Blög?

[coffee]

Don't worry I only quickly back for do what I do best: Annoy and perturb. I will leave then.

I hope this help as reflection of current LÖVE state:

- The LÖVE devs:
The level of communication and transparency between LÖVE dev team and public is very lacking. Current users and potential users are kept in the dark about the LÖVE plans, current dev's work, milestones and future plans or date releases of LÖVE. You say LÖVE is all open-source and free but the way you all communicate isn't. You keep things for yourselves, for your irc coder friendly chats and even digging in forums is hard to catch about your LÖVE dev activity and plans. LÖVE has proven solid and reliable. Stop hidden it for yourselves as only geek coders object. Announce it. Properly show it.

- The LÖVE (front-page) website:
Is static, still, dead. There isn't a news corner where devs announce news versions, their roadmap, their plans. Start looking how other framework and languages communicate. Do a quick mini-site of more 2 or 3 pages where you point main features, put a mini-faq and also really interesting appealing images or better videos. Also if possible add some showcase of the dozens good LÖVE projects.

- The LÖVE blog:
Keep a blog is so easy in our days. So no excuse. Set up is a question of couple hours in which most is only for customizing with a style and look. Post in CMS interface is basically so easy and quick as post a tweet. If you can waste so many chatting time in IRC you can do in some minutes a post from time from time. What's is actually is important is that devs have an official voice there not and not actually the extra community-driven posts. Devs need to have an official voice.

- The LÖVE name
LÖVE is a trademark mistake. LÖVE name is a cute orthographic "joke" but that's all. As everything else if is non or hardly googlable is no good. Unfortunately LÖVE is one of that expressions. It's not easily searchable. It's hard find LÖVE projects, news or anything else. LÖVE2d.org - LÖVE name discrepancy don't help. No wonder new users started calling LÖVE everywhere as LÖVE2d. A reflection about LÖVE name and functionality would be welcomed.

- The LÖVE Libs
Yeah, the sexism thing in the libs name. I have sense of humor. However others aren't obliged to have it. Puritan cleanness is everywhere and is almost a norm is a lot of places. Even now in coder world. So please don't encourage that practice. Old "sex" libs should review their name. For sake of your libs but also a wider LÖVE acceptance. Please leave behind the loner code geek stereotype. You don't want LÖVE users have avoid use your libs and even LÖVE because they have to declare them first in game parties right?

- The LÖVE Forum
Still more 10k bot users? Fooling ourselves? If we have 10% of that would be good but only probably a few hundred really follow it. Community is not stable. Users came and leave. Few actually remain. The intention of keep forum as community center is failing. Checked last Lundum and actual Global Game Jam? There were near LÖVE 25 projects in Lundum, almost 10 in GGJ. How many announce them in LÖVE forum? Very few. They don't even care with us (forum/community). So forum as community central hub must be failing.

So show to the world (and to us) how LÖVE is solid, have plans, a milestone, and expected releases. Show LÖVE is alive and is reliable to to be still used or experienced.

Sorry for the disturbance. Hope it helps. Good projects to all...

[vrld]

I second what bartbes wrote: It's a time issue. We don't get paid to develop LÖVE, so it all has to be done in our free time - and there is only so much of it. I, too, read (or at least glance over) almost every post, but rarely contribute, because all this takes time that I feel is better spent elsewhere.

This situation is far from ideal, for the reason Ensayia mentioned: You can get the impression of a standstill. However, that is far from the truth. You can follow the current development by reading the commit log. There is also the love-experiments repository which acts like a testing ground for possible new features. I understand that following those repositories is not everyones thing. It can be very very cumbersome and even daunting for both newcomers and experienced lövers to extract the relevant bits and pieces from the commit logs.

A (community-driven) blog could act as an interface that processes these and other sources into some human readable format. I also like the idea of developer cameos but don't think it's feasible to have a us writing posts on a regular basis.

Edit, because during writing the above two new posts appeared:
I am a bit put back by the hate transported in coffee's post. I have to stress this again: We sacrifice our own free time to develop LÖVE. Thelinx even pays real money for the web servers. Out of his own pocket. We don't get anything out of it besides blaze, glory and (at least I thought so up until now) respect.

[bartbes]

You say LÖVE is all open-source and free but the way you all communicate isn't. You keep things for yourselves

While this topic does clearly state that we indeed initiate very little outwards communication, I don't think there's been an occasion where people asking us things (within reason) has gone unanswered, communication is a two way street.

There isn't a news corner where devs announce news versions, their roadmap, their plans. Start looking how other framework and languages communicate.

Again, this is a time issue, we don't have a community manager, full-time, part-time, or even any-time, point me to a framework with the same amount of devtime and show me their blog! A blog is nice and all, but if it's unupdated for months, even years, it looks worse than having no blog at all.

Post in CMS interface is basically so easy and quick as post a tweet.

Just because it's easy doesn't mean it doesn't take time. I can say something on irc in 5 seconds, I can tweet in 5 seconds, a forum post takes at least 30 seconds, a thorough one (like this one and the last one) takes up to 15 minutes. Why? Because I'm not spewing out that I just had a dump, I need to tell the truth, I need to tell it right. In fact, like the unupdated blog, a blog that's not properly written, is detrimental.

The LÖVE name

The LÖVE Libs

You are entitled to your own opinion. As am I.

Still more 10k bot users? Fooling ourselves?

Excuse me? Do you have any idea how long it takes to even prevent spam from showing up on the forums, managing all this is a full-time job!
As you may or may not know, spam prevention is a community job on these forums, and there's many people spending a lot of time actually doing that.

[slime]

Still more 10k bot users? Fooling ourselves?

To put this in perspective, about 1,500 spam posts from bots were removed by volunteer community members (including LÖVE developers) in the past 10-ish days. Most of the spam is from newly registered members, so it's quite possible that almost 1,500 spammers registered on the forums in that time period.

[Lafolie]

Regarding the spam issue, this is something that the long-time lovers, inner party members and developers are truly concerned about. Regular conversations are held and ideas are bounced around with the aims of solving this problem. People are hard at work on all of this stuff man, there is a new addition to the development team and I personally check the forum several times a day to disapprove spambot threads (as do others).

Given that the project is still in some pre-release stage, given the coverage that we've seen and the awesome feedback (loads of lovers in Ludum Dare!) I'd say that progress is steady, and most definitely not hidden away. You just have to look for it, because at the time of writing there's no community manager or advertising, for obvious reasons.

[coffee]

@slime
Just let me to remind you that I was already an inner member for some time. So I did a lot of that morning approval/non-approval of posts and users. BTW I'm not anymore because some soul in irc whined that I didn't deserve it and not because I was sort of tired of do it. Also I remind you that I was one of the most active users discussing that spam question in respective forum threads. Also that forum had a good "cleanness" act that reduced rank to 3k users but since that grew to 10k. But It needs another cleansing. For DB sake and for forum credibility.

@vrld
"hate post" really? If your judgment is that my realistic objective non-coder view was a hate thing I can't do much for change it. I was objective, I was polite, I was honest however I'm no hypocrite. If hurt somehow some people maybe it's good and let people think about their P.R (public relations) strategy (you all can have coders formation but my major is actually PR/Marketing field so I'm comfortable to talk about it) working bad.

Also to say I also have my pro-bono project for over half-decade (so hosting, domain, time, money and all that stuff) taken without return because till now I never even used a paypal button to help me balance things so… I well aware of self-sacrifice thank you. It never was that in cause just the way you guys do it.
For me it's not a question a of more time needed, it's a question of how you use the same time already used in LOVE activities. Not of time itself but the way and mood dev team speak to public.

@bartbes
The LOVE name and libraries part it's not an personal review/opinion. It's very social reality and also SEO based. Because the "ö" thing is something kept somewhere hidden in various international keyboards and troublematic/not handy to insert. Cause also some search internal sites skip "accents" and also return simple "love" results. Löve is not the happiest of the choices.

The point about the blog is that you devs don't even have a regular official channel as every project does. You could even not waste time in do posts. However if you want to simple post as announce a new major version and a changelog. Forum posts is not the universal public way. People discovering LOVE don't look for your voice or news there. Also repository commits and following aren't. Forum is the proof that people without a lot of code knowledge also use LOVE. A lot more users could be attracted if right communicational posture taken. A "dead" website with no public news is half way to keep people interested in something. Do we think is credible and alive a project with some weeks without a new post? And about a site with none? My point.

Last advice before I leave:
Stop keep thinking things as from coders to coders. World is much wider than that. Embrace and attract people, don't want expect that people act, think or be like you...

[Karai17]

Wow this post kind of exploded a little D:

Disregarding the atmosphere around coffee's posts, he made a couple good points. It should be the responsibility of the love team to express the future vision of the project, be it upcoming features, major bug fixes, or whatever. Communication is a two way street, yes, but every conversation needs a lead. I highly doubt the love team is "hiding" this information, as coffee put it. I'm inclined to believe the devs when they say it is more a matter of spending time actually developing, not blogging.

The front page is very dead, and having SOME dynamic content (twitter feed, a blog, latest discussions in the forum, latest commits, etc) would really improve the first impression to new lovers.

The love name is fine. I generally search for "love2d" when I am googling around because of the obvious branding issue, but as love isn't actively being advertised, it's really hard to say if this is truly a problem or not.

The love libs are fine. If you have a serious problem with using a library because it has a clever name, you probably need to re-evaluate your life. I'll also note, coffee, that your immediate attacks ("sexism", "loner geek") do reinforce the idea that you do not actually have a sense of humour. If you can't handle using a library because of its name, it may be in your best interest to look at alternative frameworks. I would also like to note that you misused the word "sexism". There is no sexism here.

Now you may have noted that I never used the term "dev team" up above. I did this on purpose. Maybe love is in a position where it could use an addition to the team that does not do much/any direct development of the framework, but more of a community/PR position? A PR role could be the middleman needed to get information from the devs on a regular basis and inform the community about what is going on in the background. My best example for this would be the Raspberry Pi team. They have a PR manager who does tonnes of blog posts, monitors the community at large, passes information back and forth, all while letting the engineers keep on engineering.

[snake]

coffee, you forgot that love is NOT commercial software.
Popularity isn't even the main goal but to have fun.
Also it is exactly that, software "from coders to coders".
Normal people don't need to care about which engine a game is written.

If someone want to know how love dev is going, he can just hang out on IRC, really no problem.
Communication is not bad but pretty good, as everybody can just join the channel and bitch at the main devs when they have problems.

[slime]

Something to keep in mind as well, is that because LÖVE is an open-source project developed by people in their spare time, an official roadmap with deadlines and feature milestones and similar baggage probably wouldn't make sense.
LÖVE's development is often something like: "Hey, I've got a spare weekend and I'm in the mood to program x type of feature. Maybe I'll take a crack at it," not so much "We've got to get a, b, and c done before date X or we'll miss our launch window!"
The former type of thinking lends itself towards profitless spare time development much more than the latter, but as a consequence it's harder for the LÖVE developers to say when things are going to happen or what features are going to appear, because it's not always all planned out.

[SiENcE]

I would also support a LÖVE blog.

Here are examples of Forum Blogs.

http://www.tigsource.com/

or

http://www.dingoonity.org/