[Scummvm-devel] Understaffing

[Thierry Crozat (Yahoo! Mail)]

Le 4 mars 09 à 15:59, Joost Peters a écrit :

> Marcus Comstedt schreef:
>> What I think will _not_ work, however, is trying to define a set of
>> roles, and then go recruiting to fill those roles.  The basis
>> needs to be what people want to do, not what we would like to
>> have done, otherwise the role will just feel like a burden, and
>> the result is unlikely to be good.
>
> Thanks Marcus, that is a very good point.
>
> Although without recruiting (maybe it needs to be done in a much
> broad(er) sense?  A general call for involvement?), I wonder if we  
> will
> ever "find" someone willing to do certain jobs, since the people that
> enjoy it may be out there, but are unaware of the project's needs.
> *cough*manual*cough*
>


First, and to concur with what other people have already written, by  
following a bit the project in the past few years I was amazed at the  
job that has been done on the structure of the code, and that made me  
realise this project is not only about adding support for new games  
and that there is a lot of important work being done being the scene.  
Well done to all involved in this.

Back to the question: having people dedicated to certain tasks seems  
a good idea. And I mostly agree with what Joost wrote. A call for  
involvement in a news or a forum post cannot do harm. The worst that  
can happen is that nobody will reply, but this might help as I thing  
that most people think that what the project needs is only more  
developers and they don't realise they can help it.

As for the manual, coincidentally I was looking at it yesterday and  
making notes of what needs to be updated or completed (until I ran  
out of paper :-) ). The text on the wiki says "If you want to  
contribute, send us a sample of text you'd write for the new manual,  
and we will consider adding you an account", therefore I was waiting  
to have a nice draft for the "Running and Using ScummVM" section  
(which means not before next week-end as I have little time during  
the week) before contacting you. My guess was that if I send a list  
of things that needs to be updated (implying somebody else should do  
it), that would only bring more frustration ;-)

By the way, what does "send us a sample of text" mean? Do I need to  
send it on this list? to somebody in particular? add it to the patch  
tracker?

Another though I had yesterday: would it make sense to translate the  
first part of the ReadMe (About ScummVM and Quick Start) in other  
languages and distribute it with the release? Translating more than  
that would require a lot of work and then keeping everything updated/ 
synchronized would probably be an headache. But my though was that  
this section should not change much in the future, and people who  
don't read english would at least have the description ScummVM and  
the quick start in their language (which imho is better than  
nothing). The main issue would be to find volunteer to translate it  
(if you thing this is a good idea I will do the translation to french).

Thierry
		
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