Jabberwocky wrote in Sat Apr 18, 2015 5:03 pm:Well, since there is no defined quality standard for the planes and we can't even pull one out of the hat, refusal of a plane by a person who tried to get himself kind of an exclusive gatekeeper position can only be considered arbitrary, especially given, that many planes in the "official" repository are not even flyable.
At the other hand he would have to balance between get as little yelled at as possible both from people insisting on including *everything* and people insisting that no aircraft should be included unless it has a certain high standard (as well as many people leaning to each or the other side). In addition, since there is very little of guidelines he can expect to be yelled at even more, as one could expect that contributors and users have less respect for him than some guidelines.
Jabberwocky wrote in Sat Apr 18, 2015 5:03 pm:...given the situation, a guideline would have to be based on a very low level atm.
I think I can agree on that. In addition if one would raise the standard one could expect some (admittedly less reasonable) arguments on why new aircraft would have to be so much better than some of the older ones, and why this and that contributor can not be demanded to upgrade all his older aircraft.
Jabberwocky wrote in Sat Apr 18, 2015 5:03 pm:...and in the end, this is Open Soruce, so all guidelines would be more informal and non-binding while technical facts, like the ability to deny free speech are obviously the domain of "certain persons".
I would dare say that FlightGear is very free and more toward the anarchistic side on the organization level for an open source project by this size. I sometimes yoke about how the 'cathedral' is at one end of the scale, FlightGear at the other and the 'bazaar' in the middle.*
Consider that we do not have a set in stone coding style guide (do we even have one at all?), no governing board/board of trustees/whatever etc. Have you found the forum rules? It of course have both pros and cons.
Jabberwocky wrote in Sat Apr 18, 2015 5:03 pm:And of course, things are not done with a guideline about which planes can get into the "official" repository, there is obviously a need for guidelines where and in what time frame the options for decisions are discussed. Here? the devlist? Wiki? ... So, I guess, that needs more brain work
I think you touch on one of the tricky points here. Currently things are discussed on both the devlist, the forum and the wiki. Somehow I think that users and developers should to a larger extent be encouraged to discuss the wiki on the wiki, the core development and new features needing hooks on the developer list and aircraft, scenery and all things under the "data" umbrella on the forum. Currently it is often all mixed and overlapping which kind of interferes with the transparency from time to time.
In addition, and I find this a slight bit more important than where it is discussed: When do the discussion stop and the recommendations/guidelines/rules get summarized (note that this is a rater iterative process) and finally published? Could we achieve some kind of consensus? Also, what would be needed to go through it all again?
I think it would be very preferable to achieve some kind of consensus and summarize both the guidelines and, probably just as important, their rationale as well as links to the archived discussions leading to them. I think they would be much more respected that way.
More respected guidelines based on consensus would probably also lead to less in-fighting and conflicts. In essence it is much easier to be respectful towards half of the at one time active community than towards one or two users/contributors/developers/committers. Perhaps we can get there one small step at a time...
* Referring to The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric S. Raymond