Parting from M&M Council, Thoughts on Biass, and Future
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Hey, everyone,
Parting Words as M&M Councilor:
First and foremost I just want to say that is has been really interesting to work on the community (FAF) project for the past 18 months. It taught me a lot about how open source projects function in that I never really knew the structure and organization of people who make this possible.
My original goal for taking up M&M was to do one thing: raise the bar. The previous M&M councilors were motivated and kind people; however, they never made as much of an impact on the community (in my opinion) due to not knowing who made it function. There is a very unknown scene with the development side of FAF in the slack/zulip realm where most of the real work takes place.
I do not want to flood everyone with examples of the rather tedious work, but for example, here is a "issue request" in GitHub that took 6+ months to address:
https://github.com/FAForever/faf-moderator-client/issues/106
When moderating content in the client, it previously took a click of every version of some map or modification, so if you had a modification with 200+ versions it would take quite a bit of time to go through - pain in the butt!
This is not to say that the developers are slow, bad people, but more a warning to those who speak ill of them and those like myself who run the community. You hear it all the time, loathe it, want more - like anyone does, but we are unpaid, few, and there are many who we serve.
I did what I could without relying on the developers as much as possible, as per our council discussions, we all felt that a feature like "Team Matchmaker" took precedence over anything else, so I put it on the back-burner to enhance M&M, spare adding resources and creating the M&M discord, teaching individuals how things work.
It has become quite a cumbersome task, as at the old age of 35, I have other thing in real life that are detracting from my availability. This is unfair to the community, unfair to others who want to lead the position, and unfair to how I have reacted to some feedback; it's not that I do not have good responses to criticism, but lack the time to write in a proper manner, and it makes me react poorly, often angrily.
Since this unfortunate consequence has come about, I have decided, that since time is not plentiful, to let someone else give it a go!
Thoughts on Biass
Biass is a tough one for me to discuss. I would say most of the community knows we have fought and argued more then what seems healthy, and it stems from a long history of interactions.
For me, he was the first person I talked to that was able to give me a start in actually contributing to mapping in FAF. It was between he, Cookienoob, and speed2 who got things going. It would be a lie if I said it was all pleasant, but they did help and kept doing it. I think part of the problem was that so many people don't really want to go "all the way" with what the tools and offerings give, so it was a natural reaction.
The continuing arguments between each other is not something uncommon among artists, musicians, etc that create "art." This comes off as likely frustrating to hear from other people, but it's usually just a medium in which progress happens. No one ever built great things without arguing: all countries and populations argued relentlessly on how to govern themselves (and still do) so thinking it's such a bad thing is kind of immature / naive.
For that reason, I would happily like to note that I support biass full and 100% as the next M&M councilor.
He might seem really aggressive and tough to deal with, but I like that: you need to have a certain standard and draw the line somewhere. You can't just let anyone and everyone walk over you, and once you develop enough, I am certain you will appreciate him as I do today, even with all the friction we have encountered.
Future Work with FAF
Now, on to what will be next for myself. I want this game to last as long as possible as it's been something I have enjoyed since 2007, and as a former Total Annihilation player, it's incredible to see the Chris Taylor legacy live on.
As I mentioned above, the community is most desperate for one thing: developers.
So, to keep true to that, I am going to take up apprenticeship with Brutus, Axel, GeoSearch, Sheikah, etc etc to learn some coding and apply it to what the community needs. I am not certain how long this will take, but anything will help.
It is my hope that I can bring TMM, the "author vault" biass wants, and many other fixes to the community in time.
Of course, I will certainly create some maps as it's my biggest passion, but it will likely take a seat back.
For those seeking some great help with that, talk to MadMax and Jip, who are creating a pool guide of everything to know for that!
It was a pleasure working with everyone in M&M and looking forward to future endeavors.
Be well, everyone.
- Morax
