Reviewing the submission process for Utopian.io [Graphics]
My unsolicited feedback about the submission process for utopian
Yesterday @elear asked me for my feedback about the process used for submissions.
These are a recording of my thoughts about the submission process for the graphics category of utopian. I wrote them immediately after publishing my submission to @utopian-io, but scheduled a publication date in the future because I do not want to taint the experience. Because I am going to be training people how this works, it is important for me to really understand the process in depth.
So here goes:
The good:
- I documented the work in minute detail, which is more than I usually do for graphic design.
- I really did my due-diligence with regard to clearing the assets and placed the watermark in the final file.
- At the end of it I was proud enough of the work to link to it on the affinity forum:
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/64611-quasar-on-steem/ - I had an idea for extending Affinity with a "history-to-video" plugin.
The Bad:
- I expected for my first time doing this that I would spend an hour. I spent four because my documentation during the process wasn't good enough. So I turned off layers to show stages in the project and made screenshots of them which is not EXACTLY how the process unfolded.
- It wasn't really clear from the template exactly what I should be doing, so in some cases I just guessed. Part of the problem was due to grammar errors, so I made a PR. Most critical: which repository should be listed first???
- The notion that I should make it reproducible was hard to swallow, and the fact that it is possible to submit psd or other proprietary filetypes means that it is not reproducible for everyone. (I'll talk about this point below.)
The Ugly
- The recommended project that I used as a reference did not follow the given template explicitly, which was kind of a disconnect.
- Licensing is unclear, because MIT / GPL does not technically apply to graphic works - unless they are generated, and then it's the code not the artefact that is protected. I think that there should be a definite clearing here. I am ok, because I signed and made explicit reference to the Quasar FLA that considers these issues.
Takeaways
Documentation is super important. You feel good after doing it, kind of like sports. BUT!!! Documentation should not be hard.
Licensing of visual assets is a minefield, and code-licenses do not apply. Unfortunately good will is not enough and this should be resolved ASAP.
The degree of openness of a visual asset is something that should be considered and given weight to. As in, there is a difference between submitting a TIFF file with layers and a PSD file with layers, just as there is a difference between an SVG and an AI file. The latter types are proprietary and require that anyone wanting to use the source file also has access to the programme. This is a very important point.
It is so important, that I recommend you take a moment to read this article that I wrote several years ago - and then look at this PDF.
http://ionary.org/openness/
http://ionary.org/content/images/2016/5/degrees_of_openness_praesi.pdf
This is valuable and important feedback, and I thank you for providing it. We are always striving to improve, and one of the major areas we're currently working on is the guidelines. The points you raise will be useful data points to consider in that process.
A more detailed response was already made by @oups, who is far more knowledgeable about the category than I.
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[utopian-moderator]
Thank you for your review, @didic!
So far this week you've reviewed 22 contributions. Keep up the good work!
It took a while for me to find where I mentioned. It was just under the "The Ugly" part. :)
Yes it's ugly, it's not ugly actually. It just old. It's been 8 months and yes we should've updated those samples.
Before get into that, your unsolicited feedback is very appreciated. I personally would like to hear them more often.
Unfortunately we've experienced many plagiarism attempts in the past. I'm not sure if it's the current prices or we really dig deep those contributions so abusers decided to step away from Utopian. Those process screenshots (documentation) also helped us to find multiple accounts (which is another way of abuse).
I personally having the same process, I complete the work first, and try to save the files many times as possible so I can easily re-trace my steps to display in a presentation. Isn't that how presentation suppose to be if you want to explain the components of your design? You'll have to go back to your design pick the good and meaningful parts and put it into presentation.
And it's widely open, it doesn't have to be the screenshots, doesn't have to be documentation, we've seen some of contributors just go with a screencast of the process. Screencasting actually help me with focus to work and has no extra work after the design, just upload it and share.
I think that's the beauty of open source, fixed my own type. And I didn't see you made any changes on "which repository should be listed first???" - I might misunderstand the question but, the project you are contributing should be listed first, that's where Utopian bot checks. Second should be a link to steemit address with a Utopian task request or a direct GitHub issue where project owner asked for a graphic request. Thanks for improving the grammar.
As I said earlier it's too old that we should prepare a new one. It's even older than editor templates. But its main point was to improve the overall presentations back in then, every presentation should have some information about the project, a logo in various sizes, colors. This logo should be applied in a mockup for example. Files and assets should be linked at the bottom, this was prepared for this purpose actually. But definitely we should update it. But I don't think we are going to change many things because we are not trying to be too strict. Once we had rules, everyone had to follow them. Then it turned into guidelines, which is full of our suggestions. Otherwise we can face many similar, standart presentations in daily basis.
Licensing also is another thing added after those recommended project. After we watch how things going on at GitHub issues, what project owner requests usually. How we should approach them, and suggest our users to do the same. We end up decided to use creative commons in general.
Thanks for pointing your observations and experiences so far. And before we update it I would like to hear any suggestions about how it should be.
Thanks for your response! I have to say though, in hindsight, that the thing that bothered me the most as a designer was the seeming focus on "replicating" the work. I get it, but even in code projects you don't really get inside the author's head when they are solving problems - and their solution is not necessarily the only one or the one you should take...
If you want to read more about licenses, check out another post I made:
https://steemit.com/quasarframework/@nothingismagick/work-as-an-open-source-contributor
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