passinglurker Posted June 25, 2016 Author Share Posted June 25, 2016 4 minutes ago, superdavekerman said: I would argue that the best way to support the interest of the users is to encourage a healthy drama-free modding community, which implies attending to the concerns of mod authors. And in turn, the best way for mod authors to reduce their own support costs is to work with CKAN (and other networks) to ensure they have automated installs working properly. Mod authors shouldn't have to take the time to generate working metadata if they don't want to. For authors distribution and popularity are secondary concerns they'd rather spend their free time working on the project itself not distribution. CKAN should be working with modders to make the process of sharing their work as pain free as possible not set a standard for more hoops to jump through for the convenience of the users and say the authors have to put up with this or go ARR for the health of the community. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
superdavekerman Posted June 25, 2016 Share Posted June 25, 2016 7 minutes ago, passinglurker said: Mod authors shouldn't have to take the time to generate working metadata if they don't want to. For authors distribution and popularity are secondary concerns they'd rather spend their free time working on the project itself not distribution. CKAN should be working with modders to make the process of sharing their work as pain free as possible not set a standard for more hoops to jump through for the convenience of the users and say the authors have to put up with this or go ARR for the health of the community. No software developer ever wants to support their products. That's a given. The question is whether they'd rather answer questions one-by-one on the forums, or spend a little time upfront on the metadata. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sigma88 Posted June 25, 2016 Share Posted June 25, 2016 31 minutes ago, superdavekerman said: No software developer ever wants to support their products. this is not true, this whole issue has come up because modders want to receive feedback on their mods but can't get good feedback because of CKAN 32 minutes ago, superdavekerman said: The question is whether they'd rather answer questions one-by-one on the forums, or spend a little time upfront on the metadata. they would rather not receive any CKAN question since it's not their product and spend zero time in making the metadata, every mod has installation instructions, CKAN just needs to follow those. I have always been collaborative with ckan team because I never had any issues with it, but that was my choice. and seeing what attitude has being taken against people who did have problems, I am glad I never had any Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Superfluous J Posted June 25, 2016 Share Posted June 25, 2016 Random thought: Websites can add a file named "robots.txt" to their root folder that can have various things in it, but by far the most popular is "Disallow: /" which tells the robot (generally a search engine like Google or Bing or whatnot) that they're not allowed to index the page. It's totally opt-in on both sides, but both sides are encouraged to use it so more drastic steps do not need to be taken. And it seems to work well in most instances. What if CKAN checked for a file (say "robots.txt" as that's an obvious convention and if the Google spider is a "robot" then CKAN could be considered one as well) and if that file exists it checks the contents. They could be like this: user-agent: CKAN Disallow (No need for a directory structure in this case I think) Other key words than "Disallow" could be used. "Hide" could make it so CKAN doesn't even list the mod, where "disallow" would list the mod but not allow it to be distributed, so the user knows it's the modder's choice to not allow CKAN to automatically install it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted June 25, 2016 Share Posted June 25, 2016 @5thHorseman - Maybe something like a blacklist? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Superfluous J Posted June 25, 2016 Share Posted June 25, 2016 2 minutes ago, CliftonM said: @5thHorseman - Maybe something like a blacklist? The idea with a robots.txt is that the modder has total control, and only has to do one thing one time ever and it'll always work, provided CKAN implements it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
passinglurker Posted June 25, 2016 Author Share Posted June 25, 2016 51 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said: Random thought: Websites can add a file named "robots.txt" to their root folder that can have various things in it, but by far the most popular is "Disallow: /" which tells the robot (generally a search engine like Google or Bing or whatnot) that they're not allowed to index the page. It's totally opt-in on both sides, but both sides are encouraged to use it so more drastic steps do not need to be taken. And it seems to work well in most instances. What if CKAN checked for a file (say "robots.txt" as that's an obvious convention and if the Google spider is a "robot" then CKAN could be considered one as well) and if that file exists it checks the contents. They could be like this: user-agent: CKAN Disallow (No need for a directory structure in this case I think) Other key words than "Disallow" could be used. "Hide" could make it so CKAN doesn't even list the mod, where "disallow" would list the mod but not allow it to be distributed, so the user knows it's the modder's choice to not allow CKAN to automatically install it. This is actually pretty good as it essentially solves the "who owns what" problem pjf tries to raise about delisting foss mods. At single line of text packaged with the mod essentially tells ckan that the mods team (no matter how large they may be) doesn't want to be indexed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
passinglurker Posted June 26, 2016 Author Share Posted June 26, 2016 37 minutes ago, politas said: Ok, I've had some sleep so now I can explain my actions. I created PR Allow foss delisting #1795 and have started behaving as though that change were accepted. As a result, I have delisted some mods on request. If there are any delisting requests that I haven't got to, I apologise for that. Given that ModuleManager is one of the mods I delisted, CKAN is effectively useless for most users now. Sarbian handed me the launch codes, and I fired the nuke. So why did I do it? Mostly as a wake-up call to my fellow CKAN contributors. Insisting that CKAN is following FOSS ethos by keeping all FOSS mods available was not ultimately in the best interests of either the FOSS community or the KSP community. I have been thinking a lot about this over the last couple of days, and here's what I think is the fundamental problem: CKAN's policy was all about accessibility, and the rights of users. It was based on the assumption that all CKAN was doing was facilitating the installation of mods. Where it went wrong is in not taking into account the fact that in the minds of many CKAN users, CKAN also implicitly defines a support relationship, by linking to the "homepage" forum thread. We have attempted to disabuse users of that idea, but those efforts have been unsuccessful, and are likely to remain so, because people are people. It is this expectation of support in the minds of users that has antagonised the modders, as far as I can see (combined with a perception of arrogance from CKAN team members and supporters). As such, I am going to act as though my PR #1795 has been accepted. Either we change the policy, or the CKAN team kick me out of the project. UPDATE: new development! hopefully this works as it would cast ckan in a very bad light if it kicked what seems to be its only member who is now engaging the community and trying to fix things. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eirexe Posted June 27, 2016 Share Posted June 27, 2016 I don't understand this debate, it is not the mod author's competence to dictate what tool the user uses or doesn't use to install their mods. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Camacha Posted June 27, 2016 Share Posted June 27, 2016 On 25-6-2016 at 8:18 PM, superdavekerman said: I would argue that the best way to support the interest of the users is to encourage a healthy drama-free modding community, which implies attending to the concerns of mod authors. And in turn, the best way for mod authors to reduce their own support costs is to work with CKAN (and other networks) to ensure they have automated installs working properly. Some mod authors simply do not agree with how CKAN operates, or do not feel like supporting a plethora of standards. It is a hobby, not a job. No one can blame a mod author to support a simple manual installation and nothing more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
passinglurker Posted June 27, 2016 Author Share Posted June 27, 2016 (edited) 1 hour ago, eirexe said: I don't understand this debate, it is not the mod author's competence to dictate what tool the user uses or doesn't use to install their mods. well if you want it bluntly they actually can in a roundabout way dictate this stuff. if you make thier work harder they can simply stop development, pull thier download sources and all other sort of heavy handed tricks where if you push them far enough and you don't stop making thier hobby unfun they could ruin everything, but thankfully they are normally nice enough not to do that. so think of it like this our community is built on top of a sleeping giant so please don't try to make things itchy for him Anyway forum mods I think this has run its course the CKAN is making changes and no one's rushing to make evil-ckan-2.0 so if you could please apply a tube of thread lock here that'd be appreciated Edited June 27, 2016 by passinglurker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kiwi1960 Posted June 27, 2016 Share Posted June 27, 2016 I'd say this discussion has run its course. Everyone knows where everyone stands... lets see what develops from it and lets hope everyone will be happy then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
technicalfool Posted June 27, 2016 Share Posted June 27, 2016 5 hours ago, passinglurker said: well if you want it bluntly they actually can in a roundabout way dictate this stuff. if you make thier work harder they can simply stop development, pull thier download sources and all other sort of heavy handed tricks where if you push them far enough and you don't stop making thier hobby unfun they could ruin everything, but thankfully they are normally nice enough not to do that. so think of it like this our community is built on top of a sleeping giant so please don't try to make things itchy for him Anyway forum mods I think this has run its course the CKAN is making changes and no one's rushing to make evil-ckan-2.0 so if you could please apply a tube of thread lock here that'd be appreciated Done. I'll even use your tube to do it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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