Is Project Aon dead?

[pelethar]

Provocative title I know.

I'm an avid fan of Project Aon - I loved the books as a kid in the Eighties and this has given me a fantastic opportunity to revisit them. But things seem to have gone quiet for a long time - the headline announcement on the PA front page is 18 months out of date, so a new visitor would be quite likely to conclude that the project is no more.

Probably there is a lot going on behind the scenes, but what? In common with a lot of the LW fans outside the core Project Aon community, all I really want to do is read the LW books again - I'm much less interested in the New Order/Grey Star/California Countdown books. I have to agree with the other poster who suggested posting up half decent versions initially and then getting them perfect later on, rather than waiting until the versions are absolutely spot on before publishing. It used to be possible to access useable works-in-progress through the inner sanctum; this seems not to be the case any more.

Maybe a calendar on the PA front page would be a good idea, with forecast release dates etc? This would give a good indication of what's happening behind the scenes and reassure people that the project is indeed alive and kicking. Or perhaps a more regular newsletter.

And perhaps bear in mind that not all of us are familiar with the intricacies of what's going on, so not everyone will know what a "Dead Horse" is, or what it means if a book is in the OCR stage, or what we should infer from a statement that a book is being revised for Mongoose. Again I think most casual visitors will just want to know when they might be able to read The Curse Of Naar.

I really hope you don't mind the feedback. Thanks for all you guys are doing.

[Dave]

Project Aon isn't dead. It's deaf! As in Def. As in Def Leppard. As in I don't really know where I'm going with this.

(All in all, not a helpful answer, but surely one of the more "interesting" responses to such a query. I shall now retreat back into the dark recesses of my own forum...)

[outspaced]

Dec 18, 2008 10:55:07 GMT pelethar said:

Provocative title I know.

I'm an avid fan of Project Aon - I loved the books as a kid in the Eighties and this has given me a fantastic opportunity to revisit them. But things seem to have gone quiet for a long time - the headline announcement on the PA front page is 18 months out of date, so a new visitor would be quite likely to conclude that the project is no more.

Then they'd be rather foolish, in view of the fact that Highway Holocaust was published earlier this very year, and Books 1-7 have been revised over the past 12 months.

Probably there is a lot going on behind the scenes, but what?

Lots of stuff. Huge amounts of stuff. So much stuff that I couldn't even begin to describe it and its scope.

In common with a lot of the LW fans outside the core Project Aon community, all I really want to do is read the LW books again - I'm much less interested in the New Order/Grey Star/California Countdown books.

Depending on how diplomatic I'm feeling, my response when I hear/read these sort of things ranges from "That's a shame" all the way up to "Tough!" :-p

We understand that fans want the books. Please understand that we want to give them to you. We're not deliberately sitting on releases to spite other fans. We work on these books as a hobby--a labour of love--and sometimes we're all just too busy to devote enough time to it. That's called Real Life, unfortunately. We also have other interests/hobbies/friends that can take up our precious free time.

However, we are working on the books. With all due respect, fans who just want to read them aren't working[/b] on them. That's the big difference. We appreciate the later books are rarer, so fewer fans have access to them with a view to helping us release them to a high standard. That means it's taking us longer per release than the earlier books where perhaps a dozen or more contributors were pitching in simultaneously to get the book ready for release.

I have to agree with the other poster who suggested posting up half decent versions initially and then getting them perfect later on, rather than waiting until the versions are absolutely spot on before publishing.

Nope. What would be the point of that? We'd just be annoying people with releasing a whole new edition every 5 minutes when we spotted a typo. And it would be annoying to us in that we'd be releasing a substandard product. After all, it's our personal free time we're devoting to this; we have as much right to 'get something from the project' as fans who read the books. That means making the books as good as we can before releasing, and then tidying the bits we missed up later. It doesn't mean deliberately releasing a substandard product with a view to fixing myriad problems later.

It used to be possible to access useable works-in-progress through the inner sanctum; this seems not to be the case any more.

The raw text is very, very rough. We now have all of the books in XML format, so the raw text is no longer required.

Maybe a calendar on the PA front page would be a good idea, with forecast release dates etc? This would give a good indication of what's happening behind the scenes and reassure people that the project is indeed alive and kicking.

No, because as a voluntary project, we can't guarantee anything. There are no lead times or deadline dates because we work on this when we can.

Or perhaps a more regular newsletter.

Yeah, I have some sympathy with this. On the other hand, we so have the Project Aon Blog that has reasonably frequent postings.

I'll be endeavouring to post another Project Aon Annual Report at the end of December, so hopefully this will cover that.

And perhaps bear in mind that not all of us are familiar with the intricacies of what's going on, so not everyone will know what a "Dead Horse" is,

I'm not entirely sure where that euphemism came from myself. It is Jon's way of stating that a book has been published.

or what it means if a book is in the OCR stage, or what we should infer from a statement that a book is being revised for Mongoose.

OCR = Optical Character Recognition. OCR is used to translate images of the scanned pages of the books into actual ASCII characters in a computer. OCR is the second stage of a books journey toward publication:

1) Scanning - acquiring images of the original text from the books
2) OCR
3) Proofreading - checking the text of the OCRed output against the published text of the book.
4) XMLisation - converting the proofread text into a single XML file for ease of transformation. XML is a way of storing data so that it can easily be converted to other formats, such as HTML or PDF.
5) Editing - Fixing errors in the text and recording the changes as Errata. Adding footnotes where required. Adding accessibility information, such as the alternative text description of the map for Shadow on the Sand where a puzzle requires access to an illustration, which is of no use to the partially-sighted who rely on screen-readers.
6) Comment Period - When a book is almost ready for publication, with few or no outstanding issues on the requisite Errata Wiki Page, we try to playtest the book a couple of times looking for any lingering errors.
7) Publication
8) Re-editing - Usually a day or two after publication, we get a few E-mails pointing out errors that we missed, and we try to triage these to fix/reject them ASAP to avoid huge long lists of issues that never seem to get resolved.

We've not always been as thorough, but we are aiming to need fewer re-releases of the later books.

Again I think most casual visitors will just want to know when they might be able to read The Curse Of Naar.

And the answer is, as ever, "Wait and see!" We will get the books out. That's always been our goal.

I really hope you don't mind the feedback. Thanks for all you guys are doing.

Well, you did post this when I'm laid low with a nasty respiratory bug and not feeling all that generous.

Watch for the Annual Report. Seriously. It may look as though nothing much has happened this year, but it really, really has. Anyone on the Mailing List will know what advances have been made, and I'll be happy to share them with the fans at large. And hopefully I'll have stopped coughing like a 60-a-day smoker by then.

[pelethar]

What a nasty, mean-spirited response that is. Clearly you feel that the group of people working on the project are the only people whose opinions matter. Fine. Thanks for taking the time to patronise me. Have a good Christmas

[Dave]

Whoa. pelethar may be named after the King's Son, but he is nowhere near as gracious as the good Prince. I hope you realize that your original post was not so much "feedback" as you say, but rather a "This is what I want, and why aren't you giving it to me... Now?!?!" pander-to-me sort of post. If you feel outspaced's reply is patronising, please bear in mind that you have approached him much as my 4-year-old daughter does when she doesn't get what she wants - whining. That sort of stimulus never garners a positive response. I thought outspaced replied in a very informative and only slightly exasperated way - I wish I were as patient with my daughter!

[pelethar]

Which part of my original post was whiny, then? I've read it back and think it reads as what it is - an attempt to make a few constructive suggestions, trying quite hard to avoid giving offence. I found the response incredibly defensive and patronising. You leaping to his defence makes no difference to that.

[Dave]

Dec 18, 2008 10:55:07 GMT pelethar said:

... all I really want to do is read the LW books again - I'm much less interested in the New Order/Grey Star/California Countdown books. ...

This is the "gimme" part - the part that says "I know you're working on a lot of stuff - I don't care about that - just gimme what I'm interested in..."

As I review your original post, you're really not all that whiny, after all. You actually do present your questions and suggestions reasonably - once you're past the gimme part. Only, that's the part that taints the flavor of the rest of your post. I completely understand where outspaced is coming from, which is why I leapt to his defense. There's nothing to get one's hackles up like someone both complaining about what you're doing and asking you to do more of it, when everything you're doing is in your "spare time."

Anyhow, I hope there are no hard feelings - you're not really like my 4-year-old.

Plus, you gotta give outspaced a little break - he's feeling ill, and that always affects the tone of communications. Hmmm, perhaps that explains my own persnickativity of late... +2 for a new word!

[pelethar]

That's not the "gimme" part. That's just the only sentence you could find which even slightly justified the reaction I got. That particular sentence, particularly out of context, is not very well worded I admit. But reading my entire post, I think it's pretty clear where I was coming from.

All I was trying to get across in my post was that, to the untrained eye of a casual visitor (outside the inner circle), it may look like PA is dead. As I said, the front page is 18 months out of date. And I think that's a real shame - this project is massively exciting for all LW fans and we should all appreciate what's going on. I tried to make a few constructive suggestions as to how you might help the casual visitor better understand what's happening behind the scenes, if that's something you're interested in doing. And I was careful to make it clear how much I appreciate your efforts.

The problem is that outspaced - and you, at first as well, Dave - read my note as saying "where are the rest of the LW books? work faster!!!" - which very cleary wasn't what I was saying at all. Perhaps you've had messages along those lines before, but mine wasn't like that. And the reactions were totally unjustified, under the weather or not.

[outspaced]

Dec 20, 2008 23:28:32 GMT pelethar said:

What a nasty, mean-spirited response that is. Clearly you feel that the group of people working on the project are the only people whose opinions matter. Fine. Thanks for taking the time to patronise me. Have a good Christmas

I'll gladly take the time to patronise people. However, I cannot for the life of me see where you got the impression I was "mean-spirited". I even agreed with you on a couple of points.

Without wishing to blow my own trumpet too much, I have driven all of the current PDF releases from start to finish. I've taught myself from scratch Word/PDF layout and graphics editing to help with aspects of the projects. I've collated, compiled, and actively maintain the Errata lists for all of the books, despite not even knowing what a wiki was two years ago. I have been taking an active role in XML editing over the past 18 months, again teaching myself from scratch how to make XML validate and so forth. With no prior experience, I recently installed Cygwin and had to hack some Aon PERL transformation scripts to get them to work on my computer so that I could test outputting new editions of the books with errors fixed. I wikified the Rules Handbook into the Readers' Handbook from scratch. I worked on the layout and graphics of the Combat Heroes books, which was a nightmare. I've invested huge amounts of my time and effort into the project.

If I arbitrarily allocate an average of 30 minutes per day spent on Project Aon-related things since I joined at the beginning of the year 2000 (and there have been plenty of 12-14 hour days I've spent working on Aon stuff, so this might actually be a little conservative) you'll see I have spent approximately 1660 hours of my own free time working unpaid on a voluntary basis for a hobby that I enjoy.

So imagine how I feel when people post things that basically say, "We don't think you're doing enough." Then go back and read my response. I think I was extremely polite. Anyway, even if I get snarky over things, I don't think there's ever really a good excuse to be rude, so I try very hard not to be. I honestly think I succeeded. (And despite the phrase I used above--"Imagine how I feel"--I'm not talking about getting upset or depressed; I just get rather irritated.)

And I have far fewer responsibilities in Real Life than Jon Blake, Thomas Wolmer, Ingo Klocker, LeRoy McSwain, Jan Chravat, Sean Donald, Rob Wellock, and all the other (currently-)active members of Project Aon. I think I put my excess of spare time to good use. I can't imagine what it must be like to be married, have kids, a demanding employer, and be expected to get all the Lone Wolf books out by next Thursday. It sometimes does seem like a thankless task. Despite this, we will continue to work on and release the books as and when we can.

[pelethar]

And as I've said ad infinitum now, I never said "we don't think you're doing enough". Or that you should get the LW books out by next Thursday. Or anything like it. You're arguing with something you imagined I said, rather than what I actually said. Read all my comments again - how many times do I make the point that I hugely appreciate the work of the volunteers? I'll say it again - I was just trying to make a few constructive suggestions which might help casual visitors better understand what's happening in the Project Aon world, if that's something you're interested in. You didn't need to get so defensive.

[outspaced]

Uh, I'm not feeling particularly defensive. My original response to your post listed why it would be impractical to implement your ideas, and you called me "mean-spirited". I further posted why I wasn't mean-spirited. While I may have missed the thrust of your original post, the post itself does read as a criticism of Project Aon--whether you want/meant it to or not. *shrug*

[jardek]

I read your first response, Outspaced. I had also been worried that PA was dead. Rather than take umbrage though, I'm grateful that it's all still going on, am aware that it's a free service you're providing and the increasing scarcity of books (I only discovered this place when you were up to the magnakai books I think, and I only have books 2 and 4, so was unable to help).

Thanks for the efforts.

Pelethar, dude, what you don't understand is that if you [nuts] someone off who is providing you with a free service, they may decide not to provide that service any more. Neither you nor I have any right to complain about something we aren't paying for, only the privilege of being grateful. And no, I'm not sucking up. I am the reigning king of being banned from forums for being an [not a very nice person].

[outspaced]

All I can say is, I hope the Annual Report allayed anyone's fears about how we're doing. Work is definitely progressing and things are coming along nicely. Anyone with an eye on the errata lists might have noticed things have been happening over the past few days. We definitely intend to release all of the books--that's always been our goal. We're not going to stop, but life might get in the way from time to time.

Irrespective of that, great strides forward have been made over the past 12-18 months, and it has definitely been of benefit to focus on driving the OCR/proofreading stages rather than the releases, as waiting for scans has been a real bottleneck in the past. Keep watching for more releases soon . . .

[pi4t]

Can I make a (rather late in the day, but I only recently discovered PA and LW) suggestion? Could you have something similar to a loading bar for each unpublished book showing the percentage complete? Your progress page is a little hard to find and has not been updated for a while (it is still saying you are working on the comments for VOTM). That might stop these problems.

[outspaced]

Not really, because there's no way of telling how close a book is to publication. While working on just the last few books, I've thought we were ready to release one when someone posts a slew of issues pushing back the release date from "Now!" to "Sometime in the next month...or two!" And since we clearly have problems maintaining the Assignments page, the ever-changing nature of a progress meter would be pointless, since it would always be out of date or wrong. :-\

I've just moved Book 21 on the Assignments page. Maybe Book 22 will be released soon . . .