[Search-l] Warning - Rant

[jer]

> Right im afraid this is going to be a rant today.  I'm feeling in  
> that mood.  Firstly though i would like to say that i support this  
> project and want to help but theres a few things that have been  
> brought up on this list over the last few days and more that i  
> don't think are on.

Mark, you need to work on ranting harder, this is just a few  
justified complaints when I was getting ready for a big rant and  
donning my flame suit!

> My first major groan is Grub.

In it's current state it makes me groan as well :)

> This was announced the press and there was a press release about it  
> all and more media hype for the project which is fine and good and  
> shows that the project is moving on.  However what i do this was  
> weird is that it was all announced, many people went to the grub  
> site to download it and help, except you couldn't download it and  
> make it work.  What makes it worse is that it STILL doesnt work and  
> there doesnt seem to have been much work done except for some of  
> the files being copied to the SWLabs server.  This is not good as  
> many people have now been put off as when they try to help they  
> can't, projects cr*p, so they go elsewhere.  Overall not good.

Oddly, it is mostly working, but the stats are fubar'd.  There's lots  
being crawled, I know since it keeps filling up the disks on  
grub.org, *grin*.  The problem currently seems to be the server isn't  
storing/receiving the authentication token from the client when it  
posts results, so the stats just don't get tracked.  It's probably  
trivial, but I'm new to the codebase, and even with Igor and Kord's  
help, it's still baffling them as well.

There's a larger issue though (touching on in the next thread)...

> This leads me onto my next point.  Many people have flagged up that  
> Wikia seems to be wanting us to make them a profit.  Now i  
> personally don't mind helping out with the project - its kinda fun  
> and exciting but if were going to make you a profit the least you  
> could do would be to help out somehow.  Even answering posts or  
> FIXING GRUB is a minor thing but it all helps.  I dont really mind  
> if things are going on in the background and would be happy if they  
> were but PLEASE give us some indication that somethings going on  
> otherwise i (and many others) will think that nothings happening.

They are, just so many factors to juggle and not enough status info  
is getting squeezed out in the right places.  It was an older  
codebase that was designed around SOAP (which I can't stand), had to  
get it running in only a few days, has a lot of framework for  
modularization that looks more like obfuscation when trying to grok  
it quickly, needs a lot of re-packaging... I won't keep complaining,  
but if anyone wants an hour-by-hour status update just add me to your  
IM and bug me, I'm jer at jabber.org :)

>   Jimbo in a recent post said (something along the lines off) "I  
> want to get the social side set up as soon as".  Well a long time  
> since then has passed and have we got any further , don't think so.

My time-scale is years, and I wish I could make things happen in just  
a couple weeks but I'm kinda slow, good things take considerable time  
and patience IMO.

> Many people have also flagged up the fact that the project is built  
> on hope.  Yes i suppose there is a certain degree of hope at the  
> beginning but i personally think that this has been going on too  
> long.  I think that Wikia need to pull there finger out and as John  
> McCormac put it (i think sorry if im wrong) need to get some hard  
> data.  This to me means fixing Grub so we can start crawling and  
> get this project moving.  Overall it seems to me that its all talk  
> and hype and no actual progress.

There's a stated goal of having some semi-functional stuff to test/ 
play with by the end of the year.  I'll be starting another thread  
today as promised about one of those functions and it's relation to  
Grub.  That's the larger issue, Grub needs to do something valuable  
besides just crawling.

> Think that's it for the minute and I'm sorry that its come to this  
> but its all been slowly growing.  If people feel the same way or  
> feel totally different then please comment.

It's all quite understandable feelings, the goals here are immense,  
and equally will be the confusion and frustration at times :)

Jer