In the beginning I was with dCiSo just like most of you, people can be extremely stupid. But I think he made some bad communication mistakes and a small part of what happened was his fault too. I’m not just thinking of naming release dates, but also all the beta-testers and beta-release-on-rapidshare thing.

Now everything is quiet on the WiiMiidia, I wonder where did he go, and if there will ever be a release.

In the beginning I was with dCiSo just like most of you, people can be extremely stupid. But I think he made some bad communication mistakes and a small part of what happened was his fault too. I’m not just thinking of naming release dates, but also all the beta-testers and beta-release-on-rapidshare thing.

Now everything is quiet on the MiidiaCenter front, I wonder where did he go, and if there will ever be a release.

I want to get into the development side, but everything looks too difficult for me to even attempt anything. I’m still learning C, I have no idea how to even get code up and running on the Wii. If anything, I think I’ll be messing around with the DS,a dn that’s not even an easy way to get into the scene.

If that plus a stern warning before the download link and possible a warning when running the program itself, nothing is.

>”Then when it bricks a few hundred Wiis because it turns out there’s an obscure bug that appears every time you do something you do didn’t test for (click three times in a blank space or something equally silly), guess who they’ll blame and who’ll be on the receiving end of a couple hundred posts complaining it wasn’t ready for release? And a couple of thousand more complaining that it’s crap because it doesn’t have a built-in skin editor.”

Something bad happening after they were warned something like that might happen?! NO WAY! How about installing any kind of homebrew is “dangerous” and ninty takes out full paragraphs in EVERY ONE of their EULAs to tell us.

>”So, no fixed release dates.”

Agreed, but not because of your reasoning. Simply being more open will negate the need for “release dates”. In community projects where new things are evolving daily, it makes no sense to have set points. People will grab the latest releases, make videos, and be happy. Those crazy enough to *still* bitch, will rightfully be ignored and hopefully banned.

Of course idiots will *always* find something to complain about, what I’m arguing is that people who are complaining now aren’t idiots because there actually is grounds for complaint, *things are too closed*. Once you eliminate all the valid reasons for complaining, then the few remaining complainers can be guiltlessly banned.

Then when it bricks a few hundred Wiis because it turns out there’s an obscure bug that appears every time you do something you do didn’t test for (click three times in a blank space or something equally silly), guess who they’ll blame and who’ll be on the receiving end of a couple hundred posts complaining it wasn’t ready for release? And a couple of thousand more complaining that it’s crap because it doesn’t have a built-in skin editor.

So, no fixed release dates.

- He’s not getting paid for it.
- It’s in his spare time (which may suddenly disappear).
- It’s difficult enough to get something off the ground in the beginning without having to also do constant videos, put posts on blogs, check in code to CVS, and then having to field thousands of suggestions and patches which probably conflict with one another when the structure of the program is barely worked out in your head yet.
- There’s still the danger of putting unfinished code on-line and having someone brick their Wii, probably because they can’t even get the compiler settings right.

Later on when things are more or less worked out you can have all the open source and blogs you want, but until then things are private and secretive because that is the only way which reduces pestering to a minimum. Otherwise it’s like feeding a monster.

If dCiSo really wants to reduce the pestering to a minimum, he could adopt a much more open method of development.
-Post the latest code to a public repo
-Comment the code really well and/or keep a blog talking about the latest significant changes in the code
-Always have public betas (with explicit warnings that it might not work fully or at all)
-Encourage people to make their own videos (devs don’t have to waste time making them and it spreads the word about the project)

The person I see that does this best has been segher. He puts his code and work out and let’s people do whatever with it. The only barrier to using segher’s stuff is whether you want to take the time to figure it out or not.

Marcan was similar for a while but his svn was taken down after the VC explosion and afaik hasn’t been put up again.

Being pestered is a result of releasing anything at all, but segher holds his own and probably has quite a large ignore list. Seems to work fine.

The core mistake here seems to be that there is this half-truth half-rumor of a private beta, so people think they’re on the outside and not getting to play with the latest release, while from what I understand it’s only not being released because it crashes. The pestering isn’t going to go away until *some* release is made, regardless of whether it crashes or not. I say he should release what he has with a huge warning and something like “v0.01″.