Dipsters.org Forum » Tag: Dipsters Group

Dipsters.org Forum » Tag: Dipsters Group - Recent Posts http://www.dipsters.org/forum/tags/dipsters-group First please read the post, "Welcome! Using the Forum". en-US Sun, 05 Sep 2010 04:16:08 +0000 http://bbpress.org/?v=1.0.2 <![CDATA[Search]]> q http://www.dipsters.org/forum/search.php MartinMoore on "New Moderator for the Dipsters Group" http://www.dipsters.org/forum/topic/new-moderator-for-the-dipsters-group#post-239 Tue, 24 Aug 2010 14:56:43 +0000 MartinMoore 239@http://www.dipsters.org/forum/ I'll echo the thanks and good wishes to Alan. You deserve only the best, and leave some big shoes to fill. That's why there are three of us doing it. :) Jonathan, Ben, and I will try to keep the group running as smoothly as Alan has always done. With that in mind, let me remind everyone that even though things have been relatively quiet around here lately, there are several Dipsters games waiting to form. Some of these have been waiting for quite a while. How about checking them out and helping to get these games off the ground, as well as having some fun of your own? You can always see the current list of Dipsters games at: <a href="http://www.floc.net/observer.py?login=dipster&page=login" rel="nofollow">http://www.floc.net/observer.py?login=dipster&page=login</a> Martin Eric Hunter on "New Moderator for the Dipsters Group" http://www.dipsters.org/forum/topic/new-moderator-for-the-dipsters-group#post-238 Tue, 24 Aug 2010 10:14:44 +0000 Eric Hunter 238@http://www.dipsters.org/forum/ Best of luck, Alan, Martin, and Ben. Jonathan, you're Australian, so struggle on as best you may. ;-) Eric. Alan Mennel on "New Moderator for the Dipsters Group" http://www.dipsters.org/forum/topic/new-moderator-for-the-dipsters-group#post-237 Mon, 23 Aug 2010 13:09:15 +0000 Alan Mennel 237@http://www.dipsters.org/forum/ Hi Everyone: As some of you may know, I have been struggling with pulmonary sarcoidosis for six years. Pulmonary Sarcoidosis or 'Sarcoid' is a lung disease which in my case has recently developed complications that have affected my heart as well. The bottom line is that I no longer have the time nor the inclination at times to serve this group in the way that it should be served. On the bright side, there are three wonderful people who have volunteered to step up to fill this void: Martin Moore, Ben Harris, and Jonathan Powles. If you are the least bit familiar with this hobby, you know that these are three tremendous individuals who will do a tremendous job for our group. As I understand it, Martin will be the Chief Moderator while Ben and Jonathan will fill other necessary roles as they see fit. The exact division of labor will be decided by all three men as time unfolds. Please join with me in wishing Martin, Ben, and Jonathan the very best of luck. We could not have done better! All the Best, Alan Mennel Chris Babcock on "Dipsters - Revisited" http://www.dipsters.org/forum/topic/dipsters-revisited#post-219 Tue, 22 Jun 2010 19:53:07 +0000 Chris Babcock 219@http://www.dipsters.org/forum/ I think that installing the Wordpress Email Notification Plugin could go a long way towards settling the issue about returning to Yahoogroups. I have some experience also with the negativity of which the "old guard" judge hobby is no less capable than any other community. I can't speak for other judgekeepers, but I can confirm that I would be a poor choice to follow Alan Mennel as Dipsters leader. I am thoroughly overcommitted and actively pruning activities outside my core. Practically speaking that would mean I would set up a dedicated judge for Dipsters with automated creation of club games and tight integration with Dipsters accounts on floc.net... and the less I did after that, the better. I just wouldn't have the time to be both innovative and sensitive to the existing culture if I take any more on. I do agree that the nomination of Alan's replacement should be soonest. Although it would be good if there could be a transitional period, if Alan has health concerns then that need to be respected. Alan Mennel on "Dipsters - Revisited" http://www.dipsters.org/forum/topic/dipsters-revisited#post-215 Tue, 22 Jun 2010 16:35:06 +0000 Alan Mennel 215@http://www.dipsters.org/forum/ When I think of the many great games and the past camaraderie within this group, I have to say that Dipsters is a great group. Although most of our members are skilled in this game, virtually all of our members (whether skilled or not) are respectful of other members and just fun to play with. Still we do not seem to be as vibrant a group as we were. Is it the fault of switching to dipsters.org from YAHOO! Groups? I am not so sure. If you look at the number of messages on all the Diplomacy Groups on YAHOO Groups, you will see that the number of messages in every group is down dramatically from one and two years ago. In addition, the total number of games on all combined Ken Lowe judges has decreased as well. If you are looking for a reason why Dipsters is less vibrant than before, look at me. Unfortunately, the biggest negative about Dipsters is that it has and apparently still does rely upon me to move it along. Checking the hundreds of completed Dipsters games and Dipsters tournament games, you can see that I was the GM for probably 95% of all games: <a href="http://www.floc.net/observer.py?login=DipComplete&password=&other_public=&page=login" rel="nofollow">http://www.floc.net/observer.py?login=DipComplete&password=&other_public=&page=login</a> That's a problem because I have not had a good year. My mother had to enter an assisted living facility in August; my sister-in-law, with whom I was very close, suddenly lost her battle with cancer in November; and I have seen my own health problems become considerably worse this year. The bottom line is that I have had neither the time nor the inclination to work on this group as I had in the past. Only a few members have tried to help us out. Only a few have created or offered to Gm new games. And the one person who had offered to run our variant tournament has basically disappeared now that it is time to get the tournament running (I am ill and don't have time to do it myself so this will probably be a tournament that will never start). I admit that there are problems with the dipsters.org site because I have not had the time to work on it, but it still has advantages over YAHOO! groups. YAHOO! Groups is not really conducive to setting up: <ul> <li>showcase games</li> <li>tournament sites</li> <li>local F2F message boards</li> <li>game and tournament listings</li> <li>and more</li> </ul> We can certainly go back to YAHOO! Groups for our message board but I think that would be a backwards step and not really the right step to take. But if the majority of members want to do it, we will. I have to tell you that I was thoroughly disheartened by the response from some members when we switched from YAHOO! Groups to the dipsters.org message board. I had hoped that everyone would work with me during the transition. Some members actually gave me ultimatums about the change. That really took the wind out of my sails after devoting so many years to dipsters. The bottom line is that I am not going to be around as I had been in the past to push this group. Just switching back to YAHOO! Groups is not going to be the answer. The bottom line is that all members need to finally step up and do what is necessary to keep this group going. Asking everyone to GM just one game a year is not too much to ask...yet hardly anyone is doing it. And that is sad. I also think that it is time to select a new moderator, the sooner the better. If I were to pick a successor, it would be someone who is devoted to this hobby but who does not have a personal agenda. A few names pop into my mind but I am sure that this is not the complete list. People like Russ Blau, Yves Grosdidier, Ben Harris, Eric Hunter, Adam Lang, Martin Moore, Ken Navarro, and Jonathan Powles would all do a great job as the new moderator for Dipsters. Although any of our JKs (Alan, Chris, Millis, Sam, Todd) would also be excellent, I think that it is very important that the Dipsters Group treats all judges equally. Having a JK as the Group's Moderator would make that goal almost impossible to attain. Anyway I would like to get your reaction to these issues. All the Best! Alan Chris Babcock on "Question for Chris" http://www.dipsters.org/forum/topic/question-for-chris#post-132 Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:34:54 +0000 Chris Babcock 132@http://www.dipsters.org/forum/ You're welcome... for some value that might also mean "I'm sorry." I think I would rather have had a discussion. Chris Jonathan Powles on "Where's Alan?! Thanks for your support! ...originally from Dipsters@yahoo" http://www.dipsters.org/forum/topic/wheres-alan-thanks-for-your-support-originally-from-dipstersyahoo#post-126 Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:25:41 +0000 Jonathan Powles 126@http://www.dipsters.org/forum/ > Perhaps we could have a shopping list of tasks on the forum (or, forgive me for saying this, a committee, rather than an individual)? What did I tell you? Carebears one and all! Committee my hat ... Actually, not a bad suggestion at all. Whatever you call it, to divide the tasks up ... clearly we need one or more people to pitch in on the tech front; a group of 2-3 people who are prepared to run tournaments (perhaps with Alan as senior advisor); maybe somebody to keep the membership up-to-date. It's starting to sound dangerously like an organisation, with a President (Alan), Secretary, 2-3 Tournament Directors (FP, NP, Variant?)and an IT guru (I know who I'd nominate :-) ...) Help Alan share the load while retaining the authority. I think one thing we all seem to share, that needs to be explicitly stated, is that we all respect and admire the energy, concept and culture of Dipsters that Alan has established, and would all want to see him continue to shape those as leader of the group, while at the same time helping him out with the grunt work Cheers Jonathan PS Btw John, you were clearly the most cut-throat player on the board. Why else did we prevent you from ever getting more than 4 SCs? :-) Alan Mennel on "Where's Alan?! Thanks for your support! ...originally from Dipsters@yahoo" http://www.dipsters.org/forum/topic/wheres-alan-thanks-for-your-support-originally-from-dipstersyahoo#post-125 Tue, 12 Jan 2010 21:50:05 +0000 Alan Mennel 125@http://www.dipsters.org/forum/ --- In <a href="mailto:Dipsters@yahoogroups.com">Dipsters@yahoogroups.com</a>, "Jinbish" <jinbish@...> wrote: > Guys, > > I think that the discussion about the migration of Dipsters from Yahoo (and the availability of email) has been a slight distraction from an underlying issue that you raise: > >I just need some help now in doing the things necessary to restore our group to its former and future level of enjoyment." > > I am probably not be up to speed so I might not be the right person to be asking these rhetorical questions, but: What needs to be done to keep Dipsters going? Do we need "volunteers" for jobs to do? > > Perhaps we could have a shopping list of tasks on the forum (or, forgive me for saying this, a committee, rather than an individual)? > > Any thoughts? Thanks, John. No committees please...we could just use some real help. 1) Anyone interested in starting a true Dipsters game would help. We have 125 listed members in Dipsters on YAHOO! If every so often you all could take turns in creating just one game during this year, we would all have plenty of available Dipsters games to play: <a href="http://www.dipsters.org/hosting.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.dipsters.org/hosting.html</a> 2) Rian Mitra has agreed to direct the Dipsters No-Press Variant Tournament which will start on May 1, 2010. I suppose it is not too early to show your interest in playing by signing on to the queue now: <a href="http://www.dipsters.org/dvt.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.dipsters.org/dvt.html</a> I think the Variant will be Open Build but Rian may decide to throw the question open to the membership again. If he does and if another variant is chosen, you can always opt out of the tournament if the new variant is not to your liking. 3) I wonder if someone wants to clean up my mess from the ill-fated Dipsters No-Press Tournament from last Fall? The tournament should have started on September 8, 2009, but I was unable to start it because of my personal problems. If anyone is interested now in resurrecting this tournament (which would include a tremendous amount of work in assigning games and contacting players), I still have a list of 74 potential competitors, most of whom would probably still play. I am inclined to let it die at this point because it's a great deal of work but, if anyone is interested, please contact me privately: <a href="mailto:alan.mennel@dipsters.org">alan.mennel@dipsters.org</a> Anyway, John, thank you for noticing that one line in my earlier post. And thank you all in advance for doing whatever you can to help us recover from my malaise. All the best! Alan Mennel Alan Mennel on "Question for Chris" http://www.dipsters.org/forum/topic/question-for-chris#post-122 Mon, 11 Jan 2010 18:41:31 +0000 Alan Mennel 122@http://www.dipsters.org/forum/ Thanks for this comprehensive reply. Alan Chris Babcock on "Question for Chris" http://www.dipsters.org/forum/topic/question-for-chris#post-107 Sat, 09 Jan 2010 01:55:25 +0000 Chris Babcock 107@http://www.dipsters.org/forum/ Infrastructure needs to be maintained and protected. The expenses for USAK right now are between $1100 and $1200 a year, but even if I had a million dollars in the bank (and I don't) then it would be offline by the middle of the next month if I was dead or hospitalize because the bill wouldn't get paid. That's 250 active players affected in 60 or so games that would stop in 2 - 6 weeks. I'm not saying that Dipsters needs an organization to pay the bills, but the issues that affect you as benevolent dictator for life of the Dipsters group do mean that, if Dipsters is important to players then there needs to be a plan to perpetuate that beyond your life in the hobby. It doesn't need to be a corporation, but a clear second-in-command is a start and provision for the assets and liabilities of the group is recommended. When Doug Massey retired from the hobby, he left David Norman in charge of Vermont Group and Rob Farley in charge of the JDPR. Both of those people are very capable, but it wasn't enough to provide for the continuity and vitality of those services. David K sent me the physical server that had been running USVG and USIN. I was able to set up a new USVG as a result without loosing any member data and I could still relaunch USIN if it would be worthwhile. The judge transfer went well for two reasons -- I was able to secure the assets involved and I already had relevant leadership experience. The physical assets for Dipsters are the domain name and the data on the web site. In addition to preparing continuity of leadership, it is also important to secure these assets. That means trusting either a person or a process to transfer ownership of the domain and the contents of the site. Obviously, a designated heir comes first. For myself, I can only say that I plan to provide for continuity with the judge experience. I have done what I can to extend the life span of the nJudge and I plan to implement an nJudge syntax email interface on the structure that I am building. More importantly, I am planning for cultural continuity. I'm looking at email interfaces, interactive web forms, Wave or Wave-like interfaces and DAIDE clients accessing the same set of games. That means judge players in the same games with web players and with others using natural language or a DAIDE client. This kind of flexibility isn't easy to implement and fortunately I'm not doing it alone. I'm using Open Source software from all over the world and there are dozens of people doing seemingly small things in their own corner of the hobby with different levels of awareness of a bigger picture. What I'm doing is encouraging people to start coding their big dreams then helping them by sharing ideas (and eventually code) from all parts of the hobby. An example of this is an idea for using XML to communicate Diplomacy archive data that originated in the postal hobby 18 months ago. Now webDiplomacy and NADF members are together in a Wave talking details. Other cross-sector projects include map generation. Right now floc.net, USAK, DPjudge, jDip, the DAIDE client and Real Politik use a common process to generate maps that uses a map description format from nJudge, PostScript templates and a version of Mappit supplied by Manus Hand. This was tech-forward in the 80's, but today we need Scalable Vector Graphics for interactive maps over the web. DipTool, metapaw-dip and Game2Relax have implemented SVG maps using 3 different scripting languages, but none of them use an SVG templating system in a way that can be used as a stand alone replacement for Mappit to produce SVG maps with other software. That's what I'm looking for to build an order entry wizard for USAK. DPjudge was great when it written and it still has many good ideas, but a lot has changed in programming since then. Today's software is better organized -- easier to maintain and share the work. UI design is better, too. These days it's considered poor form to spread functions across multiple interfaces, so both the web and email interfaces on USAK were designed to be feature complete. When I build an order wizard or a game creation wizard, it will use a webform to create a message that can be manually edited before submission or saved for later use so that players and GMs don't have to remember all the GUI steps for a complicated set of orders to hold a stalemate line or start a game in a specific format. There is also one serious hole in nJudge that I cannot patch externally. This is a play by email application that does not process text encodings. String handling routines inside and out are built for ASCII text and that is not how email is transmitted anymore. Fixing that issue will make current judge files incompatible with existing judges because the judge stores its data as ASCII text. There's a good start already on utilities that export judge data to XML and SQL. The master file can be exported already, but there is more work needed to export game histories. The Diplomacy hobby has its own chat protocol (DAIDE), but it is rarely used because it isn't federated with any mainstream chat protocols. I'm working with a group on finalizing a chat server that is extensible and already supports XMPP, IRC, SMTP and several other network protocols and the EPCC article in DipWorld has already made me a contact that might be able to help me add a DAIDE interface to this server. SMTP is email. XMPP is an open chat protocol that is used by GoogleTalk and most social networking sites that have added chat to their service recently, as well as Wave. I'm openly campaigning for Wave support on this server, too, but the main idea here is that I already have an infrastructure on which to build this dream -- dream that involves feature complete Diplomacy and social networking user interfaces over email, web, and at least 4 different chat protocol (with content overflow going to the web and email remaining a backup push medium). I'm talking about something that is doable with today's technology and practical to do with emerging technologies. Things like this don't get built, however, without some degree of security for the infrastructure. People need to feel that their efforts will be preserved even if something happens to an important person on the project. Supplying that security means different things for me and USAK than it does for Alan and Dipsters, but the issue is still relevant. Find help, be help, provide continuity for the organization and there will be others doing the same. Alan Mennel on "Question for Chris" http://www.dipsters.org/forum/topic/question-for-chris#post-106 Fri, 08 Jan 2010 20:29:50 +0000 Alan Mennel 106@http://www.dipsters.org/forum/ Hi Chris: I know that you give much more thought to this hobby than I do and I admire you for it. At this point, I realize that dipsters.org will give us much more flexibility than the YAHOO! gaming site will. (Hell! I cannot even put the url for our open games on the YAHOO! home page because the url conflicts with the format that YAHOO! requires for the listing.) If anyone reads our home page on dipsters.org, he should realize that there are many more things that we may accomplish with our own site than we could have ever done at YAHOO!...and I am sure that our members will think of more things to add to the list that will improve our group than I could ever imagine. > This -- and everything that I clipped -- is exactly why my master plan > for asciiking.com includes a non-profit corporation. I'm not going to > last forever physically or mentally... none of us in this hobby will. I am willing to absorb whatever small amount of costs are created by having our own site at dipsters.org. Although you likely have much higher expenses than I do, I do not understand your call for a non-profit corporation at this time...at least in how it might apply to me at this stage. My interests at this time are just to see a little more involvement from the members of the group so that we can provide all the services and run all the tournaments which our members want to see. I have to admit, Chris, that all the discussion about new platforms is somewhat beyond me. I know that new technology can and will change our existing world dramatically. In this group, I am interested in looking into new platforms or formats for playing...and I would be interested in supporting the good ones...but I don't see the demise of the judges just yet...at least not while there are folks like me and the rest of our group enjoy enjoy judge play. Anyway, I am interested in hearing what everyone (including Chris) has to say about these issues. Feel free to add your voice to the discussion. All the Best! Alan