Development Updates

[JamboIE]

I know you could probably use like announcements for this but I think a sort of changelogs/dev logs section in the main part of the forums where Jayson could maybe post different updates, what he's doing, what he's possibly planning etc..

It'll help us see that development is actually happening in the background if not completely visible. If adding a new forum wouldn't work maybe more active announcements containing info about development etc..

 

[Jayson]

This would certainly improve community morale, however I'd rather not drum up expectations to avoid inheriting Mick's reputation. Different times of the year have different events and circumstances which the general public fails to realize when criticizing.

Though to say the least, my desktop is full of files.

 

[Satan]

I'd rather not drum up expectations to avoid inheriting Mick's reputation.

Are you suggesting that if you were to make a public changelog/updates dedicated forum of threads, you would post as rarely as Mick does in the announcements section? Which would probably indicate to the community here that you're barely working as a "developer" to the forum here. As long as you provide weekly updates or at the very least weekly POSTS that indicate you making progress with some new feature and/or state that you have things going on so you won't be pushing any updates/working on them, I think that's fine.

The fact that Mick rarely posts announcement threads because of the way he's been releasing announcements in a very formal and "halting" manner is the reason I believe he attained a profound "reputation to neglect the community". I personally have seen Mick in the shoutbox replying actively to people's concerns, and going around suggestions threads. Not everyone sees this and even I can agree that it'd be nice if we had more frequent updates from a developer such as you to address our technical concerns/beef with the features that MCM has to offer.

 

[Jayson]

Are you suggesting that if you were to make a public changelog/updates dedicated forum of threads, you would post as rarely as Mick does in the announcements section? Which would probably indicate to the community here that you're barely working as a "developer" to the forum here.

Prior to implementing a feature, ideas are thought out to avoid potential conflicts and ensure that the community will actually appreciate or improve with it. This can take a while on its own. Modifications to add-ons are typically done all at once (such as the feedback system) in order to maintain the same thought train and experience with how the add-on is built. These changes can take a while and I'd rather not share an incomplete view on what's being implemented for a specific aspect of our platform. While developing our feedback system's modifications, which includes new buttons (delete/undelete (staff)/dispute/join dispute/history (staff)), I added the buttons as the features backing them up were implemented-not all at once. This ensures that if something gets cancelled, the entire system I've built still works and doesn't need modification because of the feature implementation cancellation/idea modification. While common sense would tell you hey, their still not done yet and there's more to come, others may state what, are you not implementing this?!. Small looking features can also take a while, but nobody's going to know that. I build things to last, not to satisfy an immediate need.

I like the idea of sharing what's happening, however not when the community contributes incomplete thoughts. It would become a post farming method for many.

 

[JamboIE]

Prior to implementing a feature, ideas are thought out to avoid potential conflicts and ensure that the community will actually appreciate or improve with it. This can take a while on its own. Modifications to add-ons are typically done all at once (such as the feedback system) in order to maintain the same thought train and experience with how the add-on is built. These changes can take a while and I'd rather not share an incomplete view on what's being implemented for a specific aspect of our platform. While developing our feedback system's modifications, which includes new buttons (delete/undelete (staff)/dispute/join dispute/history (staff)), I added the buttons as the features backing them up were implemented-not all at once. This ensures that if something gets cancelled, the entire system I've built still works and doesn't need modification because of the feature implementation cancellation/idea modification. While common sense would tell you hey, their still not done yet and there's more to come, others may state what, are you not implementing this?!. Small looking features can also take a while, but nobody's going to know that. I build things to last, not to satisfy an immediate need.

I like the idea of sharing what's happening, however not when the community contributes incomplete thoughts. It would become a post farming method for many.

I mean maybe make it that members can't respond?
There could be a few new reactions like agree and disagree just renamed like "Useful" "Useless" etc.. to share their opinions. I mean what is added / removed is ultimately your decision. I myself know that stuff is happening that's not visible but I think with it being visible whether you get negative/positive reactions it shouldn't matter. You'll be showing you're trying to improve the market as the sort of reputation it has now is that Mick isn't giving a shit basically < what a lot of people think not myself.

 

[Satan]

I mean maybe make it that members can't respond?
There could be a few new reactions like agree and disagree just renamed like "Useful" "Useless" etc.. to share their opinions. I mean what is added / removed is ultimately your decision. I myself know that stuff is happening that's not visible but I think with it being visible whether you get negative/positive reactions it shouldn't matter. You'll be showing you're trying to improve the market as the sort of reputation it has now is that Mick isn't giving a shit basically < what a lot of people think not myself.

In addition to this, I'd like to add that the community morale is low of the staff and specifically to you as the developer Jayson because we don't receive any updates whatsoever. Even if you made posts that we can't reply to, at least we're seeing activity and progress that we can see with our very own eyes that someone is paying attention that we're being listened to. The suggestions forum is great and all, but they're just ideas until executed. Seeing an idea/suggestion turn into development is something I think we all would like to see for ourselves and say "Finally. MCM is actually moving forward.".

 

[JamboIE]

I mean I myself thought MCM was finally making a bigger push to fix things when I saw Mick responding to all the suggestions and bug reports. That's **visible** progress which is honestly exactly what the community needs because we only want the best for the market. So I can't express enough that visible things we can read/ images we can look at anything.. will help so much and shut people up with the mcm is dying, mick doesnt care, devs are shit etc..

Hopefully the suggestion is accepted now that I think everyone understands how this can benefit the market

Edit:
There will always be the people saying this wont help, this wont work, this is shit, how would this benefit the market but they're always like that.. don't deny this suggestion because there might be negative outlooks on development.. I'm 10000% sure there will be a much larger positive reaction to it all

 

[Lotus]

Whatever Jayson creates, anything which is relevant to the community and significant enough will be talked about whenever Mick creates a site wide announcement. Sometimes, if it is a minor change where it is unnecessary for a large announcement, we will simply tweet the change.

Jayson is by far one of the most contrubutive developers ever for MCM from my standpoint in the short timeframe he has already been involved as a member of staff, however, maintaining a public development log is simply unnecessary in my eyes.

It adds a certain unnecessary burden on a developer if they have a public development log to ‘sate’ the community’s curiosity. I understand, everyone wants to know what’s going on and what’s going to happen. The simple concept of curiosity is what drives this suggestion. But that places pressure to ‘impress’, and community expectations, especially for a community as vocal as MCM, will take its toll and create strife.

Internally, we’ve been making changes, fleshing out ideas. One day we may consider a certain idea viable, the next week we may decide to scrap it. Development is planned process, but as Jayson has stated multiple times, sharing an incomplete view of some project isn’t something in our best interests. Projects change halfway and it suddenly may start heading towards a different concept. There will be an insatiable demand and hunger for knowledge on what does Jayson do if we encourage that idea through a public development log. Hence I don’t particularly support the idea from my perspective considering all those conditions.

Additionally, it’ll take up another subforum slot on the forum. We try to conserve and minimise things like that.

Any development changes significant enough to the community will be announced through Mick regardless. And we don’t plan to disappoint.

 

[jayt387]

we will simply tweet the change.

There hasn’t been a tweet for a while, I guarantee there has been changes since the last tweet couldn’t there be like a 2 week update notice for the very least it doesn’t have to announced to everyone but for the very least it can be shown in the announcements for people to read.

 

[Ambrosia]

Thought this was an official update from MCM, should've known, it would've been a miracle.

 

[Mick]

There are a few different ways that updates are pushed out on websites, with the two main ways being a whole bunch of small announcements saying "hey, we've implemented a feature you should check out", and another where you release a whole bunch of updates in a batch.

I remember when I was younger being so excited about minecraft updates occuring because I knew that as soon as they released an update from 1.7 to 1.8, there'd be so much to learn and explore new about the game. I've always been fond of batch updates of things in a sort of presentation rather than a less formal and more regular way. The downside to this approach is that it looks like absolutely nothing is happening for weeks or months at a time until suddenly we have released a new update, which is never the case. About a month ago we released an announcement before it was even released we were already planning and developing ideas for a next announcement.

We have a new update coming out in just a few days time to celebrate MC-Market's 5th birthday, and there are so many new features we have prepared including a few pretty massive ones, but we've kept it completely secret until the release because that's just the way I like to do it, which I don't expect will change anytime soon.

I'm sure Justis will agree that my desire to batch-release announcements on the 1st day of the month is excessive, but along with the rest of the community, I just get so excited on announcement day for the new cool things on the market to be released. Smaller changes are announced on our twitter (@MCMarket_org) during the month if they're small, too.

Denied, thanks for the suggestion.