Oolite Bulletins

Griff's normalmapped ships are awesome, but now that the manager is the primary source (it is!) for expansions, they might not get the attention they deserve.

How about using the manager for advertising OXPs that are not available from the manager? Create a deliberate conflict with min-max version properties and put some nice advertising text to the description including text like: "...this oxp is available only from the Oolite wiki...".

Good idea? Bad idea?

I totally agree that is a problem to solve.

I understand that you propose to make fake oxps in-manager to let the user know the oxps exist on the wiki?

I would propose that the official policy be: "The official way to propose oxps is the expansion manager; other means are exceptions".
Exceptions because... not maintained, not consensual enough, indecent, the author is allergic to the manager, whatever you wish.

Advertising text, well... I understand it would be a solution to some exceptions. So Good Idea in some cases.

Concerning Griff's normalmapped ships, is there a reason why they shouldn't be on the manager?

There is no consensus required nor a decency check...

I don't really like the idea of spamming the manager with 'fake' expansions acting as Ads if that's what is being suggested here.
If an expansion is current and maintained I'm sure it will find its way into the Manager in time. Even if the author doesn't know how/can't be bothered then somebody else will step up to do it - there are several instances of this happening already.

Making a manifest just to advertise an oxp is almost the same effort than making an oxz copy but the second is more useful. For example I just now made an oxz from the old Total patrol due to I wanted to put into my Addons for beginners metapackage. So I think an advertising package is unnecessary in most cases.

maik wrote:

There is no consensus required nor a decency check...

Well, I can imagine it could happen in the future. I'm not pushing it, being mostly against it, but I understood some here had children playing with Oolite.

If an expansion is current and maintained I'm sure it will find its way into the Manager in time. Even if the author doesn't know how/can't be bothered then somebody else will step up to do it - there are several instances of this happening already.

So it could happen with Griff's normalmapped ships? Yay!!

The OXPs I had in mind were Griff's, that are currently WIP, quite big and randomly updating and perhaps PovRay planets that are so huge the hosting with direct links is a problem.

But maybe it's better not put anything like that into the manager. What's in the manager simply works and then there are some other odd OXPs around that you just have to be aware of.

Norby wrote:

For example I just now made an oxz from the old Total patrol due to I wanted to put into my Addons for beginners metapackage.

I thought that the current Oolite has something like that built in. I might be wrong though.

spara wrote:

The OXPs I had in mind were...randomly updating...

Hehe, that sounds like most of mine, but maybe one day they will all work properly......

spara wrote:

But maybe it's better not put anything like that into the manager. What's in the manager simply works and then there are some other odd OXPs around that you just have to be aware of.

Well, for me, the manager is an important mean to better quality oxps. An oxp in the manager is used more often, so bugs are found more often, in this oxp and in every thing that is linked to it: other oxps and main oolite.

So, I'm quite in favour of having every oxp in the manager, even if we may need to tag some as WIP/unmaintained.

Day wrote:

WIP

We have a WIP status in the OXP List to exclude these from the working ones, so why we haven't a WIP category in the manager?

Luckily these letteres put it to the end of the alphabetical list where it shoud be, and an OXZ without contents can be considered as unfinished until the author fill it up with the proper content, then set the real category.

spara wrote:

Norby wrote:

For example I just now made an oxz from the old Total patrol due to I wanted to put into my Addons for beginners metapackage.

I thought that the current Oolite has something like that built in. I might be wrong though.

Oolite from 1.79 onwards has populated and repopulated both police and bounty hunter patrols on all three major spacelanes.

Rather than putting advertising OXP's in the manager, I think a good solution would be to have a regular (say every six months) review of popular and favourite OXP's, manager-accessed or otherwise. Kind of like having an Oolite magazine where members can mention a couple of OXP's they really enjoy using, and perhaps more importantly, why they enjoy using them. If a new thread was created every six months it wouldn't get too long, and it allows for repeats. This thread could be linked to from the manager webpage for users who want a bit of help in deciding what's good and why. It could also be pinned at the top of the discussion page so it's easy to find for forum lurkers.

phkb wrote:

... I think a good solution would be to have a regular (say every six months) review of popular and favourite OXP's ...

Does the OXZ manager collect data? Is it possible to generate this information automatically and have it posted on the Oolite web page?

Having said that the privacy nutjob in me can forsee all manner of implications in having Oolite report information back to the (Thargoid) mothership...

One feature that could be useful - provide an 'OXZ auto-update' option, or at least provide an explicit list of 'Installed OXZs that have a newer version available' (yes, I realise this is achieved by clicking 'Manage Expansion Packs' / 'Update expansion list', then comparing the Installed vs Available version strings - what I'm suggesting is a list that removes this monkey work).

Bugbear wrote:

Does the OXZ manager collect data?

I don't think the manager does, but items stored on the Wiki can have the number of downloads listed. The limitation for this is that there is no indication when those downloads occurred, or for which version of the OXP.

For me, the point of a bi-annual "In the world of Oolite" forum post is for members to share why they like a particular OXP. Just saying "I like using PovRay Planets" or "Griffs ships" was downloaded x times is fine, but saying "I like Griff's ships because they add so much more detail and variety to the ships you see." is much more helpful to new users. If regular members each contributed a post detailing a couple of their favorite OXP's, and why they fall into that category, would be very helpful.

The topic could certainly be opened with post that outlines "These are OXP's that were released in the last 6 months, and these OXP's were updated". I think it would be possible for someone (or several someones) to do an initial pass of new OXP's they've seen released, combined with all the updated OXPs from the manager. Of course, I'm suggesting work here that "someone" would need to do...

Feel free to be that someone

Updated and new OXPs should be easy to list: go to the [wiki]OXP List[/wiki] and sort by date, copy and paste to the BB. "Should be" because of course it depends on authors keeping their entries up-to-date.

The "I like x because" bit is probably not so critical: if you get an idea what OXP is popular, e.g. from download numbers, then you can look up the wiki page or forum thread and read up on it and understand why/if you want it yourself.