; I think more so than the first one this is a problem that doesn't have "a solution", it's likely a thing that modders and support will just have to be conscious of and act together when these users show up to satisfy them so that it does not become the former situation.

Edited August 6, 2014 by Greys

[Padishar]

A more concerning possibility is that users don't accept any of this group's word as good as the modder's. It'll turn into the constant problem of people telling them that they want to "speak to [their] manager" as it were, though that would basically amount to dismissing what any of them say and instead demanding an answer from the modder. So this raises the question of how we avoid this happening, since then it turns into more demands on the modder, and given how some users can get, this is something that needs to be considered. Especially if it's a situation where it's the user's own fault, and they might take talking to someone who isn't the modder as reason to dismiss the answers as "obviously wrong, they don't know what they're talking about."

I realise that an argument against this is that lots of users don't actually read the OP anyway but if the modder actually listed the "approved" people in the OP then it should be more likely their advice would be followed...

[AlphaAsh]

I like the idea. I'm not sure there's any issue here regarding modder's supervision of voluntary support. I've had situations where a 'fan' has provided support for one of my mods in a thread both 'accurately' and 'incorrectly'. I thanked the former chap and I thanked and corrected the latter. Wasn't time-consuming or difficult.

[sarbian]

Maybe not 100% on topic, but certainly related.

What I think would be very helpful is a modder support group authorized to:

a. recompile source for a new version of KSP

b. reupload should the original link vanish

Authorization could be given along with the license, though not limited to users X and Y, but members of this group, whoever they might be in a few months/years.

(Achievement unlocked: Five Words with "A" in a row!)

A. When a mod does not work with a new KSP version it needs more than a recompile. There is no need to rush to get the mods as soon as a version is out. The modders need to look at what changed in the game, fix their stuff and test it.

If players NEED their mod then they should play with the previous KSP version for a week or two. They'll the the KSP fix and the mod will be here.

B. Sometimes it's more complex than getting authorization from one modder. You may have a distinct license for code and art asset.

if a modder wants his mod to live he'll reply to PM, choose a successor before leaving or make an announcement. If a group as a mandatory right to re upload then you'll alienate the modders who like to keep control of their stuff.

I get why you want that but I m not sure it's a good idea.

As for the original post : I like the idea and as NathanKell said some users already do it (Starwaster is my threads too !)

[cybutek]

I have seen that the community is very good with answering many of the simple questions and can offer great support. More often than not the answer was on a page or two back, but considering the state of the forum search, I don't blame players for not wanting to trawl through tens if not hundreds of pages on a thread for the answer.

Just chucking this idea out there, but what about a standardised place such as a wiki, or knowledge base. A place that has the sole purpose of answering some of the more common questions and problems. It could be user editable and if it is shouted out enough or becomes official, it would be the first place users look for answers, instead of posting the same already answered questions on the forum thread.

[NathanKell]

KerbMav: yes, honestly, the *last* thing we need is people compiling unofficial versions of mods for new KSPs versions. This thread is about reducing the support workload of modders, not increasing it.

ferram4: I think that, while it's possible those things might happen, it's less likely than you fear, especially since (a) informally this help is happening already and ( it's not leading to what you fear. If anything, formalizing it will hopefully avoid the situation described above where *wrong* advice is given by third parties (I've seen this too...oy. So much bad advice becomes conventional wisdom.)

[TheAlmightyOS]

A. When a mod does not work with a new KSP version it needs more than a recompile. There is no need to rush to get the mods as soon as a version is out. The modders need to look at what changed in the game, fix their stuff and test it.

If players NEED their mod then they should play with the previous KSP version for a week or two. They'll the the KSP fix and the mod will be here.

B. Sometimes it's more complex than getting authorization from one modder. You may have a distinct license for code and art asset.

if a modder wants his mod to live he'll reply to PM, choose a successor before leaving or make an announcement. If a group as a mandatory right to re upload then you'll alienate the modders who like to keep control of their stuff.

I get why you want that but I m not sure it's a good idea.

As for the original post : I like the idea and as NathanKell said some users already do it (Starwaster is my threads too !)

I have seen that the community is very good with answering many of the simple questions and can offer great support. More often than not the answer was on a page or two back, but considering the state of the forum search, I don't blame players for not wanting to trawl through tens if not hundreds of pages on a thread for the answer.

Just chucking this idea out there, but what about a standardised place such as a wiki, or knowledge base. A place that has the sole purpose of answering some of the more common questions and problems. It could be user editable and if it is shouted out enough or becomes official, it would be the first place users look for answers, instead of posting the same already answered questions on the forum thread.

@everyone: Please don't hate me. I had good intentions. Still do. I just started off wording everything badly and and it went downhill from there.

@sarbian: I would like to only point out that users on Steam do not get an option to "hang back" a version. All games are automatically updated. I just looked at my options in steam and see nothing for manual updating or holding off on updating. Just something to think about. Some users will not have that option so it will just be broken for them.

@cybutek: A wiki or a knowledge base would save some time if the users utilized it. However, if users utilized the readme's or OP's then they would have installed it correctly in the first place.

We are dealing with two types of support requests, are we not? Those from first time / inexperienced users and then those from the more experienced users.

I think a wiki would be good for the experienced user to check and see the latest issues with a particular mod. However, for the users that do not pay attention (and are causing the largest headache) I do not believe it would be effective.

@OP: Do I think we can make a support scheme? I want to say yes however I am hesitant to say we can find one that we all would agree upon. My $0.02, for what it is worth:

The mod threads, in my personal opinion, should be used for 1) announcing/displaying the mod. 2) Talking to the author about enhancements you would like to see or just pat them on the back/head/buttocks, whatever is your cultural preference, for a job well done. And lastly 3.) Updates and important announcements. Support requests should be handled outside of that thread. Maybe even outside of the forum.

You could use the ticketing or bug tracking option of your choice here. It would be a big change. Forum rules would have to be changed, ether a support forum created or a ticketing system would have to be created. BUT it would address the issue that ferram4 brought up. You could have your "team" approved to work on your mod's tickets and if the user is REALLY insistent on seeing the "manager" then they can escalate it to the modder him/her self. I do not know if my personal experience is worth anything, but my agency receives thousands of tickets and of those 5+ thousand I only know of one where the user wanted "the manager" and it was resolved easily. Now all this is based on using a ticketing system where the modders "team" is identified and legitimized by the system itself. If we use the forum then the users may doubt the team member's legitimacy.

Edited August 6, 2014 by TheAlmightyOS

[regex]

Not to butt-in here, but:

@sarbian: I would like to only point out that users on Steam do not get an option to "hang back" a version. All games are automatically updated.

They're not, you can set auto-update options per game. In fact, I often have to coax Steam into updating my games for me. Furthermore, the best part about KSP on Steam is that it doesn't require Steam; you can move it around and stuff just like the store version.

[TheAlmightyOS]

Not to butt-in here, but:

They're not, you can set auto-update options per game. In fact, I often have to coax Steam into updating my games for me. Furthermore, the best part about KSP on Steam is that it doesn't require Steam; you can move it around and stuff just like the store version.

For me I only have "Update while playing" and "Keep Updated". Maybe because I opt-in for the beta steam client?

Anyway, thanks for the tip about moving the game folder. I just assumed it was tied to steam. Nice info to have

[R0cketC0der]

For me I only have "Update while playing" and "Keep Updated". Maybe because I opt-in for the beta steam client?

Anyway, thanks for the tip about moving the game folder. I just assumed it was tied to steam. Nice info to have

I'm not entirely sure about this, but IIRC you can right-click on any game title in you steam library, select "properties" and then there is an option somewhere.

[TheAlmightyOS]

I'm not entirely sure about this, but IIRC you can right-click on any game title in you steam library, select "properties" and then there is an option somewhere.

Yes, that's where I was. I remember the dropdown used to have the option for manual but it doesn't anymore. I think we are taking this off topic though. Thank you for your input

[Garoad]

They're not, you can set auto-update options per game. In fact, I often have to coax Steam into updating my games for me.

That's not correct in "normal" Steam either, despite setting "Do not update automatically" in the settings for KSP, it still forces you to update before it launches. You get one of those annoying startup delay dialogs when it's doing this.

Steam users need to remember to back up each version (folder copy) if they want to delay updating, it's not optional. Touchy subject for me because it ruined hours of mod tweaking before (now I have a non-Steam version of KSP too, heh).

[regex]

Off-topic, my bad.

Edited August 7, 2014 by regex

[cpast]

On Steam, right-click KSP, properties, betas, and select Previous Stable Release under "beta".

[Greys]

Yea, time to get back on topic

There's two directions to go with this concept, "what if there were a singular group that modders could turn to", or "Should Modders create their own support groups", I think it's pretty clear that Monolithic Support Incorperated is probably just not going to work, disregarding whether it's a good idea or not. But modders developing their own organization of people they have personal reasons to trust using systems that are readily at hand seems like a powerful step forward from what apparently is happening way more than I thought when I started this. I feel that as I said before, the difference between helpful people and support is the relationship between the modder and the helpful people that permits the support to get valuable information to the modder; and the modder to kind of 'train' the support in how to provide support most correctly, which I think will happen naturally. But in addition to to that the support process makes it easier to funnel users to things such as wikis, making it easier to build them; and funnel users to, and train them on the use of bug trackers to further enhance the effectiveness of everybody involved.

But, how formal does it need to be in order to get any of the advantages of being formal at all? I think not much. Having a list in the threads of people to treat as authority and also seek out for assistance, getting and setting up a bug tracker so that they are authority figures on it, as well as setting up the basic structure of a wiki with the assumption that it can be completed over time. Again, if you use github this is only a matter of getting the support people to sign up for github, and setting them as collaberators on the repo, and convincing users to sign up to. There are a lot of other bug trackers and wikihosts if you don't want to leverage on github, I'm not sure if there are any bug trackers that support anonymous(accountless) reporting though.