ROME - Team Collaboration Tool For Fansubber

[silverado]

Long awaited ROME *BETA is open! Register and request your own project for your group:

http://rome.jcafe24.com/

Are you tired of board and IRC based member communication? Are your members never online when you need them? No matter how big or small your team is, ROME will help you to solve your coordination problems more efficiently without any extra software! All you need is a browser and you are good to go!

Multiple projects support


Manage all your projects and group activities with on one site


Each user can have a different role on each project

Each project can be declared as public (visible by anyone) or private (visible by project members only)

Flexible role based access control
Define your own roles and set their permissions in a click.

Flexible task (issue) tracking system




Gantt chart and calendar
Automatic gantt and calendar based on issues start and due dates

Time tracking functionality
Time can be entered at project or ticket level
Simple report to view time per user, issue type, category or activity

News, documents & files management
You can easily post messages and share files

Per project wiki and forums
Wiki uses textile syntax and free linking within the wiki using brackets
Diff and annotate views are available

Modules (e.g. task management, forum, time tracking, wikipedia, documents, ...)

Can be enabled/disabled at project level.


Register and request a project for your own group!

http://rome.jcafe24.com/

silv

[Jiyuu]

how is this any different from other task managing systems(meaning what fansubber centric features does this have)?
and is the chat used in it is a real time one?

[getfresh]

Yeah, kinda looks like subversion with a lot of extra menus to slow it down to me. Though some of the features may be interesting.

[日本ひきこもり協会]

It looks nice but that's all. It's just making simple tasks more complex and I honestly don't see any benefit, rather a disadvantage. Primitive methods like using FTP and IRC chan topic is in fact more effective and well arranged. Also you can create diff files with various programs so this is quite superfluous IMO.

[getfresh]

Originally Posted by 日本ひきこもり協会

It looks nice but that's all. It's just making simple tasks more complex and I honestly don't see any benefit, rather a disadvantage. Primitive methods like using FTP and IRC chan topic is in fact more effective and well arranged. Also you can create diff files with various programs so this is quite superfluous IMO.

Thats pretty much what I'm seeing with it as well. I don't really see a need to have "staff assigned to" since everyone should know what projects they are on. As far as a "forum" system thing for msging, Most staff forums I've seen in groups are in general ghost towns. Everything else SVN can handle. If this were used for a software dev group that would prob be better. But fansubs release a script, and as long as there are no glaring issues we don't refer back to it unless there is a dvd release. So a "bug tracker" is pretty useless.

Unless the author can explain it some more, as to why this is a major time saver I'll remain weary of it.

[Itachikun]

It can definitely be useful to new members who have trouble with IRC and also those to whom don't have access to IRC. For those who just keep their IRC runnign 24/7, not such a great tool. However, this does have a good thing to it, considering that its a bit more complex in terms of allocating people with the job.

It's still a good effort, that I commend you on.

[pichu]

What do you expect... this *is* written with CakePHP >.>

And, sorry most of the progresses are private... IRC is usually not monitored... Rizon, at least I know, does not monitor the users or channels. [except for joins/parts/quits, but that's natural] (considered that I'm an oper there for more than 3 years)

[日本ひきこもり協会]

Originally Posted by pichus

What do you expect... this *is* written with CakePHP >.>

And, sorry most of the progresses are private... IRC is usually not monitored... Rizon, at least I know, does not monitor the users or channels. [except for joins/parts/quits, but that's natural] (considered that I'm an oper there for more than 3 years)

Like Rizon IRC ops reading staff channel topics? *cough*

[pichu]

/me gives you a lot of lolis... *shhh*

I don't really do that. :/ But topics don't tell much anyways compared to going through the entire database for a website...

[silverado]

Originally Posted by pichus

What do you expect... this *is* written with CakePHP >.>

And, sorry most of the progresses are private... IRC is usually not monitored... Rizon, at least I know, does not monitor the users or channels. [except for joins/parts/quits, but that's natural] (considered that I'm an oper there for more than 3 years)

Actually we got quite a lot of private groups which aren't shown in the public project list. Project access can be limited to staff-members-only very easily in your project settings. Rome has different role based permission levels that let you work with external members easily.

You can use the wiki to store translations. Changes and new lines are saved in a history allowing you to roll back or compare different versions with each other. You can see the person who made the changes. It became quite handy for proofreaders and translators to work with it. Here is an example: http://rome.jcafe24.com/wiki/mangau/...tate?version=3

The best feature of Rome is the Issue Tracking System that send members updates per email. so you dont have to be on rome but you will still be notified about new tasks assigned to you. this feature evolved from the open source scene and has become very efficient way of task distribution because it doesn't force your members to be online on a specific site at a specific time. the time you spend on irc waiting for new tasks can be spend on your project. my team members live in very different time zones that varies from 2 hours till 8 hours. it's difficult to catch all members online. rome breaks this cycle by sending emails to the members directly whenever a task was given and updated.

I might add a real time collaboration editor that allows multiple authors to translate, annotate and mark texts at the same time. similiar to writely from google, just in real time.

if you want more informations, you can simply try our demo account or create your own project.

More here: http://rome.jcafe24.com/wiki/rome

oh and it's written in ruby

[Tofusensei]

Originally Posted by silverado

the time you spend on irc waiting for new tasks can be spend on your project.

...

it's difficult to catch all members online. rome breaks this cycle by sending emails to the members directly whenever a task was given and updated.

Don't get me wrong, I think the software is nifty.

That being said, how is what you just mentioned any different than updating an irc topic when a task is completed? How difficult is it to check your irc window to see if the topic has changed when you come online?

-Tofu

[pichu]

Originally Posted by Tofusensei

That being said, how is what you just mentioned any different than updating an irc topic when a task is completed? How difficult is it to check your irc window to see if the topic has changed when you come online?

-Tofu

I am logged on 24 hours/7 days on a remote server (SSH/screen/irssi combo) so it's not a problem for me to go through channel logs when I need to. In most cases, I just grep through my nick (pichu) to find out exactly what I needed to do if I weren't able to be there for a few days.


Well, I'm not sure about teh system -- it looks like it's pretty public; most projects should be made private. know what's privacy?

[Tofusensei]

Originally Posted by pichus

I am logged on 24 hours/7 days on a remote server (SSH/screen/irssi combo) so it's not a problem for me to go through channel logs when I need to. In most cases, I just grep through my nick (pichu) to find out exactly what I needed to do if I weren't able to be there for a few days.


Well, I'm not sure about teh system -- it looks like it's pretty public; most projects should be made private. know what's privacy?

I definitely agree about the privacy thing.

Even if you're not logged in 24/7, you just log onto irc whenever you come online and check the irc topic for status changes. It's really not difficult to maintain an irc topic with updates.

e.g.

Sazaesan [1 TYPESET/nick1 2 edit/nick2 3 time/nick4 4-1820 translate/Tofu]

(we're not actually subbing Sazaesan)

-Tofu

[silverado]

oh well it should be used as alternative. personally i find it much easier to get my updates while i read emails. getting on irc is also possible, but it still requires certain software and really, who needs that? for me it's pretty much time consuming to force all members to come to irc for a few updates. rome is a new way for fansub and scanlation groups to work together. it has many cool features such as roll back history, issue tracking and collaborative editing. you will soon learn to love it.

as I stated above you can setup private projects with just one click. the majority of our projects are private and only visible to team members.

[Starks]

ROME is pretty novel idea. However, I could imagine it becoming a pain in the ass after a while...

[Jiyuu]

Originally Posted by silverado

oh well it should be used as alternative. personally i find it much easier to get my updates while i read emails. getting on irc is also possible, but it still requires certain software and really, who needs that? for me it's pretty much time consuming to force all members to come to irc for a few updates. rome is a new way for fansub and scanlation groups to work together. it has many cool features such as roll back history, issue tracking and collaborative editing. you will soon learn to love it.

as I stated above you can setup private projects with just one click. the majority of our projects are private and only visible to team members.

the rollback history seems pretty cool, but as it is web-only it looks like it could be troublesome people to need to copypaste their work from their files to a wiki system for something like that, that is for fansub. for manga translating it shouldn't be an issue as they don't need to work with external programs and could work with a wiki system about the same as they can work with their notepad program

[Tofusensei]

Originally Posted by silverado

for me it's pretty much time consuming to force all members to come to irc for a few updates.

You know, one other last thing I'd like to point out for you to keep in mind as you design this program.

First and foremost, a fansub group is a tight-knit community of friends. It is not a company, not an assembly line. The groups that last are the ones that are seen by its members first as a community or a place to socialize and hang out (albeit mostly on irc). The groups that focus on maximum efficiency and churning out releases tend to fail pretty spectacularly (look at AnimeJunkies as the prime example).

So, with that in mind, "forcing all members to come to irc" is a way to ensure that 1) you maintain some level of chat activity in the group's channels and 2) that the members who ultimately last and stick around are members who are comfortable on irc and comfortable spending a good deal of time chatting on irc.

Now I'm not asking you to shoehorn irc into your process and frankly for the newest members of the internet community, irc may be a foreign concept for them. I've heard of groups primarily communicating over AIM, for example. But implementing some sort of true community aspect into ROME will ensure its relevance going forth.

If you make it just about production and nothing else, the groups who adopt it will most certainly fall apart.

I've seen more groups come and go than you can imagine. Ensuring that it's about a community of like-minded individuals having a good time and less about production is the only way to sustain a medium-to-large-sized group.

-Tofu

[silverado]

remember this is a tool to manage tasks. just like you dont use your notepad to phone your friend this site was made to give you an easy and intuitive way to coordinate your team work. members who are seldom online will benefit from the progress feature, where you can change the task progress with a right mouse click. this minimizes the "paperwork" and let concentrate on the important stuff: fansubbing.

But i must agree that this site has no ssa support :/

Did i mention that rome has project news system and forums as well?

[Starks]

Tofu, not to play devil's advocate or anything, but wouldn't having a Java IRC chat integrated into ROME help mitigate that concern? >__>

[Tofusensei]

Originally Posted by Starks

Tofu, not to play devil's advocate or anything, but wouldn't having a Java IRC chat integrated into ROME help mitigate that concern? >__>

I'd venture to say jabber might even be a better fit for it, since it's for the group members primarily, no?

-Tofu