This probably doesn’t need to be mentioned by me. It’s probably already been discussed, however there should be some sort of organisational structure and other founding documents. Structure could be officers, protocols, etc. Founding documents could include corporate things like strategic plans, core values, mission, vision, etc. It might sound stupid, but having these things really is super helpful for maintaining order, organisation, and managing expectations. It also provides a framework, which is super important.
I know it’s not really on anyone’s mind at the moment. Getting something for 1.8 is taking precedence, however, this can be something that people work on simultaneously. There’s no reason to feel these things are mutually exclusive.
EDIT: I think I should’ve put this in Suggestions as it’s a Sponge-Wide Suggestion.
It could also help in a way to keep the dev team focused on more important things that they need to be worried about and other people worry about other things. No need to stretch things too thinly and wind up with insta-brain-fry.
The fact is that this project has been established and quickly joined well established names in the Minecraft modding community (developers of different kind, forum and PR staff, documentation makers, helpers, etc.).
In the light of the recent developments and chaos around Bukkit it is completely understandable to hurry up and use the momentum, to kick-off and maintain a project that depends completely on contributors’ good will and motivation.
Having in mind the fact that contributors in this sense usually means developer, it’s not strange that publicly, from the first day, 90% of the communication/info were related solely to programming aspect of the new product this project should deliver.
Therefore, as part of a “general public”, I can only say that it seems like that the key organizational topics were ignored a bit, because of a hurry (please don’t take it against me, it is just a feeling I get from the position from which I am overseeing the progress of this project :)).
The very important fact is that the project has been joined by the Minecraft modding “celebrities”, who know each other very well, and most probably are already covering the aspects mentioned in the OP, but have not communicated anything about it publicly.
To me, this also makes sense. They are all coming from the similar projects, therefore it is expected to have them engaged in the important positions within the project, also including others than codding.
The only suggestion I have is to be more systematic in communication. At this moment it might not be the case, but soon, very soon, you will start attracting masses interested into what is this all about and who are we (as a community/product). If all they see is coding community with no clear mid-to-long term direction and no contingency plans for different situations (e.g. the one we have already experienced with Bukkit), their interest and support might be smaller than you might desire.
The suggested aspects of the projects from OP are not important only for “visitors”. They are a great tool to control your direction as well, and what is the most important, your own and the expectations of the community.
Finally, it could be that the guys at the top of this project are simply not interested in this mumbo-jumbo at all and that that is not something they are willing to follow or respect. That is totally cool also.
However, it would be great to have some transparency into what is the organizational approach/model that this project will follow. Just a simple structured communication about it.
You do not need a complex and high-tech website to write your mission statement in the about page. Even if the design will change over time, the content of such information could be very valuable to exist from the very beginning.
Our organization structure is somewhat flat at the moment, but it currently is as follows:
Project lead
Development team
Moderation team (with two leads)
Web development team (no lead at the moment)
Systems administration team (no lead at the moment)
Developers currently make up 44% of the team. (We’re still working on getting developers from the community, for those who are wondering.)
We’re doing our best to provide transparency, starting with the recent status update (though admittedly very developer-oriented) as well as communicating over Twitter and other social media services.
Doing well so far. You guys got plenty of time to iron things out, don’t feel rushed into making something that may have a major mistake because you weren’t careful.
