AJAX-Chat Wiki Additions Discussion

[Doc gWorldz]

WARNING: This is a long post discussing the creation of a community contributions section for mods and styles being added to the AJAX-Chat Wiki to preserve fully functional mods and styles contributed by the community.

I encourage you to read my rambling and ranting but if you don't have the time just let us know what you think or ask some questions and maybe Frig will consider it :D

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Over the years the community has suggested everything from websites to forums and chatrooms devoted to community support. Each has its pros and cons and in the end it was always best to maintain the current form of support for various reasons. 

I've been playing with AJAX-Chat for a long time, and I have seen many resources come and go. We have gained and lost dozens of mods and styles along the way. 2 years ago I finally decided to become part of the community and actually try to help and even contribute when I could. I released 20 or so mods on my website and began directing people to the site I was administrating at the time PureChaos.us (dad and gone) I even released a few here thankfully but I had IRL issues and had to leave almost a year ago. Now that I'm back first thing I wanted to do was resurrect my old chat, unfortunately that server crashed and my backup was corrupted costing me the final versions of my mods. I thought I would be able to come here (and Sourceforge o.O) and recover them but that has proven more difficult than I ever thought it would :(

I got lucky and found some text file mods I wrote up back in when I first starting speaking on Sourceforge and here in the group but they are all rough and unrefined so they are more or less starting over and cleaning them up again and re-post them in hopes they won't be lost again but I'm afraid there is no place that I can put them that is safe. If I put them on my site, the same thing could happen again. Putting them on SF is just stupid and would go against Frug's wishes to leave SF behind which I completely agree with. Don't get me wrong there are some gems buried at SF, believe me o.O before I ever posted in this group I read ever post ever made there so when I started posting I would know how to help them or where to direct people. that leaves the group as my only place to post, and that works *UNLESS* you post detailed instructions and no one has trouble with it or discusses it to keep it from getting buried. 

That's not even the big issue with posting here though, the search function of google groups is not the greatest and to be honest mods don't really belong here in my opinion. That's what all this rambling is all about anyway ... so where do I think community mods belong?

Well, the only place that really makes sense and the only place to get official mods in the AJAX-Chat Wiki. If we could get a dedicated section in the wiki for community mods with a simple standard posting format (no worries we all do this already open|find|action and all that) a simple template to follow ...

MOD|STYLE NAME

Compatibility: AJAX-Chat version ??? - ???
Developed On: AJAX-Chat BRANCH
Verified By: NAME1 - 0.8.3, NAME2 - 0.83b, NAME3 - 0.8.7
Notes: WHATEVER SHOULD BE SAID ABOUT COMPATIBILITY


THE MOD

... maybe that's not good but its off the top of my head. I'm sure the community can hammer out a decent header we could all use to add them o.O

Proposal would be a community mods section added to the wiki ...

General modifications

|_ Community Contributions

   |_ Custom Styles

   |_ Modifications

... include a nice disclaimer reminding everyone that the community contributions are unofficial and all that mod stuff about backing up everything before you do anything. Leave it to mod authors to do the rest, write and contribute their mods|styles.

Anyway, sorry for rambling and ranting, I been awake staring at code for almost 48 hours I needed a break and this was it o.O

[EDIT] Maybe even have a graveyard under Custom Styles & Modifications for mods that haven't been verified within 30 days of new stable release so we know which mods need to be verified|updated ...

General modifications

|_ Community Contributions

   |_ Custom Styles

   |_ Modifications

   |_ Mod Graveyard

This could actually be done quite easily when new versions of AJAX-Chat are released by cutting all listed mods from the Modifications page and pasting it directly to the Mod Graveyard awaiting the authors to update them or someone to verify them and add them back to the Modifications list. Styles would ofcourse be a little different and only be moved when they are verified failures. As far back as I can recall there have not been very many changes made to styles or how they function *NOTE* I said very few, there have been some but they were not difficult to compensate for o.O[/EDIT]

[ClubSyNXTremeTV]

A forum with a download system with a integrated live chat for support would be so much better and alot easier to manage IMO.

[Doc gWorldz]

Yes but also requires upkeep and hosting, Frug is busy and this is not an option at the moment. {;us there is an issue of wgicj forum software and then it looks like a particular 3rd party app is preferred over another ... this has more ramifications than it seems like at first. I've seen this discussed on other projects the cons trult do outweigh the pros :(

We need to use what we have available to get a repository o.O

The wiki is here its not going anywhere anytime soon, its always been and I feel always will be part of AJAX-Chat, just seems like something we should all embrace and expand ... isn't that what wiki's are all about?

[Frug]

The wiki is the proper place to store things if you want to save them from death if someone leaves the project. If I get hit by a bus tomorrow, github is there for you to fork the project. 

Setting up a forum is easy, I've just not been convinced it's necessary since groups works, even though it's got an awful interface. I have server space and will put one up. Sorry i didn't get to your pull request this weekend, by the way.

File storage/download system is not necessary. Github has file storage. If you want to provide a download, the proper way to do it is to create a github repo. If someone doesn't want to learn or use git, they won't be able to properly contribute to this project. If someone makes a little hack and are sharing it casually, I'm sure we can find a spot to dump it.

One option for extensions is for me to set them up as composer packages so that devs can download them from the command line. It wouldn't help regular users, but any developer with access to linux, or access to SSH on their host, or who can use the windows command prompt, could plug in an extension with a command. It would mean some rewrites to how extensions are made, and would require php 5.3. It's something to consider for the near future. 0.9 looks more and more like a total rewrite of chat to me.