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Tom Allensworth

How do we look at our Freeware Designers...

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Les,You make a good point, but I don't think you understand it yourself. For the record, here is what you are trying to say:"It is wrong for us to criticize designers for their hard work, as we did in the case of Kevin Trinkle. It is wrong for us to pick favorites and compare models with each other. We should simply appreciate what we have, and offer constructive criticism when we think a designer has made a mistake." The logical continuation, which I will add to your very good start, is that we must recognize that the designer is not obligated to correct any shortcomings of his design, even after we do point them out, for as Mike said, at some point it's good enough for the designer, and that's how it's going to be.Unfortunately, the fact that you proceeded to bash Mike Stone and attempted to prove the superiority of Kevin's model over Mike's obscures your point.Yes, it was wrong of the flightsim community to relentlessly criticize Kevin Trinkle for shortcomings in his work. The proper way to correct that is to ensure we don't offend other designers the same way. The "unhelpful solution" is to "make the playing field even" by making sure we give everyone else the same treatment we gave Kevin.Or maybe you were just trolling, as John suggests. Oh well.Matt

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I have 2 questions for you Leo....1. What have you contributed in the way of add-ons that gives you the right to gripe about others work...2. No one can say that Mike Stones Goose is a botch up! It's perfect! I know cause I've flown may trips in a Goose in my young days....So nobodies perfect... You win some. You loose some. That's the way it is...Don't make us loose another great aircraft designer...Stop wasting our time and the forums space with griping.. Go out and make something that's better yourself...I don't often use this tone in my postings, but this has really cheesed me off....//Tonni

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Guest

Lets try this again shall we...first, try to present some facts.1) the number of high quality freeware designs is far lower now than it was for FS2000.2) designers are quitting because they are being flamed over the smallest imperfection.3) some designers are not being critisized at all, despite their work having serious flaws (or at least, that crisisism isn't public).Now to try and find some reasons for that.1) designing for FS2002 is harder. Gmax is harder to use than FSDS, the expected standards have gone up, and people now expect a full aircraft with virtual cockpit and panel which they didn't expect for FS2000. All this leads to development requiring more skills than before and taking longer, making it ever harder for a single individual to accomplish.2) flaming people seems to have quickly become the norm for some. Flamers seem to concentrate on people/groups that have excellent work with minor flaws, driving them out of business in disgust. This might be explained by the flamers wanting to harm the FS scene at large rather than just vent frustration with poor designs. Best thing to do would be for organisations like Avsim to create blacklists of such people so they can be blocked in the future.3) maybe those designers get critisism in private email instead. Crisitism that way often is more constructive, offering possibilities for improvement (I know Mike Stone updated his 727 quickly after there were some bad flaws in the initial release. I guess someone alerted him to the problems allowing him to quickly address them. Mind that this is only a recent example and not meant to single out Mike. I don't like many of your aircraft personally, but you are rapidly improving and the 727 now looks impressive).Then, draw some conclusions from all this to make your argument.There are less quality addons being produced for FS2002 than there were in the past. The reasons for this are threefold: First, people have come to expect more so something will take longer to create. This will reduce the number of people that can find the time to build something as well, decreasing the release rate even further. Second, the tools to be used are more complex so less people will be able to learn them properly (both because of technical problems and lack of time). Last but not least, those who do take the time to come up with a quality addon will more likely than not become the target of flamewars both in public and private. This leads some of them to stop and prevents others from entering the scene because they don't want that for themselves.Of course this does not cover every case. Some designers may not want to accept that they can be imperfect and take even well meant constructive criticism as a personal insult.In the past, these designers just quietly went away. Now they post here and elsewhere demanding public recognition. Effectively, they're the exact opposite of those people flaming designers. These are designers flaming their users. Maybe some became that way because of being disgusted with flames in the past, but probably not most.Now, lastly, try to give some ideas about what can be done to overcome the problems.1) find a way to silence the senseless flamers. Maybe a blacklist which can be shared between designers will help in this, plus permanent bans from forums such as this one.2) find a way to encourage designers to cooperate more. Groups like POSKY and FFG (just examples, there are more) are successfull in releasing quality addons. When such a group goes silent with no new releases for a while, don't pester them with demands and questions. Most likely they're hard at work on something.3) keep critisism constructive. Don't just say something isn't right, but give indications or details on what it should be and maybe even on how that could be achieved. Maybe the designer didn't have the correct data, or maybe he DID have that data but didn't know how to properly interpret it or how to incorporate it into his design.Now, I've said much the same as you did, but it doesn't sound half as harsh...

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Guest jaapverduijn

"(...) Les(bian)?? what? Are you for real dude! (...)"What problem do you have with lesbians? What decent purpose can be served by bringing somebody's alleged sexual orientation into this discussion, just in order to disrespect and put a person down? In the past it was shown that the moderators of this forum go to applaudable ends to protect the dignity of those who happen to have another sexual orientation than most of us. I have no idea what being a lesbian has to do with the designing of airplanes for FS, so I guess you just mention the word as a term of abuse.Considering the strong stance this forum takes towards those who really or allegedly discriminate against gays and lesbians, I fully trust that your insulting message does not go unnoticed.Jaap Verduijn.

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