What about re-organizing the community library in some way?

#1

Hi there,

I really love the community library,
but the more (great!) objects are in it,it gets harder and harder to get an overview,
because contributors are using their own folder-names, in a way what they think might
be best to describe the category/functionality.
(for example when I started using 'data' for objects storing data in tables,I wasn't really sure
whether I shouldn't have said 'table')

also,there are bunch of objects that are quite similar,and some are a bit beta,
and if contributors make substantial changes to them,it will potentially break patches..

what about,as a first step
-setting up a fixed folder-structure,so the library is not organized by contributor/folder
but by functionality/contributor (seq/username/object)
-setting up a beta - folder , where contributors can publish objects that are still in development
(beta/seq/username)

#2

I agree, except for the beta objects. I think one should not publish broken or unfinished objects into the community library (unless they're functional in some way), both axo and axs, nobody will want to use them.

I think some contributors create objects in bulk and upload them without checking functionality. I agree testing can be boring and stuff, but at least it will avoid this kind of problems.

Also, a unified subfolder structure would be nice to have (or at least object tags, in order to sort objects by functionality and not by user)

#3

I think publishing a beta object is a fine way to get feedback and track down bugs. I think there should be a flag that one can set for an object that is still in flux so that people know that there may be changes in the future that will break patches.
Regarding the OP, being able to sort/search by functionality rather than contributor would definitely be useful. Perhaps a tag system is in order? So keep the actual folder structure as is, but if things can be sorted or filtered by tags it would help in the manner you suggest and also allow things to be marked as beta (if something has the beta tag than it needs to be displayed prominently by the patcher in some way, perhaps the name should be a different colour in the list?).

#4

EDIT : moved to 'software', the community library section is just for how to use, and contribution post.
(it needs to be kept 'minimal' so its easier to navigate)

yeah, unfortunately, as you will have noticed on other user libraries, you can never guarantee quality, or compatibility, I hope we can avoid the 'obsolete object' syndrome by using object versioning, but even thats hard.

also I don't think its appropriate to moderate objects/patches, it has to be self-maintained... one might think an object is buggy, but other its beautifully glitchy.

this was the 'first step' it was all about getting a way to share patches/objects.... I made this very clear in the proposal I put forward and implemented it... it will take a few iterations. it was what I had time to implement now, I can think of hundreds of ways to improve it, ideas are not in short supply, unfortunately time is... I just don't have a lot of time of this right now.

going forward I consider increasingly adding more a sophisticated 'front end' to this 'storage mechanism', a better interface to improve, searching, tagging, ratings. its these kind of things that tend to allow the 'cream to rise to the top'.
the main thing - I have in mind is a new floating object/patch browser that will build the above into it.

(the one thing we are missing though, is a central DB to store tags/ratings etc ... this is problematic, as ideally it should be a cloning db, so the its still available offline)

its done like this so that users do not start accidentally, overwriting each others, which would cause conflict, and no end of problems.... as part of the object browser change this could be change, but with the current object browser its tricky given the way its implemented (essentially just scans the directory structure)

alway, I not planning on doing anything on this, until this release is properly released... as it needs to be 'out there', as whilst many 'testers' have been using it for quite a while now, there are still lots of users not using it, so thats the most important milestone to hit.

EDIT: again, a call out to anyone thats interested in helping in the dev of the axoloti, the more the merrier and the more that can be implemented/improved.

EDIT2: perhaps one thing, is to try to ask 'contributors' to organise things consistently, or to name objects with beta etc.
I think this is perfectly valid feedback.
(note: changing the name of objects no longer breaks patches, as its purely done by UUID now)