Re: The endless influx of low-quality, low-realism, quantity-over-quality aircraft into FGAddon

Hi Folks,

I've been reading this thread with interest, but haven't had the time to
comment before as the thread moves on faster than I've been able to respond!

Some thoughts, which I've split into two as the discussion has moved on.

# FGAddon / Aircraft Ratings

For those not aware, the policy for FGAddon is here:
https://www.flightgear.org/about/policy/ .  It is an svn repo for aircraft
development, as well as the source of the default "hangar" of aircraft in
the launcher.  So I don't think it's right to suggest that we should remove
aircraft from fgaddon based on development status.

At present we generate the hangar from all of the aircraft in fgaddon.  We
could skip aircraft that are in very early stages of development, but I
think we should only do that with the aircraft developer's permission.

If someone has an issue with the ratings for a specific aircraft, then I
think the first approach should be to communicate with the author to ask
them to be adjusted.  When the aircraft ratings were originally introduced
(after lots of discussion and consensus on this list), we did try to make
them as clear as possible.  So if an aircraft is not meeting specific
ratings it should be possible to make an evidence-based argument.  Clearly
that is going to require tact and diplomacy, particularly if working across
a language barrier.  It's not clear from this discussion whether any of the
folks who are unhappy about specific ratings have actually done so?

Personally, I've not been convinced by the arguments put forward that the
rating system is broken.  Or that it is materially impacting new users.
I've read a lot of opinions that it does, but beyond Richard's analysis of
MP aircraft usage, not much evidence.  In particular I've not seen any
evidence that FlightGear is getting less popular, which has been mentioned
a number of times.

# Contributing / Value of critique / Community

James is absolutely right that what actually matters for the development of
FlightGear is actual changes to FlightGear.  While we focus on code, merge
requests / PR, aircraft, scenery etc, contribution does go beyond that, and
definitely includes documentation, high quality bug reports, website,
infrastructure.  These are all tangible contributions.

Ideas and suggestions are only valuable insofar that they result in change.
If you want to make that change happen then you either need to be prepared
to do it yourself _or_ convince other volunteers to make the change.

That latter path is more difficult, particularly for any code change (e.g.
C++) because we all have very long todo lists, and you need to convince us
to not work on something else instead.  So the bar is pretty high, and I
personally would need compelling evidence or a truly exciting idea.

There is definitely some truth that if you have contributed to FlightGear
(by the definition above) then your views are going to carry more weight
simply because it demonstrates that you understand the FlightGear project
as a contributor, and that you know what you are asking others.  I'm more
likely to use my volunteering time to work on something for you if I feel
that you are also contributing.

Finally, interpersonal skills are important, and being nice and polite
definitely helps.

Best regards,

-Stuart

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