FreeOrion newsletter?

[MikkoM]

Could we start a mailing list, which would provide information about new releases and future major tasks on the project, to anyone who subscribes to the list?

The idea behind such a list would be that since it can sometimes take quite a long time before a new release that is also interesting for the average fan is released; he/she might forget that FreeOrion ever existed or think that FreeOrion is dead and try to find a similar interesting project. By having the news letter, which would remind people about FreeOrion, we might keep more people interested in this project for a longer period of time, and possibly get more testers for new releases and maybe more ideas for the project. There might also be some artists and audio people, and maybe even programmers, who are very interested in a certain part of this project, but because the project only advances slowly towards those parts, they forget about FreeOrion. So hopefully with the newsletter we could remind these people that FreeOrion is still alive and has finally reached the stage that they were waiting for.

Now if I can remember right there already was a some sort of a news mailing list some years ago, or at least I subscribed to one mailing list related to the FreeOrion project back then, but a quick glance to my email showed that the list doesn`t seem to be in active use. I also realize that starting this mailing list might not produce us anything useful at all. And I don`t know how much extra work it would be to maintain this list, since I have never maintained a mailing list. However at least writing the mails for the list wouldn`t probably require too much extra energy, since news about new releases are already posted on these forums and so we could just use those for the mailing list as well.

[Josh]

I think the best way we can hook people and keep them coming back is to make it more approachable to a general audience. I think most people leave perhaps because they can't just hop right in and do whatever.
The graphics section tries to be very professional about it's approach I know, but to be honest, that can be kind of scary for a casual experience. I'm just saying.

I think what freeorion really needs is NOT more people necessarily, but should be looking for professionals with free time, or finding a way to cater or advertise to them. Casual people come later, once the project goes in full force. To do that we need to prove our project isn't dead or dying.

We advertised to the Ogre3d forums a while back, and I endorse that move completely.

I also think the DevBlogs are a good way to inform the public exactly what's going on.

I personally don't think newsletters will keep people interested in a project like this. They kind of fall in a niche category of spam.

[Geoff the Medio]

There are a few mailing lists hosted by sourceforge:

http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=75752

The programmers list gets updates for bug tracker comments and changes and SVN commits, although the web interface seems to be hiding a lot of messages for some reason.

There is also an announce list, which was historically used for major releases like v0.3, v0.2 and v0.1. When v0.4 finally arrives, I suspect we'd make a post about it... Although since v0.3, we've been doing v0.3.1, v0.3.2, etc. which are perhaps worthy of announcing as well.

But I'm inclined to agree with Josh about the (non)usefulness of newsletters... We do announcements on the main page and forums and post the updates on the sourceforge download page. Various other websites intermittently report on our releases in multiple languages (unlike an english-only mailing list). And any mailings we send out are probably going to get blocked as spam for most people anyway...

I'm also not particularly excited about having another thing to update whenever we do a release, although I suppose it would probably just be a cut and paste of, or link to, the forum announcement.

What might be useful is for anyone on the forums who's interested to post on various other forums, where appropriate, when releases are made, to attract attention to them, much like the recruitment posts discussed above.

[MikkoM]

There is also an announce list, which was historically used for major releases like v0.3, v0.2 and v0.1. When v0.4 finally arrives, I suspect we'd make a post about it... Although since v0.3, we've been doing v0.3.1, v0.3.2, etc. which are perhaps worthy of announcing as well.

This is just what I was talking about. Announcements on new releases and info about major future events and tasks. Like for example when v.0.4 is released some info about what’s ahead in v.0.5.

Also if we would want the use the announcements list more effectively it would be nice to have a link to it on our main page, since hidden away in SourceForge it probably doesn`t reach every potential subscriber.

But I'm inclined to agree with Josh about the (non)usefulness of newsletters... We do announcements on the main page and forums and post the updates on the sourceforge download page. Various other websites intermittently report on our releases in multiple languages (unlike an english-only mailing list).

Yeah, some sites report on the progress of this project, but the audience of a newsletter might be slightly different than the audiences of those pages. Since a newsletter is something that you have to subscribe to, the people subscribing to it have already shown at least some interest in FreeOrion. As otherwise they wouldn`t have bothered to subscribe to the list. It might also be easier for some people to notice our new releases or remember this project, if they would receive a message about them, when reading through their emails. Assuming of course that the newsletter isn`t buried under tons of spam mail.

And any mailings we send out are probably going to get blocked as spam for most people anyway...

This could be a big problem.

I'm also not particularly excited about having another thing to update whenever we do a release, although I suppose it would probably just be a cut and paste of, or link to, the forum announcement.

Yes, you probably have enough work already.

What might be useful is for anyone on the forums who's interested to post on various other forums, where appropriate, when releases are made, to attract attention to them, much like the recruitment posts discussed above.

This could be a good idea, since it would seem that not even all of those pages that report on the progress of this project seem to be up to date. And v.0.3.12 would seem like a particularly good one to start this, since it contains an early space combat tech demo, which is a clear indication of progress towards v0.4, and might be interesting to see even for an average gamer interested in these sorts of games.

I think what freeorion really needs is NOT more people necessarily, but should be looking for professionals with free time, or finding a way to cater or advertise to them. Casual people come later, once the project goes in full force. To do that we need to prove our project isn't dead or dying.

One problem with these professionals is that can we offer them enough interesting things to work with currently? So if an artist for example wants to create some ship designs, currently all we can say to him/her is that pick some race from the story board and work on that. However this might not be very rewarding to everyone, since there is currently no way to tell if a particular race will be in the final game or not. And if you are for example an audio person (for a lack of a better term) and would have been excited after v.0.3 about soon getting to do some music and sounds for the v.0.4 you would have had a long wait, before you could actually test your creations in actual space combat.

So I guess what I would like to establish with these newsletters is a more controlled reserve of people for FreeOrion. So that we would have some way to reach these professionals and regular fans too and inform them about new possibilities, instead of just having to relay on them to follow the progress of this project themselves and coming back on their own. However it is of course possible that a newsletter couldn’t achieve this goal anyway.

[pd]

So if an artist for example wants to create some ship designs, currently all we can say to him/her is that pick some race from the story board and work on that. However this might not be very rewarding to everyone, since there is currently no way to tell if a particular race will be in the final game or not.

In addition, I always tell people, they are free to come up with their own races. So arists can choose if they want to work from a brief or completely on their own. That's a pretty great thing, because there aren't any limitations. It's also enough motivation for any serious artist. If the results are of a certain quality, he/she can be sure that those designs will be included. We have the chance to create an entire universe, from the ground up. That's extremely fascinating to me and I know other artists think the same way.