strredwolf | (no subject)

Entry tags:

comic genesis

(no subject)

I usually don't blog about stuff inside Comic Genesis, but then... well, a bit of work philosophy.

You see, I'm a bit open about how I work. I've found out that the more people know, the less they question and the less they bother you about things. I'd rather know what's going on and have some documentation over having to dig through source code myself (the latter is evident with AutoKeen, which I rewrote into WolfKeen and hopefully will soon test publicly). I try to maintain a To-Do list on the CG Wiki, so that everyone knows what I'm trying to work on and that I know what I have to do (because I forget, I'm only human).

However, my co-admin has a different philosophy that doesn't mesh -- she rather do it and leave everyone behind, causing major problems when I try to do something that was valid before her changes. She doesn't tell anyone despite being asked many times, having several avenues of communications availible to her. I keep asking and asking, and nothing is being replied back until I force the issue. It makes me look bad, it makes her look bad, it makes CG look bad, it makes Keenspot look bad.

Over CG's IRC channel, we got into an argument. I didn't know what was going on and I ask. I wait and ask again. I wait again. And then I tell people that I will wait, with was a passing threat (even though I felt it wasn't). Then the co-admin starts virtually wailing into me while questions finally get answered... and it devoles down to a volunteer asking the co-admin about something, getting a friend to help her, and the co-admin saying yes. I wasn't told. I didn't get any word of this, after asking her to. And I get hell when I try to find out myself.

I asked her again, over and over, to talk to me, tell me what she's doing so I can:

Get out of her way
Raise objections if need be
Support the end product when folks email me

It's such a simple thing. Tell me what you're doing. I'm already telling you what I'm doing. Talk to me. I don't automatically shoot everything down. Just talk to me.

And yet she doesn't do it, and does her own thing, giving me the excuse that I'd shoot it down or kill it.

Yeah. Like the individual forums idea she wanted to do. Folks couldn't wait, and wanted forums now. I dragged that out and asked folks opinions. I told her that before, durring, and now I've had to clean up her attempts because we need the server for another use.

I know about the co-admin's problems outside CG. I do read her journal. She did contact me and Keenspot when she was having problems securing Internet access, and Keenspot helped out.

I know we're having problems. I'm willing to work things out, but it's like I'm being left behind. I don't like that, especially when I asked to be kept in the loop in order to perform my role at CG admin. When I'm unable to do that, I will make myself known so I can...

...and if it continues on for too long, I will have to take drastic action.

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I hope you realize you aren't left out of the loop, only left out of the negotiation panel. I would much rather get something done then have to wait for approval I don't need if it's not going to break anything. That entire issue with the forum slaving was a disagreement in how to add more forums without killing the entire thing, I wanted redundancy, you wanted 'now'.

You're wanting 'now' is what pisses people off when you come into the middle of things and meddle where you weren't asked to, or form a conclusion without knowing all the answers.

I don't want this to turn into good cop/bad cop, with you always portrayed as the bad cop. Take a look at ComicGenesis History and see how it is almost always you taking unilateral action AND getting the flack for it.

I'll be honest and admit I've been leaving you behind in development matters because I don't want you even trying to fix anything I write, because when you do, it gets broken worse. There are three rules I try to abide by in coding:
1. Write bug-free code (always fix warnings)
2. Write secure-first code (always initialze variables, validate everything)
3. Write flexible code (no throw-away code, a lot of perl stuff uses the same framework)

Nowhere in there is "document clearly" or "get approvals from 15 layers of management"

So this means that in Perl, always using use strict and -w, in PHP this is turning on the debugger and making sure there are no warnings, ever. PHP is a lot more difficult to get bug-free code since there is no defined output. It either works or you get the white screen of death.

I experiment a lot and only put in code that I know works. Sometimes it outgrows it's usefulness like the last version of the newsbox. Sometimes it was written for one thing and got used somewhere else (the ENTIRE database backend was designed for the GUIDE originally.)

What really pisses me off is when you decide to do something that has a major effect on ComicGenesis and people complain. I always put a poll in the forums to see if people even want said feature if it's going to be significant. Check out the newsbox size poll, I opted to implement all the sizes anyways (as different ad caches), but the 150x300 image size is still the newsbox size. There were times where you were saying that you were going to change the size to the keenspot size and I was like NO we aren't, and you still repeated it.

I even remember back when I proposed half of this DB design for a new database backend, when nate actually did something on the server, and we agreed to use a new backend... and nothing became of it. So not everything I want to do ever works. There was the experimental help.keenspace.com that didn't work (The wiki was a much better idea), there was putting the jams in the wiki, that didn't work. There was the javascript flatfile newsbox that didn't get used by more than three people, there was a bunch of utilities I wrote in shell script and perl when we still had the flatfile backend that people used and I wound up throwing them away because they weren't adaptable to the database.

The FIRST program I ever wrote that used a database is a perl program to automate changing the forums and tying it to the keenspace account... guess why this never was released? Because I wanted the database backend for keenspace at the time and the flatfiles were easily destroyed.

So using the forums as the main "author-user" database was part of MY plan all along, and I would still throw this all away if I could write everything from scratch.

In fact It wouldn't be too far fetched to just write a dozen different updaters... you know HTML3.2, HTML4.01, XHTML, XHTML+CSS,XSLT, AJAX, etc and let the user use. I'm all for choice. I converted most of the existing Autokeen to have both XHTML and XHTML+CSS versions of tags so people could do some customization, something I wanted to back before I EVER did anything with keenspace. You might say my having anything to do with keenspace was being in the right place at the right time.

*sigh*

Well, at least my wife's comic is no longer on Comics Genesis, so I don't need to worry about the little squabbles. :)

Excuse the use of the username - it's my wife's account. This is rkolter. I'm just tossing in my own .02.

Redwolf - your lack of people skills makes your arguement dangerously like a battle. You are a good admin. You need to hire a PR guy.

Kisai - Please don't go. You have been the impetus for many good things here at ComicGenesis. Saying you would not be missed if you left is about as silly as anything I've heard.

Can't the two of you agree on something simple that would help you both? The idea was mentioned earlier of a private forum for you two to post changes you are working on. Wow - fast and cool concept. Then at the very least, you know if your changes may stray into what the other person is doing. I can't see why you wouldn't beg for something like this - you both are obviously frustrated and upset specifically because you two aren't communicating.

Kisai, I know you aren't getting paid and can see your point of view, but adding your info to a forum or database would make the job you have taken on easier! RedWolf - You have a task list, but it's not updated with current statuses (or it wasn't when I last viewed it). You'd have to put the effort in too.

Anyway, the last piece of my .02 is this - ComicGenesis simply won't continue to function properly without the both of you. Or rather, it would... after a very long period of suffering. Say what you want to about it, but I (and a whole crapload of other) CGers really like it, even with its problems. Don't let your differences (professional or personal) endanger a good place to be.

Please.

I understand wanting to continue this discussion after the thread was locked, but this is not the way to do it. You took something which was a community issue and dragged it from the neutral territory of the forum to a biased one.

So instead of doing something like PMing Kisai over the issue or making a thread about it in the Admin/Wrangler area where you can further discuss it, you chose to pull it away.

You brought it here where you can present your own opinion on the situation and you still don't seem to grasp the problem. "Even though I felt it wasn't [a threat]"? Your choice of words, "I'll wait, but I don't want to get DreamHost on the line and have [site] yanked on a DMCA violation." cannot be seen as anything but threat, especially coming from someone in a position of power. You whois'd his domain which shows an even more clear intent on following through with said threat.

You say you apologized for the threat. No, it's more like you apologized for voicing your threat. Your apology is more like "I'm sorry I got caught". "I'm sorry you got upset even though I saw no reason for people to take it so seriously."

If it weren't for the fact that his like for the community and helping it outweighed his dislike for you and your actions, I wouldn't have been surprised if he had decided to disallow use of his theme entirely.

Goddamn, you guys posting after the thread was locked is getting pretty annoying!

Take your conversation somewhere private if you really don't want the userbase to meddle in it.

It bothers me still that you are convinced you did nothing wrong! If users threatened to petition to the fab 4 about removing you from admin status of anything, you'd be throwing a hissy fit that we'd be threatening you. It doesn't even matter if it would go past that, or if nothing ever happened. The point is, you'd still be insulted. It's no different than threatening to contact someone's service provider to ask them to yank someone's site on something that was obviously not harmful. People can't read your tone of voice. Even if you were being Sarcastic, we can't tell. It doesn't help that you've been so trigger happy in the past either. Your reputation will always make Comicgenesis' users assume that every threat you type is a true threat.

Arguing the point anymore is actually asinine. This whole "Listen to me whine in my LJ because I'm not getting my way on the forum," only proves more that your apology was never meant to be sincere and that you never have the intention of ever making one. That's that. The subject was locked and was asked to be closed until you were sincere about apologizing for what you did wrong and I believe that will never happen. You're too selfish of a person to ever think about anyone other than yourself.

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