Oolite Bulletins

Whats going on?

Is he deleting his OXPs?

I'm undoing all the deletes. Think that they should not be allowed. OXPs of his include the Griff No Shaders Shipset, I-Missile amongst others. I think these should be preserved for the Community at least!

So it would seem - as noted elsewhere, he blanked his Wiki page on 26/11, and removed (all?) his OXPs from Box.

Are you sure about doing that, JH? His OXPs are no longer available.

Cody wrote:

Are you sure about doing that, JH?

Yes. It shouldn't be allowed for us to lose the history, even if the OXPs are gone.

Especially if someone takes on the OXPs in the future. The Wiki pages should be preserved.

I've been wondering as well, seeing how he is blanking all his pages. But he can't delete, all past revisions still exist. Before this results in endless blanking/undoing, coud you please PM him to sort it out? I also feel that the content should remain. A note that the original creator is gone should be sufficient.

The man has made a choice I think we must respect it. His web pages says it all.. he is leaving and taking his OXP's with him. no reason given but someday he may let us know. Someone must have ticked him off enough so that he wanted to have no further contact with OOlite. That is sad and we must bear that loss by respecting his wishes.

I'm with Yah-Ta-Hey on this.
From Solo's website...

...I've left the Oolite community for reasons which may some day be revealed. In the process, I removed every OXP contribution that I had made...

He clearly wishes to make a break from the community and as part of this he is removing his 'footprints' as best he can. It is his choice to do this and I think we should just accept that in good grace and let it be.
I don't think re-instating deleted parts of the wiki is a good idea - they are likely to be re-deleted if this is noticed, and I could see this being very annoying to Solo. I don't know if his retreat is connected to this community or not, but if it is, we don't need to make things worse, and if it isn't, acting like this at a time when he possibly has other issues he needs to deal with is not going to be helpful.
He has intimated that in time he may return, and the reasons for his absence made clear, but this will not happen if we ignore his wishes now. We should accept his position, and respect his wishes and actions.

Yah-Ta-Hey wrote:

Someone must have ticked him off enough so that he wanted to have no further contact with OOlite.

I saw his website message yesterday, and I wondered about that - but conjecture is pointless. I agree about respecting his intent, btw.

This is what the man himself has said about it:

CaptSolo @ http://bis.midco.net/galendg/captsolo/solo.htm wrote:

Oolite
Oolite is a modern remake of classical Elite and more. It allows for user created expansion packs (OXP's) which can vastly enrich one's gaming experience. I still play Oolite and dabble with modelling and texturing, but I've left the Oolite community for reasons which may some day be revealed. In the process, I removed every OXP contribution that I had made; like a retreating army burning bridges behind them. It was not an emotional response nor very logical either, as I'm sure some may be questioning my sanity. Hola and adios, amigo viejo!

The thing I'm worried about is losing all this great content and OXPs. I myself only use one of his OXPs (I-Missile).

I saw the same thing happen to the Atari community. There used to be 1,000's of great public domain software for the Atari ST range. Now most of it has disappeared down the trashcan of life. Such a shame.

The loss of this body of work would be regretable to be sure, but we should accept that Solo is doing this because this is what he wants.
I have a couple of his OXPs installed as well, and do find this all a little strange, particularly as they carry the standard CC licence and could therefore be adopted and adapted by others under the terns of the licence. To the best of my knowledge Solo has not amended the licencing as things stand.
My instincts are that in time it will become more clear what he is doing and why, and it may well be that he is following this discussion anyway, as a guest or hidden member. In this case he might clear things up at least regarding his OXPs and their current status. Until then, I feel we should let this run and respect the man's wishes.

For me there's a real dilemma here. I respect CaptSolo pulling his OXPs. This has been done before by other members, and I think we've always respected it. And nobody who has ever downloaded an OXP of his can be prevented from continuing to use it (and update it for use with future versions of Oolite if necessary, if the license permits it).

But Wiki pages seem a little different to me. They're by definition a collaborative work, and no single author can lay a claim on them. It's clearly stated on the edit form that by submitting text you agree that this text may be mercilessly edited by other people (which includes deleting or restoring it).

So it's not so clear-cut that the blanking of pages must be respected. On the other hand, reverting the edits may of course result in an edit war—which I think nobody here wants. If we don't want to go down that road, we haven't really a choice but to respect the deletions as well.

My personal limit would be if an outgoing member would begin to blank pages that are not specifically related to their OXPs (for instance if they had contributed a paragraph in one of the general introductory pages and would now blank that complete page). This I would consider an act of vandalism.

Without checking I assume that this is not the case with CaptSolo, thus I agree with the members above: we should let it go.

Just wondering: where can I find his web page?

log in and then go to the small Members box and search for Captain Solo.(#192) his web page is listed there.
http://bis.midco.net/galendg/captsolo/solo.htm