I am looking for people to help me with the Magic Set Editor project. The following are roles that I think would benefit the project. This is not a definitive list, if you think there is some other way you can help, don't hesitate to ask.

Bug/patch Manager

With the growing community more bugs are popping up, as well as proposed changes to the templates. In the past I managed these using a small 'todo' list. Especially with the new forums I am losing the overview of what has been done and what still needs to be done. I am looking for someone to take over the list of bugs and minor feature requests/patches. This entails maintaining a list somewhere on the website of open issues. A (factious) example list is:

Bugs

{|

ID !! Severity !! Planned Release !! Description !! Reproduction
-
1 || crash || ASAP. || Crash when opening symbol editor || Open the symbol editor and click on Ctrl+Alt+Crash
-
2 || annoyance || 0.2.9 || Crash when opening
}

Patches

{|

ID !! Planned Release !! Description
-
P1 || 0.3.1 || Add My-Amazing-Cardgame templates
-
P2 || 0.3.2 || Change position of copyright text in magic-new-token
}

Perhaps a better alternative to such a list is to use the bug tracker provided by Sourceforge.

For making this list you will need to watch the forums (also the old threads on MtgNews and MtgSalvation). Answer questions there if people have found a new bug or a known bug.

Besides maintaining this list you will need to narrow down and try to reproduce problems, and write a clear description of the problem. Make sure the problem can be reproduced; write down how to do this in a test case.

For changes that people propose, mostly template changes, requests for adding new templates, etc., you will need to check out the current quality of the templates, make sure the changes are desirable. If multiple patches request changes to the same file, see if they can be merged into a single patch.

You will also get to decide/plan what should be done when, mostly by prioritizing the list of problems. As Bug Manager you also get some influence on the release schedule, if there is a serious bug that lots of people have problems with, contact me to get me of my lazy but :).

Task overview:

• Maintain list of bugs and patches.
• Answer bug related questions in the forums.
• Narrow down problems, reproduce them, make test cases.
• Check patch quality, group related patches.
• Write announcement for releases.

Requirements:

• Willing and able to invest time regularly to keep the list up to date.
• Some experience in solving technical problems.
• Knowledge of the MSE template and scripting system.

Forum Moderator / Community Manager

The forums are quite messy right now. As you may have noticed, I don't have much time to look after them. I am also not very happy with the current structure of the forums, in many cases it is not clear what goes where. Your task will also be to lead the reorganization of the forum. There should be a discussion thread about this, where we can talk about how the forum should look.

For question and answer type threads there should be a way to mark threads as resolved, perhaps putting [RESOLVED] in the title or something like that. Someone should try to enforce such a policy.

While the forum is an important aspect of the MSE community it is not all of it. There may be other ways to improve the community, the spirit, etc. You can try to come up with ways of improving the involvement of the community in the project. I know it sounds vague :). Take for example the documentation section, it is a wiki, you know!

Task overview:

• Reorganize forum structure.
• Move threads to conform to the structure.
• Make protocol for resolving threads.
• Close and move threads as appropriate.
• Come up with other ideas to improve the MSE community.

Requirements:

• Willing and able to invest time regularly to keep the forum clean.
• Good people skills to prevent fights, etc. :)

Website Improvement

Currently this site lacks good screenshots, feature lists, user stories, example pictures, etc. Maybe there should also be some changes in how the menu on the left is organized? Feel free to come with proposals. In general the website looks quite dull, it would be great if you could add some graphics or otherwise improve the look and feel of the site.

Task overview:

• Add some sales pitch, without making it sound like marketing drivel.
• Propose changes to improve the look and feel of the website.

Requirements:

• Artistic skills (or contacts with artistic skills).

Documentation Writer

The documentation is still lacking in a lot of places. We don't need a help file that says "To copy text, click copy", everybody knows that. Instead the FAQ is an important place to update, as well as HOWTOs for more complex tasks such as modifying the templates and adding keywords. A lot of this information can be found on the forum, but it is not available in a central location. The current FAQ is also missing structure, there should be some distinction between Magic related questions, general questions, etc.

Task overview:

• Fill in the important missing areas of the documentation.
• Maintain FAQ.
• Write technical HOWTOs.

Requirements:

• Knowledge of the MSE template system (for technical howtos)

People who understand the code

Currently I am the only one who understands the source code of MSE. MSE2 is a big project, with 27000 lines of source code at the last counting. It would be great if there was someone who could at least get a basic grasp of how the project works. It would be even better if that someone could start submitting patches for longstanding issues. Work is also needed to improve the portability, to make a Mac and Linux version.

MSE is written in C++ (starting from version 0.3.0). The good itself has fairly good doxygen documentation, so it should not be too hard to get started.

Requirements:

• Strong knowledge of C++
• Probably: knowledge of boost and wxWidgets.
• Probably: knowledge of how the MSE template system and scripting works.
• Willing to invest a lot of time in understanding something someone else wrote.

The Rules

If you want to apply for one of the above roles, or a subset/combination of them, send an email to help wanted forum.

Note that I have been quite busy with college lately, which is also part of why I am asking for help. This means that it may be a while before you hear back from me.

Twan van Laarhoven
MSE Developer
2006-12-25