Walking into unknown [more] |
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  Beta Lt Icydemon In the past few years ("few" here is used inappropriately but nevermind), I have been involved in a thing called Informatics. Whether you look it from the programmer's point of view, or the analyst's or just the "random guy who's gonna format my computer", its the same thing. Realising that I have spent more than my less of my short life with computers and various communities, people that i have met online and some of them even in real life, people that share the same ideals and visions with me. I remember a decade ago it was, take a year and some, it was the first time i visited Cyberarmy. Ten years later, the site is different, the ideals are different and the people are different. I am different too. Cyberarmy, I dont know how, evolved from a black hat community, to an activism organization. This change, altered a lot of us. Some stopped. Some quit. Some internal affairs. You see, I started being an activist here (active member) since 2003. I first joined Class Delivery, under CyberArmy University back then. I was a trooper (and I had another name back then), walking my first steps in the community, teaching Visual Basic for beginners to give people a chance not to learn VB or the interface, design and shit. But to give them an idea of programming. I was always saying and will continue to hammer on that if someone haven't learned the basics, he'll never be able to move on. Myself... Lets say that I am a mediocre programmer with binary logic. But due to my knowledge of the basics, i can learn a new programming language in no time, i can understand, in a conversation, technical stuff. Now someone would wonder. Why the heck do I say those things? Looking through the past and the present, I see myself as a rather old member here, despite the fact that I didn't contribute as much as I wanted to due personal issues, I have seen the change. And I am here to make some recommendations. If you are still here with me, reading, you will have probably guessed that this should be posted on Communitas forum, yet it's written in such a way that probably it'll get deleted. So here are my recommendations: Brigades: I feel that all brigades should follow the example of CAP and SAS. To have a brigade under their structure (like "The Den", "The Reserves") to act as a home for all the people involved in particular brigade work. The main brigade should only contain the executive members (commander and his sub commanders), then the sub-brigade should be consisted of the members that are doing work on this brigade. For example CAIS could have a "The Laboratory" brigade to act as a home for our programmers and people working mostly on CAIS projects (same applies for CAA, OSI). This should minimize the people crying about not having a home in cyberarmy (and believe me working and being "white" isn't the best thing for one's morale) since it's a human need to be a part of a group. OSI is dead for some years now, something must be done about that too. I dont know what and I won't interfere there, this is another man's decision. Projects: The projects (idea and implementation) seems to work fine, although when I heard that projects would be introduced in CyberArmy (A long long time ago), I thought that they would fail. Thank god in this subject I was totally wrong, Projects are going well, not that well as I would like to see them going. And then... We turned into a Project-Driven community from a Brigade-Driven one. This is fine but projects were made to be more specialized and I am unhappy to see a generic Game project. It would be nice to have a Game Project, and various subprojects under that, just like a brigade with sub-brigades, e.g A MUD project under The Game and a CyberKeyWars project under the main one too. Projects, it seems, is CyberArmy's future. The brigades now are mostly for managing human resources. But dont kill the whole idea. Keep the brigades up, those nice colors in the forums, and happy people beloning in a group. Specialization is what they need and should have and we have to do it one way or another, sooner or later. You see, brainstorming about something generic can be infinite. And with infinite ideas you have two choices. Either implement all of them or none of them. The Library: Unfortunately I see that the library hosts a great deal of articles, but I see we are out of writters (and believe me I want to help there too but my time is limited and when it comes to writting most, if not all of us, want to write as good as we can). In my humble opinion (again), via the Ambassadors project should link our library and our content with other sites. To have more articles inside and a wider selection of subjects. Also we should write articles in our native languages, to spread the word to people that aren't that familiar with the english language. It is doable but still, I haven't seen much. Someone here would ask (again): FFS Icy, write the damn articles in Greek instead of english and stop the lecture. Unfortunately, my time is limited but that is on the schedule too. I am trying to write up a good article or two in greek, which is my native language, to spread the word in greek people too. I think that if each and every one of us, wrote a simple article about a field that he/she has a solid knowledge and understanding of, Halley would have much homework (editing the articles ^^). Here we need some team spirit, and also contribute a bit better in the Library. After all it is a living organism inside cyberarmy. It grows, it evolves. Who knows? It might reproduce some time ;) Sered/Challenges: Sered is good as it is. I am merely a beta there but I have seen it. It's a programmers'/hackers' challenge, not a logic one and definately not an easy one, especially if you are unfamiliar with some concepts. The only thing to be done in sered is to have the rest of the levels implemented (i think its up to Sered10), but this is probably something totally unaccomplishable since there is no Challenge Development Team as far as i know (correct me here if i'm wrong). Sered should not be a mean to show up, And i think that we should make the Sered Rank optional to be shown. E.g. It would be nice to hide my sered level when posting on the forum or doing anything else (simply Lt. Icydemon), and someone, if he wanted to know, could visit /~icydemon to check on which level i am on. People: While trying to finish this long (and I could add full of nonsense) post, I wonder, how much have we changed? And why? Inactivity is a part of the community but mistakes are leading to inactivity, people dont stop coming from the one day to the other. I had been inactive in the past for personal reasons, I came back, CAU was screwed up and I quit. I saw my work and my beliefs lost in a fight. I saw my ideas and my visions falling apart. And i say "kkthx, bb". While being here, working togeather, chatting, having fun or arguing, we have to realise that we are a community, standing here for a decade now, with Internet as our only means of communication (most of us), and same ideas, visions, and goals. We should stay united and be ready to forgive. I have seen it at least twice happen in here and unfortunatelly I wont be here to see it once more. If things go bad in a brigade and we have the usual story of commander changing, demoting, disbanding, etc. I'll be far away. And with me many people that share my point of view and don't want to see things turn that bad. Army: is it or not? I have wondered myself a lot of times. Are we really a militaristic-like community or not? Someone must take a solid decision on that. Either we are a militaristic community and my damn Lieutenant rank means something, my Beta Sered rank gives me a greater access than an Alpha other than a forum or we are a computer/internet enthusiast community, so what the heck, alter the ranks in something non militaristic. On that, many can be said, most of us respect each other regarding of rank and what he/she has to do in the community. Someone should stand out and give a clean answer. What are we doing? Which are our beliefs? What is our goal? What the heck are we representing. Conclusion: Seeing that the community has changed a lot, the way it works, the way people think, our repeated rise and fall, I believe that I am doing the right thing, creating this post and pointing some things out. And believe me i dont want some answers on this. I demand them. Farewell, Lieutenant Icydemon Replies:
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