ROME - Team Collaboration Tool For Fansubber

[silverado]

so far I have not gathered any feedback about how rome is, but how good irc is. I'm still waiting for real feedback from testers. you said it's a triangle but to me you are using a very old and archaic way to organize your group.

[Starks]

for a vast majority of groups, fansubbing is a pretty streamline process because of irc. you are trying to apply a new science to something that isn't in need of a replacement.

if you want rome to complement irc or implement as part of a java client, be my guest. however, please keep in mind that while anime is the heart of fansubbing, irc and the communities on it are undoubtedly the soul.

[getfresh]

It isn't "very old", nor is it inefficient. The system has been more complicated in the past with website forums for staff to do most of what you are saying, and they were dropped for this because this was found to be much faster. Just because something is "new" does not mean it is better. Goes along with the old sang, "If it isn't broken, don't fix it." I personally would have tried your tool had you actually done research into fansubbing or looked into exactly what we have all been posting instead of just replying with more close mindedness. But as martino said, it really does appear you know next to nothing about the process first hand. Your ideas of it are riddled with assumptions and unfounded bias. I can't support this with the creator just saying "you all are wrong because I say so," while not presenting any solid reasons.

[D404]

ROME seems to make fansubbing seem more like 'work', rather than a hobby, which it is. It takes the fun out of fansubbing imo! (IRC, Community, Epic LULZ, etc).

I dunno about you but I certainly don't want fansubbing to start feeling like work.

[DrX_]

okay,

so you keep mentioning the fact that the people get "notified" by email.

for one, i've noticed _MOST_ of the staff members, (atleast in the groups i'm in), are usually on 24/7 or visit once a day... unless something has came up... it's not really hard to do "/t" in a channel to see the topic, status and whatnot, 99% of the time the topic is up-to-date.

now tell me what'd you prefer, typing "/t" or going to the site that you have your email on (if you don't check daily, like me) and logging in and whatnot.

and lastly, you won't really be able to force old fansubbers to change their way

[Agilis]

So, how long did it take to strip most of the features out of Trac, disable the svn support, install some plugins, yank some more features out, and then slap a skin on it?

[twilightNoir]

Lol, silverado, you talk about how we only say how good IRC is. That's because it's true. IRC has stood the test of time. it also has multiple RFC standards relating to it.

What's worked for years will continue to work for years. You can't just topple that legacy.

Another thing involved with withstanding the test of time is that it's withstood viruses/trojans/etc. ROME has yet to have that happen, so you'd have to get it running for at least a few years before you can just expect everyone to pick it up and use it. Always remember, there's no such thing as instant popularity. You have to earn it.

Lastly, ROME just doesn't give me "that" vibe. The one where you stop and think, "This is gonna revolutionize everything."

Edit: IRC scripting is probably the easiest thing to learn on the face of the planet. mIRC comes with a help file that's more useful than an o'reilly book. Tcl scripting for eggdrops is also easy as well as PHP and Perl bots. Ultimately, IRC offers a vast horizon for programmers of any skill level, whereas you make ROME sound like some tool that turns fansubbing into fansubbing for dummies. After all, we put out effort to learn how to fansub in the first place, why not put out a little more just to learn a little scripting or a few IRC commands at the minimum?

More edit: A friend just brought up another great reason. ROME isn't open-source. IRC has hundreds of open-source projects. How do we know that this isn't some plot for you to spy on fansubbers? Even GoogleApps is more capable than ROME.

[niko]

Originally Posted by Agilis

So, how long did it take to strip most of the features out of Trac, disable the svn support, install some plugins, yank some more features out, and then slap a skin on it?

http://www.redmine.org/ <0.5hr?

[silverado]

again, yeah it seems to be more of a discussion about why you love irc. There have been yet any contsructive critic about the website.

"It's complicated", and so arent all those irc memo scripts?

"Irc is faster" then what?, then making two clicks with the mouse?

"I'm in irc the whole day anyway", bummer.

"Rome should compliment IRC", why didn't you said that earlier? I would have completely overwritten the script in order fit your demands. But hey, isn't rome already outsourcing the task feature of irc? Aren't you already capable of using irc AND rome together? IRC for real time messaging, rome for task management? Maybe I should stop using the word "replacement" and start using "irc plugin" or "irc clone" so that you understand that you can still use both tools.

"Lastly, ROME just doesn't give me "that" vibe. The one where you stop and think, "This is gonna revolutionize everything.", they said the same about the first motorways. It's not like people are always able to see the benefit of something on the long run.

""If it isn't broken, don't fix it.", if that was true you would be still writing on email based irc boards instead of a bulletin board with WYSIWYG editor. There is always room for improvemets.

"ROME seems to make fansubbing seem more like 'work', rather than a hobby", no matter how you look at it, spending several hours a day and meet working deadlines sounds quite mich like work to me. Some of you are competiting each other over speed, accuracy and quality. And even if you are just a die hard anime fan for whom this is just "another hobby" you have to admit that if something works very well for a company, there are chances that it might supplement irc based fansubbing, aren't there?

"for one, i've noticed _MOST_ of the staff members, (atleast in the groups i'm in), are usually on 24/7 or visit once a day... unless something has came up... it's not really hard to do "/t" in a channel to see the topic, status and whatnot, 99% of the time the topic is up-to-date.", that's exactly why there is rome. You simply dont have to idle there if you dont want. Forcing all members to be online at the same time just in order to feel the teamwork is a very superficial argument and doesn't suit everybody.

"and lastly, you won't really be able to force old fansubbers to change their way", I'm just telling them to think about it. If they have experience with staff forums and have dropped it, why not also try rome before going in circles. Look here is a live project where you can see the features of rome: http://rome.jcafe24.com/projects/show/mangau

Originally Posted by Agilis

So, how long did it take to strip most of the features out of Trac, disable the svn support, install some plugins, yank some more features out, and then slap a skin on it?

Ppl are migrating from Trac to Rome as we speak. If opensource groups have realized the benefit of Rome, there must be a striking argument for it.

"ROME isn't open-source. IRC has hundreds of open-source projects. How do we know that this isn't some plot for you to spy on fansubbers?", and there you are wrong. ROME is completely open Ruby on Rails script. If you want more information, just pm me.

"IRC scripting is probably the easiest thing to learn on the face of the planet. mIRC comes with a help file that's more useful than an o'reilly book.", rome is easier. it has no software requirements, no commands, it's simpler. and simple is better.

[creamyhorror]

Ultimately, you made ROME to suit an approach or style of fansubbing that's different from what most groups use, and then went on to defend it by saying IRC was inefficient and problematic. It's really no surprise that you're getting this kind of response. If you had pitched it from the start as a clear side-tool to IRC, you might not have had such a frosty reception.

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!

See, this is the heart of the issue: you made ROME to solve a problem that wasn't really there.

"Rome should compliment IRC", why didn't you said that earlier? I would have completely overwritten the script in order fit your demands.

If you had consulted actual fansubbers before you started making your software, you'd have realized the large majority of the fansubbing community is centered on IRC. Not to mention that most groups are in all likelihood not having problems with relying on IRC, so you'd have to offer really significant additional features in order to get some to switch to ROME.

Finally, using your tool means relying on both IRC and a browser window for communication, which is frankly a bit extraneous. It's adding more complexity for minimal benefit.

There might be some fansub groups out there that aren't very attached to IRC and might find ROME useful. I suggest you focus on those groups and not bother to argue with those who clearly don't need it.


edit:

Originally Posted by niko

http://www.redmine.org/ <0.5hr?

Oh, haha, I only just checked this out. So what new features did you add to Redmine that would justify naming it something else, silverado?

[pichu]

Here's my two cents.

Do you ever work in real-life? How do managers communicate to their subordinates? Do they use some automated systems and communicate to them?

Or, do they make a conference and organize their speech in their own ways and then tell what people have to do and listen to them well. Like writing a memorandum and making meetings are what upper managements do.

Bring the same concept to fansubbing. Group leaders and project leaders (aka directors and supervisors, respectively) communicate their fellow fansubbers (aka employees) using IRC, Forums, Emails, MSN/ICQ/AIM/Yahoo!/Google chat/whatever directly. They know exactly what they should do. And, most of them prefer freedoms.

Your system only works for people and fansubbers who don't know how to manage fansubbing groups or have little experience in handling fansubbing groups, and that they need guidelines on how to lead a group to success... Hence your system is there for them.

That's all I have to say.

[silverado]

I might have rubbed some of you the wrong way by saying that you should quit with irc. You guys are obviously more irc centered than I've imagined. It doesn't change the fact that Rome is and stays useful for groups who work on multiple tasks simultanously. So if you think that irc topics are sometimes not enough and you want to add more information than just the status update, then you should consider trying out rome. Rome was made with the goal in mind to make status updates easy and instantly available without using any additional tools such as forum, irc scripts or msn messanger. It has useful featues that allows you to create your own workflow, mile stones, project forum and wiki pages that can help you greatly. I think if it can improve your workflow in some aspects, then I think Rome's existence is more than justified.

Yes, it's the redmine engine. I renamed it to Rome to increase recall value. That's just a question of marketing and a whole different topic. Rome is completely open source and can be run on any webhosts that allows high cpu loads and supports ruby on rails.

[silverado]

Originally Posted by pichus

Here's my two cents.

Do you ever work in real-life? How do managers communicate to their subordinates? Do they use some automated systems and communicate to them?

Or, do they make a conference and organize their speech in their own ways and then tell what people have to do and listen to them well. Like writing a memorandum and making meetings are what upper managements do.

It's obvious that you haven't worked in a big company, have you? Project managemet software have become standard and is used besides the conferences to note goals, schedules and prevent time frame collisions.

[pichu]

The preference is on the person and the company itself. I've seen numerous older companies refusing to use any software too...

Originally Posted by silverado

Yes, it's the redmine engine. I renamed it to Rome to increase recall value. That's just a question of marketing and a whole different topic. Rome is completely open source and can be run on any webhosts that allows high cpu loads and supports ruby on rails.

Marketing and open-source? lol...

[asunder]

Originally Posted by silverado

It's obvious that you haven't worked in a big company, have you? Project managemet software have become standard and is used besides the conferences to note goals, schedules and prevent time frame collisions.

Is this really needed for a hobby? Use the KISS philosophy. (Keep It Simple Stupid) It really just seems that you're adding more work/bureaucracy to something that really doesn't need it.

Milestones/schedules/goals are .... kinda useless to be honest.

Again this might be useful for (new) groups that don't know how to properly manage or organize themselves.

[silverado]

oh it has its advantages. before rome, we used to hang out in irc for hours, updating topics and status, just like you. now we use it to manage our projects. i login twice a week, create new tasks and so far it has minimized the time we used for coordination. try it, let a small group of your members register on rome and try it out for just one week. we got soon used to it and don't want to miss it anymore.

[nachtrabe]

Originally Posted by silverado

It's obvious that you haven't worked in a big company, have you? Project managemet software have become standard and is used besides the conferences to note goals, schedules and prevent time frame collisions.

Before we begin, let me clear something up to keep from having to deal with a similar challenge.

I am a Senior Software Engineer. I manage others, conduct interviews, and I have worked on 20-30 million dollar projects. I have used numerous tools including XPlanner, RallyDev, and Trac in a professional capacity.

I do not say this to brag, and it is not nearly as much as some people I know. Just indicating that I have a little experience here.

Originally Posted by silverado

I might have rubbed some of you the wrong way by saying that you should quit with irc. You guys are obviously more irc centered than I've imagined. It doesn't change the fact that Rome is and stays useful for groups who work on multiple tasks simultanously.

Don't take this the wrong way, but it feels to me like you don't understand the difference between a business problem and a technical problem.

There are two major classes of problems: technical challenges that you have solved but lack a business case, and business problems that you have solved but lack a technical solution. The latter is always preferable to the former from the standpoint of selling: it is better to have a customer and no product than to have a product and no customer.

You have a product--which as near as I can tell is just a rebranded version of what other people have done (and "rome" is not more significant than "redmine" from a rebranding perspective here)--and then you went out to try and sell the business case. Unfortunately, your analysis of your market was so superficial that you bid the wrong product to them.

If you want to market or build a product for someone, you must understand their needs first and foremost. This is software engineering 101, you can even find it in the Head First books on Software Development and Object Oriented Analysis & Design. Start by trying to understand the customer.

The customer in this case, for the sake of argument, is fansubbers. Okay, so let's analyze the current situation:

- They operate in small groups, generally with fairly autonomous individuals within that. Many groups never pass 10 people who can get more than a passing mention.
- They are mostly working with text files, though they may have repository needs for larger files that change less frequently (e.g., videos).
- Once something is "published" it is generally forgotten about. There might be a revision or two, but in general there is no prolonged maintenance phase.
- The work is declarative and not procedural.
- The work is freeform and done in the spare time of the various people working on it.

So what do they need in their tools?

- The ability to stay in touch and coordinate communication in real time. Any good guide for management or team communication will tell you the importance of walking the halls, and anyone who has worked in a remote or spread out environment can talk in depth about the challenges involved in keeping in touch with everyone. We just had a situation where someone didn't reply to email for two weeks because they were swamped, but had information everyone else needed. Within 24 hours of having him in the same location we had the data we needed.

- A way to exchange data and keep track of changes over time (groups that use FTP need to be using SCM of some sort--even writers for NaNoWriMo etc are starting to use it).

- Simple, easy-to-use tools that fit the above two needs.

Where in this picture do you see the concept of a bug? While assigning tickets may have some merit as a tracking tool, it doesn't offer a really compelling case over IRC (at least that you have given so far). Trying to impose software for structuring higher level order on groups that are not sufficiently mature--in software terms--either leads to resistance of the product or more time lost maintaining the product than not having the product would cost.

Schedule management? Difficult even in large open source projects and nothing that can't be done with Google Calendar (which actually may be preferable: it is more important that X is out of town than that he has 22 hours of estimated translation time left). Deadlines are either functionally infinite (no one is paying for it) or immediate (gotta get it out within a very short period of time). The former group doesn't care about gantt charts, the later has no time to use them.

Basically, and this is the important piece, translation is not software development. They are going to have different needs. If you believe that your software is the best thing since sliced bread for translators, then you need to sell it to them based on their needs and not what you assume their needs are.

So try asking them questions rather than telling them what would be good for them.

[edogawaconan]

I was almost a little bit interested until I saw...

Originally Posted by silverado

"ROME isn't open-source. IRC has hundreds of open-source projects. How do we know that this isn't some plot for you to spy on fansubbers?", and there you are wrong. ROME is completely open Ruby on Rails script. If you want more information, just pm me.

...uh ok, so I need ruby+rails+mongrel just to run this on private server?

on another note, some people here are already sad with current state of IRC channels nowadays and you're trying to reduce the usage of IRC?

[silverado]

"You have a product--which as near as I can tell is just a rebranded version of what other people have done (and "rome" is not more significant than "redmine" from a rebranding perspective here)--and then you went out to try and sell the business case. Unfortunately, your analysis of your market was so superficial that you bid the wrong product to them.", how would you describe the process of fansubbing differently than a business problem? The essential problem is the same for both: time management. No matter what kind of task there is no task which can't be broken down to and be scheduled. Simply put there are no essetial differences in both process that would require a further "adaptation".

"- They operate in small groups, generally with fairly autonomous individuals within that. Many groups never pass 10 people who can get more than a passing mention.", I've been working with groups with over 20 members. Timing them in irc is nearly impossible.

"- They are mostly working with text files, though they may have repository needs for larger files that change less frequently (e.g., videos).", exactly what the wiki page is for.

"- Once something is "published" it is generally forgotten about. There might be a revision or two, but in general there is no prolonged maintenance phase.", completed issues disappear automatically from the task list. So there is no "artifact" effect of old status.

"- The ability to stay in touch and coordinate communication in real time. [...]We just had a situation where someone didn't reply to email for two weeks because they were swamped, but had information everyone else needed.", this is a very important issue. How much time have you spent on searching irc logs, because you weren't available at the moment? Wouldn't it be more efficient to have the most important information on some kind of blackboard? Again-> Rome Wiki & Issue Tracking System

"- A way to exchange data and keep track of changes over time (groups that use FTP need to be using SCM of some sort--even writers for NaNoWriMo etc are starting to use it).", there is no really need for ftp and nano if you got a wiki to store your text.

"- Simple, easy-to-use tools that fit the above two needs.", yep, I agree. Instead of using two or more tools, one tool that fulfills those needs is better. So why are you using irc, ftp, msn, forum, svn?

"Where in this picture do you see the concept of a bug?", this is easy to change. Just need to go to the translation file and replace "issue" with "task". Solved.

"While assigning tickets may have some merit as a tracking tool, it doesn't offer a really compelling case over IRC (at least that you have given so far).", wait have you been reading the whole topic? How often do you expect me to number the advantages?

"Trying to impose software for structuring higher level order on groups that are not sufficiently mature--in software terms--either leads to resistance of the product or more time lost maintaining the product than not having the product would cost.", if your company have bought a software and it's really buggy, wouldn't you want to improve it? Your argument is that those groups are too small for software management. I'd say it's the opposite. If you have a small group who releases less frequently you don't expect your members to be as active as big groups. Therefor the distribution of accurate information becomes vital. From my experience it's simplier and better to have both files, text and status at the same location. From what you just said, the use of seperate tools like irc, ftp creates more work to maintain it and therefor would be a negative argument for the use of IRC as project management software. I bet it wasn't invented for that.

"Schedule management? Difficult even in large open source projects and nothing that can't be done with Google Calendar", err so you are actually suggesting to use a third tool, if on the other hand you could do all this with one tool? I see, your company must run on a goldmine.

"Deadlines are either functionally infinite (no one is paying for it) or immediate (gotta get it out within a very short period of time). The former group doesn't care about gantt charts, the later has no time to use them.", gantt charts and time tracking are bonus features and don't have to be used.

"Basically, translation is not software development. They are going to have different needs.", I wonder.

"So try asking them questions rather than telling them what would be good for them.", I didn't? Look at all those responses:

"What do you need?" -> "IRC and Mao Am"

But the whole goal was to give them an alternative, more flexible tool to use. But they want no alternatives, I find that ludicrous. It's like saying "I want no car, because my horse is cheaper and warmer.".

[silverado]

Originally Posted by edogawaconan

I was almost a little bit interested until I saw...

...uh ok, so I need ruby+rails+mongrel just to run this on private server?

on another note, some people here are already sad with current state of IRC channels nowadays and you're trying to reduce the usage of IRC?

Yes It's the best if you let your admin install it. Also it might not work right away for you.