[Artifex] comrade_general (patron: Legio)2/28/2010

[Legio]

Client: comrade_general

comrade_general

My duty as a citizen at TWC, along with being involved some way in the operation of this site, is to continue modding RTW, and to display these mods at TWC in productive and attractive ways. I am very knowledgeable in this particular niche, therefore I also have duties to assist the members of this site in these activities.

My largest contribution would be my mod - Persian Invasion. I worked on this for roughly one and a third years on most weekends, doing about 90% of the work myself. Unfortunately due to apparent loss of interest in RTW, and my empty wallet, I am unable to complete the major aesthetics for the mod.
On the other hand, my second contribution, Pyrrhic Victory, the minimod, was completed in a few days. The mod was then extended after suggestions from players.
My next mod, Empires and Traders - Total War rolls back the RTW world to 549BC. This mod was also amended from considerable member suggestions, and is available in two versions.
My latest addition to the mod community is Imperial Crisis - Total War, my third contribution and first BI mod, recreates the Roman world during the Crisis of the Third Century.

As an artifex, I would have yet another reason to keep modding (and perhaps a better sense of satisfaction from all my hard work).

Thanks,
-CG

Patron:

Legio

I first noticed this member over at the Org, when I saw his Persian Wars mod. It was very well done and I asked if it was over at TWC. It was, and when it was released I was one of the first to download it. I was very impressed, as he did this mod mostly himself. It has new units, unit card renders, a very good map, among other things. I asked to patronize him very quickly, and he continued to make more mods. While the rest of his released mods are not as large as the Persian Wars mod, they are just as good and he expended a lot of effort on them. He is a friendly member and posts very little outside of the modding part of the site- almost exactly the stereotypical modder! He really cares about the modding, so I think he deserves the rank.

[the Black Prince]

Had a quick look today, and all the stuff mentioned just seems to be mods that are posted on TWC for download, none of it seems to have been developed on TWC.

I'm not sure how posting your mod for download can be considered a contribution to this forum. Let the Org reward him for his work.

[Nikos]

Poll added

[Viking Prince]

I tend to agree with tBP on this one. The member is not really active on the site and does not seem to work with other members on projects. Simply releasing work to the site that has been developed on another site is not sufficient. If the member were to become more active with our members and then approach for citizenship, the contibutions might be viewed differantly.

[Hesus de bodemloze]

Is it me are are polls added to soon these day's?

All of them seem like mini mods to me, i am not sure what amount of work it takes to create such mod so i would like to hear the opinion of some more experienced people on this matter.

[y2day]

His mods are contributions to the community and I haven't looked too close but he does interact in his release threads. He also takes suggestions from the community and updates his work. I'm sure he has spent many hours working on his mods. Has a low post count but that isn't unheard of from a modder. Just looking at his work I woud say yes. Will look a little more at his work but it looks like a yes from me.

[Viking Prince]

After doing some more poking -- The candidate appears to be more of a lone wolf -- he is just as inactive at the Org. On both sites, he is simply presenting the work. As y2day has observed, he does interact with our membership in his mod threads. Yes, as y2day has noted, the post count is low and that is not unusual for the modding community.

Is this candidate is really a part of this site? This is a difficult question to answer. I will probably vote yes and give the applicant the benefit of the doubt on this matter.

[Legio]

Is it me are are polls added to soon these day's?

All of them seem like mini mods to me, i am not sure what amount of work it takes to create such mod so i would like to hear the opinion of some more experienced people on this matter.

Hazel, you looked at the last three mods. The Persian Invasion mod is not a minimod, but quite a large one in fact. It has its own shebang on ModDB here:
http://www.moddb.com/mods/persian-in...alexander-only

There are two campaigns and a wealth of units, a new map, etc.

[Gertrudius]

I'm thinking yes on my part. His mods look solid and while he doesn't post allot, I think his contributions warrant the rank, even if his mods were developed elsewhere.

[Hesus de bodemloze]

I will Abstain on this one as his commitment to the site bothers me, he has done some nice work with his mod and mini mods.

[the Black Prince]

Clear no from me. The size of the mods or the fact that he develops them by himself are not the issue for me. This guy is really just posting his mod on the site and running a feedback thread here for them. Thats not contributing, thats distributing. This is not what citizenship is about.

[Belisarius]

If he is equally inactive on the org then maybe he just liked to work. I think the fact he releases his work on TWC means that he is contributing to the site and rewarding him for this contribution might further integrate him into the community. Yes from me, I would like nice PM sent to him to encourage him to join in more here, possibly hook him up with an ES interview or something.

[aja5191]

I would tend to agree with tBP on this one - citizenship is not rewarding people just for their work and what they have done behind closed doors, but for their work and how they have used it to enhance TWC for others, and how connected they have become to it, in a sense, at least in my eyes.

The mods are very nice, and if he had developed them with a team here and had a dev forum and all those other things you would expect from a mod team headed here at TWC I would say yes. But he's posting them here and has a feedback/questions/suggestions thread.

Maybe more research will sway me, but for now, I'm leaning towards a no.

[Viking Prince]

To be honest, I could easily abstain on this from indecision. I have voted yes though. In any event, the applicant should be encouraged to try again if this first attempt is not successful. Since I am not certain why the applicant wishes the rank (recognition for the mod contributions, perhaps) it will be hard to judge what the best course to take for success other than do a bit more on site with his fellow modders.

[Augustus Lucifer]

I'm going to have to disagree with the assessment made by tBP and aja. I can understand where you're coming from, but I think that modding is a wholly different procedure from other forms of forum participation, and community involvement is only a small part of that. I've touched on this at length before in a previous application, which I won't name since it was a failed applicant. Here are my quotes from that thread explaining my position(I put deletion notices through the parts that were specific to that other user):

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I'm going to vote yes. While the work he did for TWC was off-site I feel that is almost wholly irrelevant to the modding procedure. Can we consider work which is done in a private dev forum on TWC a 'contribution'? After all no one in the community can see it, all you see is the product when it's posted and any previews we deem to show you, and more often than not the product itself is hosted off-site in a place like FileFront, MegaUpload, or RapidShare. The entire modding procedure is one which is removed from the community at large and done on home computers with the forums merely acting as communication between developers or a discussion in the workshops.

Some mods have forums here, and that's good because fans can come here to ask the mod questions, which brings more people to TWC as the mod's 'hub'. But he to has a thread where he has answered questions, and the fact it's a thread and not a forum is not something to fault. As someone who centralizes AUH development here on TWC, I can say that I rarely if ever look anywhere else to update people, even places like ModDB or the Org where I either have a section for the mod or could have a section. The fact that modders of foreign languages do us the courtesy of making homes that they're fairly active in here on TWC, outside their comfort zone and their main development environment, is more than many of us English modders can say we do in return.

At the end of the day there's two distinctions of modders, those who help others mod and those who make mods, and many do both. For those who make mods, which is what he does, it is the product which we must evaluate and whether or not he has endeavored to make it available to the TWC community. In that respect he's gone above and beyond, not only linking us to his site with multi-lingual download links, but also posting files for other modders to freely use in the making of their own skins and models, which upon inspection appears to be quite large.

In my opinion we'd be misguided if we expected modders of foreign languages to do their development here first and foremost, and deny them on the place they do their developing, which is quite literally in all cases the home computer. The Rusichi guys have a minor hub here with Tchouk, but if their two modelers came over here and actually posted 50 times to the point we could identify their accounts, I'd jump at the chance to put them up for Opifex.

In that particular thread there were other questions raised, so I elaborated further:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Hosted forums have more to do than a simple desire. I don't doubt he probably could get a hosted forum for the mod if he wanted one, given the release status of his mod, but I'd love to hear why he needs one. The Rusichi mod only got a hosted forum late in the process, but if you were to ask any Opifex about it(primarily M2 though), they'd assure that it is undoubtedly one of the greater works of the modding community and has remained that way regardless of where it was made available. But let's look at what a hosted forum actually constitutes.

1) More than 1 thread for laid out discussions
2) A development forum
3) Easier access for users

#1 is unnecessary because it would only create more issues for him if he had to respond in a multitude of threads, as he seems to be a one-man team. Modders are primarily here to make mods, and many of the most popular mods have their own PR divisions to answer a grip of the stupid questions they get asked. It's in his best interests in terms of actually working more on the mod to be consolidated as he is now. #2 is unnecessary because it would not be used, and whether or not it's used is not the business of the council, just as we don't know how extensively any of the other dev forums which have been granted are used. Europa Barbarorum in fact does all of their developing at the Org [yet their devs have received Artifex here and plenty of yearly awards]. #3 is an admirable endeavor, but I'd attribute it to humility on his part or a lack of knowledge about that avenue, and furthermore the onus is not on the mod creator to say "Hey! Look at me! I'm over here!". Basing it on the third should come as a supplementary suggestion from the council in terms of being more accessible, but should hardly be an issue in the process.

Or are we to require that candidates who succeed on debating merits index every significant contribution they've made so the members of the community can partake in them?

If anyone wishes to parlay with me the merits and demerits of such a thing, I'll be trying to watch this thread until it closes. I'm only sorry that I couldn't have gotten around to assessing this candidate sooner, as misinformation may directly result in his failure at this time. Notably we need two more votes or this will be void and subject to a re-vote(or whatever happens when the number isn't met). I hope we don't get them so we have more time to discuss this very important matter.

EDIT:

I would also add that it would be a stunning new practice for this council to deny modding applications on the basis of not having a hosted mod forum. I've only gone through the passed applications in the Antechamber, but I can already isolate all of these examples of people who's majority of work is not on a hosted mod.

[Artifex] Renown - A Third Age sub-mod, consolidated in a thread.

[Artfiex] Louis Lux - A third age sub-mod, consolidated in a thread. Possibly later incorporated.

[Artifex] userprobe - Has a hosted forum, but the majority of his released work at the time of his ascension were on mods like "Four Seasons" which have only mod threads.

[Artifex] Tsarsies - Creates scripts which can be used for other mods, obviously none of these scripts have forums.

[Artifex] Boicote - 1143 is the perfect example, a mod based in a thread and hosted off-site.

[Artifex] Eothese - At the time he ascended in rank his "Expanded Americas" mod had not received a hosted forum.

[Artifex] Byg - Author of Byg's Grim Reality, a fantastic mod but a sub-mod for SS primarily, and notably you can only download most of the versions on his own site.

I'll elaborate even further though, just in case the above doesn't make aware my position on this matter.

What is a contribution? What does a 'contribution' to TWC DO for TWC? My succinct explanation of that working relationship was voiced in the CdeC Debate thread last election:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The whole logic behind what constitutes a contribution to TWC is an interesting thing to think about. Most of us can name what we consider a contribution and what we don't, and have an arbitrary idea of what stacks up with Citizenship or large awards. But if asked what a contribution does for TWC which makes it such, that's a much more intricate question I venture many people don't think much on. As a website our primary concern is userbase expansion and retention, so the core of what we consider 'contributions' centers around this user servicing. The more diverse and well-maintained venues we have for members to peruse, and the more products which are hosted and supported here on TWC, the more of a 'community' develops within TWC which in turn causes member retention and expansion. We often expand upon this notion to encompass areas which may not achieve the same end but take a comparable amount of work, so as not to discourage members their initiative simply because it proved not to be popular.

For mods, this contribution is in the form of the product they make available to our users on TWC. We could pretend that it has to do with the support they provide for their mod here, but I'm willing to bet that an applicant whose only contribution was providing user support for a mod would be unlikely to pass unless it was very substantial. We could also pretend it has to do with developing here, but the only way to make that claim is by placing an emphasis on hype. Doing that means we are unfairly biased towards mods that don't have a hype creating premise, which is hardly in the Citizenship spirit, the debate equivalent being excluding users whose views are unpopular.

Artifex and Opifex are as much about proficiency and product satisfaction, if not more, than they are about any direct involvement in TWC the forum. One of the best Rome modders, wlesmana from LOTR:TW, who has done amazing things with modeling, completely contains his mod off-site. I challenge anyone who thinks that would disqualify him from Artifex/Opifex if he were at all interested to ask prominent Rome modders whether they think he fits the bill. Obviously I can't guarantee a 100% return, just as I can't guarantee everyone knows who he is given his not seeking visibility, but if it's not a majority I'll cut out my e-tongue.

The point is that players want two things from TWC. First, they want to be able to get links to downloads for all the existing mods here. Second, they want information or links to information about those mods. Some may also seek a larger degree of support, but if we look at some of the most active mod communities their players are self-maintaining, and you rarely see a team that actively responds to the plethora of support topics. If we give them those things, they will be satisfied and keep coming back to TWC for their mod fix. And the way we keep giving them those things is by not only accommodating those who wish to do their development here, but also providing the means for those who centralize it elsewhere to propagate their product through our service. By simply making and distributing that product with links on TWC they are contributing to the extent of our mod coverage.

Summarily, I'd be disappointed if we denied any user whose product(s) are at the standard we expect of an Artifex, purely on the grounds that they aren't as involved in the forum.

[Tzar]

Working on all this mini-mods by himself is good enough for me. I also agree that we should encourage him to interact more with TWC community.


Voted Yes.

[Justinian]

I voted yes as well. It looks like he has easily enough work under his belt.

[aja5191]

...and after further research, both into what he has done and into his interactions with other member here, I am swayed to vote yes on this candidate.

[Astaroth]

I've voted yes as well. He might not be the most active member in terms of posts here, but I think his contributions are sufficient regardless of that.

[Nikos]

PASSED