My experience...
I just found this game about a month ago. I played the 2.2.1 release and it took me quite a while to get the hang of it. The wiki and stuff are more incomplete than the game. I figured out what worked and what didn't using what I could from the wiki and loved it. In hunting for more information on playing it on the forums I realized everyone is using the 2.3-dev version. I installed that and loved what I saw, but immediately hit the pathfinding and other bugs making it unplayable. So I went back, read the last months of forums posts in most forums, starting reading the wiki for development stuff. I am a c++/java/c# (and about a dozen other languages) programmer and thought I could help, thought I could fix the bug, but there is just so little outline and I have spent some time browsing the code, but I am not a big fan of C and don't know the Quake II engine so it will take me a while and I don't have that huge amount of time I would need to spin up on things (and I have largely been waiting to get a version that I can run and compile without hunting through the forums to figure out what I am missing in C::B for UFO Radiant).
I can't wait for 2.3 and this is one of the first Open Source projects I have found that I felt like I wanted to and could contribute to, but it is not 'easy' as a player or a potential contributor to get involved. Right now my plan is to read the forums until I see something I can help out with, because I have no idea what, when or why when it comes to the wiki. I huge part of the problem is I haven't been willing to devote the time to figure out where to even start or what I need to know. I am use to finding a bug, grabbing the source, compiling it, finding the area in the code, reading some documentation about the specific area, fixing the bug, testing it, submitting it and moving on with my life. That breaks down here because 'reading the documentation' is a hunt of forum posts and wiki posts, its prohibitive. Criusmac had more determination (time?) than I did to actually get involved, but reading his post it seemed like he was fighting obstacles to try and help. I think you are losing a lot of potential help. Some specific points feedback:
- Pretty much everything a player will see is focused on 2.2.1 which is over a year old. Its pretty obvious once you hit the forums that 2.2.1 is barely a memory in anyone's mind, but if you don't look at the forums you will hit up an incomplete manual and fiddle around with 2.2.1 and thats it. The only thing that even made me really look into this was the monthly update on the front I realize it was still under heavy development, otherwise I would have assume that over a year since the last stable version = dead project. I am not going to say to release things more often, its done when its done, but if it is going to be greater than say 6 months between any stable release, there needs to be some kind of "reasonably stable" dev version that people can try out and test and get a better taste of whats to come. I.e. right now all the responses are, check out 2.3, but not really because it is under heavy development, find a version that works in X 10 page thread. If a dev release works decently well maybe make a note of it on the wiki with some comments on where it will break so people can try a dev version without trying to figure out which ones could potentially be playable.
- The technical area of the wiki looks like my personal wiki. Stuff is all over, linked to all over. Its completely unclear what is current and what isn't and most of it has a large amount of assumed knowledge associated with (its not wikified). This works fine for my personal wiki, the directory is password protected and no one other than myself should ever see it. It probably works fine for most of the developers here, but it is a heck of a hurdle for someone trying to learn.
- The 2.2.1 manual was a huge help, but left me dying to know more a lot more. I can see why no one has done much with it since it seems pointless with 2.3 so different. There probably needs to be a good start with the 2.3 manual and while it will change a lot it could be ready close to go for the 2.3 release.
- Most pages in the wiki need some sort of "applicable to X version" page. There is a lot of good information there, but if you actually find it it is impossible to know if it is current or not. For example, I can go look at the Tweak weapons page and the weapons *.ufo page. The last edit was July 2008. I assume it was made for 2.2.1, but maybe it was made for the 2.3 dev version at the time? Or both? Is it still applicable in 2.3? At the very least it needs to have a version it was written for and then it can be updated when the next release comes out and/or make notes about what has changed in the dev version.
- I don't know about a CMS, I mean the monthy updates are great but what else are you going to put there? The daily SVN logs? Forums are fickle, information gets lost and few new people read anything but the stickies (if that) unless they are searching out something specific. I would try and make the wiki the focal point, make the main page updated with current notes and have at least all the pages that link from the main page be well designed and up to date. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of activity on there though.
Anyways I am trying to be constructive I hope no one gets offended; I am probably not saying anything that is new or that anyone doesn't already know, but thought it might help. I am software engineer and am just finishing up two months of documentation work and just about want to kill myself (which is why I was hoping to jump in and start coding something neat), I know the pain of trying to write junk to explain complex things to people who know nothing. If I can motivate myself maybe I will try and start doing a 2.3 user manual on the wiki or trying to figure out what needs to be update and how it might better be organized, it would be a good project for learning to code and figure out how things work and what needs to be done...
