thread: 2005-06-16 : Craft and Innovation
On 2005-06-16, Eric Finley wrote:
(Just teasing Ben for his choice of words. Read that with a big-ass grin all over it. I definitely include myself as well.)So, here's an on-thread question in atonement:
How do we better help out the first-time designers... the new apprentices, too raw yet to know not to grab the hot irons of verisimilitude without the tongs of No Myth? Seriously, right now the system we have for that sucks eggs. The Forge and anyway have been our answer to date, but I get the feeling that between those who turn away out of prejudice, those who go into theory overdose, and those who try and try and sorta kinda get it... we've burned far more fingers than we've saved. This isn't to say that it hasn't helped. But using the blacksmith analogy, we've got a crowd out in the yard yelling "Oh, and by the way, don't grab those irons without yer gloves on!" in cacaphony with a hundred other things at all levels of sophistication. We don't have a master smith in the room to see you reaching for burnt fingers and point you to the tongs hanging by the fire. We don't even have a well-intentioned journeyman working on his own stuff on the other side of the room, looking over once in a while to head off theoryitis and GNSquabblia.
Is open-source, open-community necessarily the best way to do this? It's freewheeling but, I suspect, pretty inefficient. Go to work at a company and you won't find education of the new hire being left to "if you have any problems just post 'em to the intranet and someone'll answer you eventually."
One could make a case for the IGC being a slightly more focused attempt at something of the sort... but it's still pretty diffuse, innit?
- Eric
