Frequently Asked Questions

I'm flooded by the emails from the mailing-list, that's too much!
Free Software mailing lists are usually very crowded - not to scare you, but the volume of emails will only grow with time ;p (one of the worse examples is the Linux kernel mailing-list, who can get up to 1000 emails/day on some days - but don't worry, it shouldn't get to that point :D).

There are various ways to address this.


 * First, from your end, if you haven't done it already, set your mailer to put all emails from the mailing-list to a specific folder, and display them by threads. This way you can read discussions more easily, and only skim through the threads that you are not very interested in. (Let us know on the mailing-list if you don't know how to do this)
 * Alternatively, can also ask to receive the content of the mailing-list compiled in a single email, sent once a day. It's harder to follow this way than the previous option, but some people prefer this.
 * Also, if you prefer reading it on a forum, we can install a forum<->ML gateway (it can be harder to follow than a forum though, as you have to think to go there and have a look - so you may end up following the discussions less frequently).
 * A last resort option, when the traffic grows more, is to split in several mailing-lists - but it also makes it harder to communicate between groups, and we're not there yet in terms of traffic.

There is a discussion on the mailing-list that I don't understand, should I give up, or maybe ask someone in private to explain to me?
No, if you can't find the answer in the mailing-list archives or in this FAQ, you should seek clarification directly on the ML. On one side, a lot of people will not share a good enough technical/financial/gameplay/whatever background to understand everything, so, asking questions on the ML will make the answer available to anyone who join it. Also, it shows the good example. Anyone can ask anything, always. Nobody should ever be ashamed of his ignorance. : )

When are decisions made for all the discussions that happen on the mailing-list? There never seems to be a conclusion to them
On the mailing-list, a point is considered as temporary settled, if :
 * There is an explicit consensus
 * There is an implicit and soft consensus (nobody answer the last thread of the discussion)
 * There has been a vote of the project leadership council

So on a given subject, the decision is the latest consensus reached - it is to say, until someone has a new objection or new elements to bring to the discussion

The person who started or resumed the discussion is responsible for writing down the results of the discussion on the wiki.

Is it meaningful to write down the informations from discussions on the wiki ?
A page on the Wiki is some sort of photography of a discussion, at a certain time. It’s main purpose is, when someone join us, to make him able to catch up his backwardness just by reading the Wiki (it's better than having to read all the discussions archives ;p).

Anyone can write down discussions results to the wiki, and it is better to do it as soon as possible.

When a thread is started by Aurélien/Xav/me, the one who started it is in charge to update the wiki accordingly. If a thread is started by someone else, the best is if this person updates the wiki, but at the end of the day Aurélien is in charge of making sure it’s done (by the person or by him) if it’s related to game design, Xav if it’s related to community/open source/hackit dev/technical, David for the rest – these 3 roles should be more defined in a near future by the way. This should be done every 2-3 days.

All this can be summarized by the fact that anyone can update the wiki, but that at the end of the day we have currently three persons who are finally responsible that it’s done.