CAVCON meter - A discussion

rocketdog · **Posted:** Sat Nov 05, 2011 5:13 pm

Hi all, and congratulations to all of us for reaching CAVCON 4!

I wasn't sure if this should be a new subject or a continuation of one of the other CAVCON topics so if this has been covered please forgive me. I did look but didn't see what I am about to discuss mentioned in the other CAVCON topics

This is a suggestion that I hope Cyan will consider, but we all can help them by adding ideas to it if they like the idea.

CAVCON 1-5 tells us what level were at but not where we are in that level. For instance we are now at level 4, but are we at the lower end of level 4 or the upper end. If we are at the upper end we can relax a little, if not we should keep the funds drive going. I think it would be helpful to know if we were getting close to CAVCON 3 (for instance) and then the drive could begin before there is a crises. I would love it if we could reach CAVCON 5 and stay there.

Is there a way that Cyan can add a graphical meter something like a color bar with a pointer indicator showing CAVCON health. Or add a point indicator to the CAVCON information in the start up screen ( for instance 4.3 or 4.7 )

Though I'm glad Cyan has added the CAVCON information to the start up screen it still leaves us somewhat short of the information we need to maintain CAVCON health.

rocketdog

Mod note: 11/06/11 - Amended thread title to avoid confusion

Marten · **Posted:** Sat Nov 05, 2011 6:15 pm

I think this is definitely a good choice to split off of the main thread, rocketdog.

Because the CAVCON party success news displaced them so quickly, I'll take this opportunity to point to a few other posts out of the original CAVCON thread that are relevant here. Chogon asks how to make the CAVCON meter more "realtime", There are a number of suggestions on that same page, from Zardoz, Trekluver, Angustaff, myself, and Jmp12. Emor D'ni Lap had a good post on the following page.

I guess the key thing I want to hear that Cyan understands is - while I accept that Cyan prefers not to share specific financial numbers, the CAVCON meter isn't and should not be treated as a puzzle, though it feels to me that is how it is being handled.

Those who have donated are investors of a sort. Investors want to know where we are at, what is the next destination or goal, and what will it take to get there. The current CAVCON meter is a bit like looking at this picture through a fuzzy lens with a delay. Making it more "realtime" is only a partial solution.

JWPlatt · **Posted:** Sat Nov 05, 2011 6:22 pm

We should probably be happy with the information given us already and not try to increase its maintenance load upon Cyan. There's always the tendency to ask for more than we have and we should be careful about that in terms of new things Cyan may be willing to provide at the risk of being asked for more, more, more.

That said, we (at OU) have implemented a color coding for CAVCON in our banner and widget. It was based upon RAWA's COAS (Cautious Optimism Advisory System) chart he established during GameTap MOUL. I've suggested to Cyan that perhaps it could be repurposed (relabeled or redesigned) for Chogon's intended changes to this website to promote CAVCON.

http://mystonline.com/forums/viewtopic. ... 753#377753 (Chogon's Post About CAVCON & This Website)

http://mystonline.com/forums/viewtopic. ... 147#378147 (OpenUru.org's CAVCON Indicators)

http://forums.drcsite.org/viewtopic.php?t=618 (RAWA's COAS thread on the DRC site)

By the way, anyone can use our widget on their own websites to promote MOULa, CAVCON, and donations.

Marten · **Posted:** Sat Nov 05, 2011 6:27 pm

JWPlatt wrote:

We should probably be happy with the information given us already and not try to increase its maintenance load upon Cyan. There's always the tendency to ask for more than we have and we should be careful about that in terms of new things Cyan may be willing to provide at the risk of being asked for more, more, more.

Not asking for increased maintenance load; asking that information be more specific - the same amount of work is involved.

Emor D'ni Lap · **Joined:** Sun Aug 12, 2007 6:15 am **Posts:** 587

I seem to have cross-posted with rocketdog, and missed this topic split- he has better netiquette than I, obviously!

JWPlatt · **Posted:** Sat Nov 05, 2011 6:51 pm

Marten wrote:

JWPlatt wrote:

We should probably be happy with the information given us already and not try to increase its maintenance load upon Cyan. There's always the tendency to ask for more than we have and we should be careful about that in terms of new things Cyan may be willing to provide at the risk of being asked for more, more, more.

Not asking for increased maintenance load; asking that information be more specific - the same amount of work is involved.

Maybe, though greater precision usually means greater effort in any field of knowledge.

Nothing about the positive portion of my message? The more worthwhile we can make things for Cyan, the more likely they'll be able to afford the effort you seek.

CaptainQuery · **Posted:** Sat Nov 05, 2011 7:02 pm

Great idea Rocket and I agree with your thoughts Marten. We don't need a Cyan financial statement but more detail in that CAVCON scale would be a big plus. Donations to a nebulous objective will always lose steam. We are "investors" and better CAVCON feedback would allow us to establish and target specific goals. I would also encourage all to donate on an ongoing basis as their budget allows. Better detail would facilitate that. I know when the game came back online I gave regularly but stopped doing that over the last 6 months. With open source showing signs of life now it would be a plus to have a steady cash flow and have more of those Cyan "open cycles" directed at URU.

rocketdog · **Posted:** Sat Nov 05, 2011 7:12 pm

Hi JWPlatt !

I would think at the very least adding a point number to the CAVCON information in the start up screen would help, and it shouldn't take any more time to add a point number.

rocketdog

PaladinOfKaos · **Joined:** Thu Aug 03, 2006 10:55 pm **Posts:** 625

MOULagain is a collaboration between Cyan and the fans. Donations aren't buying a product; they're funding a project. That requires a shift in the way Cyan deals with us.

The community deserves better information on how well fundraising is going, and how it's being used. They deserve information on Cyan's roadmap for MOULagain, and how the funding situation is impacting those plans. They deserve to have some sort of dialogue with the Cyantists.

Cyan is an insular company. That can be great when you're developing a product - it helps keep the purity of a given artistic vision. This is not the time or place to be insular, though. Cyan needs to be more open. They need to treat the donors, developers, and artists as partners, not as customers. And above all else, they need to communicate.

janaba1 · **Posted:** Sat Nov 05, 2011 8:00 pm

Excellent! ...

Mac_Fife · **Posted:** Sat Nov 05, 2011 8:14 pm

I'm not so sure that a more fine grained CAVCON would actually help a lot... It could end up jumping from say 4.5 to 4.1 to 4.4, etc., and become more difficult to follow. As was mentioned in an ealier post in RAWA's CAVCON thread, donations are being counted weekly but the server bills are monthly, adding a complication to measuring CAVCON: I'm guessing that the server bills aren't a fixed monthly fee, else it'd be relatively easy to get a good measure by applying the fees pro-rata over the month. But maybe something that indicated whether the trend was generally upwards, downwards or static could work - CAVCON 4+, 4-, 4= or something like that.

Cyan has said that the whole donation things was hard for them. I think they really wanted to avoid putting any kind of pressure on anyone to donate any more than they could really afford, and I feel that these requests for more detailed information starts to lean in that direction. There was a thread here recently where people started to comment on how much or how often they donated - I was a bit uncomfortable with that because I know there are people here who get pleasure from MOULa but have very limited means. If you get people thinking "Wow, I can't afford to donate {insert dollar figure here} a month for this, I better get out" then you risk shrinking an already small community, and I don't think it was ever Cyan's intention to exclude people just because they couldn't donate, provided that the server remained viable.

rocketdog · **Posted:** Sat Nov 05, 2011 9:16 pm

Mac_Fife

The answer to your first comment is simple, Just give us a update once a month after paying all that months bills and checking it against their bank statement. Once a month will set a pattern that we can follow.

As for the second comment this will always be a problem for those with limited means. I don't think there is any less pressure on them when we have a situation like the one we just had. And I think that's beside the point, we need to know when we need to donate. Whether we like it or not Cyan needs money to keep the game alive.

rocketdog

Marten · **Posted:** Sat Nov 05, 2011 11:01 pm

I'm very appreciative of the effort that the OpenUru volunteers (JW, Mac, and rarified) have put into developing the relationship with Cyan that helped to finally bring the Myst Online client into open source. I have a lot of respect for the opinions of those involved in that effort because, quite clearly, they've been doing something right to accomplish what they have done. I have reason to expect that they, more than the rest of us, have developed a reasonable sense of what Cyan is and is not able or willing to do.

So when one of them says "We should probably be happy with the information given us already," I really do take that insight into consideration. I recognize that Cyan doesn't want to put pressure on people. And I know that the law of unintended consequences could manifest itself through people deciding to walk away if they feel overwhelmed by the costs of maintaining and improving Uru.

Yet in the long term, I am worried that there is as great a chance that people will walk away because of the shortage of feedback as there is that people will leave due to pressure or a sense of futility. When people could derive no real sense of progress from dropping pellets into the lake, efforts waned. Honestly, CAVCON isn't much more meaningful than the Homeland Security Advisory system upon which it was based. Shouldn't this, too, be a concern?

Paladin is right that this is a partnership. In a partnership, there is trust and a more open flow of information.

Trekluver · **Posted:** Sun Nov 06, 2011 12:10 am

You have to admit though, their information flow is better than it was to begin with. We forget sometimes that there's only two or three people at Cyan who communicate with us at all. As for a better CAVCON scale: no, what we have is good enough. A meter IC for us to see? Yes. It's only a few code changes away from being implemented. We won't know if we maintain CAVCON 4 until next month so I guess the only thing is to donate and see.

DaVinci · **Posted:** Sun Nov 06, 2011 5:41 am

Mod note: Edited - 11/06/11 - Off-topic content removed at poster's request

CAVCON meter - A discussion

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