That is something I can’t answer. My impression is that it was perceived as a self promotion campaign by the admins as I was new to the org at that time (2008).

Regardless, what made me step back immediately was that the discussion thread was obliterated from the forum. Opposing an initiative is one thing, censuring an open discussion in educated terms is a very different one.

What is a bit sad is that none of the ideas crystallized in 4 years, when there where people willing to push them forward. Maybe it is just a matter of time. Maybe it is not the right community for this kind of organization.

If that’s how things went then that is truly disgusting behaviour and longer-term will seriously be damaging the sim’s traction with new adopters. I wonder why they saw your initiative as damaging to their information fiefdom when there are other similar collab projects (e.g OpenSceneryX) that get breathing room there?

I proposed the creation of a centralized site for airport maintenance a few years ago in the .org. I actually created a proof of concept site, so discussions could be held on something tangible. I got banned from the org in return o_O.

The original idea for the site was to contain educational content in wiki format (doc, tutorials, guidelines, etc), an airport repository under revision control, and organizational tools to facilitate team collaboration (issue tracker, discussion forum, etc). Pretty standard for mature open source projects.

That idea was killed upon inception due to the frontal opposition found in the org administration, and because I had no intention to disturb the community.

Infrastructure is necessary and nice to have, but in the end, it is the people who make it happen. So if the community don’t buy it, it’s not going to work.

But it is remarkable that the same ideas are being raised years after…

Yes!

I think the library should export both all the specific objects etc. available (including objects designed to make up .apg mini-scenes), which are guaranteed not to change, as well as aliases to general categories, where a specific example is selected at random. That way, each author can decide if an individual item represents a deliberate choice of architectural style, of if it merely indicates a function.

Judith

I can only sign your comment regarding th UI. It really needs some work!

I agree. Without some kind of online collaboration/project status page, it seems like a disaster waiting to happen. It takes HOURS of work to build a whole airport, I’m not going to do it if someone else is going to do the same thing a week later.

But having empty airports all over sucks too.

Is it smart enough to know what scenery I have installed, and what I don’t?

If there is already an airport, it would create essentially a change-log where the new version is 1.1 instead of 1.0 and it would be modification of an existing item. All airports in the database are currently at 1.0 except for the Seattle and other Aerosoft airports.

Jim edits KJFK to add terminals and anything else he does. Bill sees this new KJFK, but says he can edit a few things Jim did to make it better. Bill goes in and edits the current airport (Jim’s) to move a building, add a fence and a few signs around the airport. Bill then uploads the changes. In this instance, WED would have to upload the new file, but it would be changes based on the previous version.