SP Happenings #140

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One of the most disappointing things about running a website like SP is the number of people who mail me about helping with various things on our help-wanted list. Most of them are fans of the games covered on SP, though some are just looking for fame or other benefits coming from their name being associated with the site. But that's not really a problem - as long as people actually do what they've signed up for, I don't really care about the reasons or justifications. The problem lies in getting them to actually do something.

I've received literally hundreds of offers for all kinds of work on SP over the years. From coding, to solution writing, to doing the news, and more. Every now and then I get an offer from someone with such shining credentials and (quite frequently) academic titles that I just stare blankly at it for a second or two. Then I remember how many like that I've seen before. It's pretty much the same deal with all such mails - the people writing are either huge fans of the games, SP, or both. And they're prepared to go to the end of the world to help SP. Great, huh? Well, there's a hitch.

For some reason, 99% of these people are only willing to help out until I actually ask them to do something. Or even better, they come to me with a detailed plain of what they'll do and how, and are never heard from again. Why do they go out of their way to offer their help when they obviously don't mean it is beyond me, but it's a trend that's been going on for years. Just this week I've asked two such volunteers to modify one of the php scripts in use on the site. After a thorough briefing of the first coder, he came up with something that only remotely resembled what I asked him to do, and hasn't been heard from since. But ok, I'm used to that. Going on to the next coder on the list who's offered his assistance. Enthusiastic mail back - sure, send it over, no problem, I'll do it! Guess what? No word since. I'll be trying the third coder by the end of the week.

I could understand if they simply told me that it's beyond their skills. Or that they can't do it, for whatever reason. But not even sending a response back, that really irks me. I like working with people from the community, because we have a really large number of talented folks around here who've helped SP in various ways over the years. But it's also an unfortunate fact that 99% (and I'm not exaggerating here one bit) of those who volunteer aren't prepared to do anything, or simply give up on it before they even get started.

Having so many bad experiences with people offering to help only makes me appreciate the people who actually do stick around and help with the site more. So, kudos to the SP team - you guys really are the best.

Anyway, now that I got that little rant off my chest, off to happier happenings. A lot has been going on on the site and boards over the past week. It was about evenly split between internal and external work, but as I like to keep the internal hushed up until it becomes external, I'll only talk about the external. Most obviously, you can see that two new forums have been added to our message boards, brining the total to 40 forums and over 9500 registered users. Aye, the ship's filling up nicely.

The two new forums are "Dragons Not Required" and "The Elder Scrolls Series". More information about them is available in their descriptions on the front page of the message boards, and the details about them can be found in the Sorcerous Sundries forum. Since the creation of these new forums has required a painstaking sifting and moving from the old all-in-one forum, these was a lot boring manual labour involved. Thanks to Blackthorne TA's help with the moving and renaming, it was all done in a couple of days. All that is now left to do is to update the board search index (this will be done during regular maintenance and only cause slightly extended board closure).

Since I've got a number of other projects open right now it's hard for me to say what will be done next, so let's wait with the predictions until next week, when things will become clearer.

P. S.

I've received one (1) screenshot submission since my call for screenshots last week. Come on people... it's not that hard to hit the Print Screen button while you're playing and send the output over here! If I don't get any other screenshots, you'll only be looking at BG2 and NWN screenshots, because those are the only ones I have in abundance.

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I can't help you with that one unfortunately as I've never played it... but in most games, pressing Print Screen takes a screenshot to somewhere in the game's installation directory. Could also be some other button in PoR, though.

If all else fails, you can use a program like IrfanView to take screenshots in-game.

 

Just remember to send me uncompressed bmp or tga shots, not jpgs.