HEY, LOOK AT THIS, IT'S SUPA GREAT AND ALL NEW (KIND OF)
It's funny to see that there are still people who come on IRC to ask "well, what is this Wetfish place for, anyway?". This is a problem. When I started wetfish, I was 15, just getting into programming, and 4chan was super cool. "I'll make my own imageboard, and become rich and famous, like moot!!" Unfortunately, it seems the internet doesn't quite work that way.
For almost three years, we've been fumbling around with ideas without really getting anywhere. A wiki? That's also a blog and an imageboard? WeedHat? Hacking into traffic cams? How about today I make a game! ComCat? CosPlay? Oh, and, markov chains! The list goes on and on, and I'm not saying any of these things aren't cool. Simply, our ideas haven't been focused in a way which makes them useful to us as a whole.
Now, I'm not here to point fingers at anyone, that's not going to get us anywhere. Perhaps instead, I should be pointing my finger at where we need to be headed. If you've been paying attention through the past few months, there's this thing I've been waving my arms around about, this "development community" thing, but I had yet to come up with a good definition.
What is Wetfish?
Imagine a place where people who like to do stuff hang out. You can come up with an idea to see if it flies, and find the people to make it happen too. Imagine a town centre, someone complains—there should be a fountain here!—perhaps a plumber and sculptor overhear the complaint, then offer their help. On the internet, we're all connected, but at the same time, we're separated by all the noise. Wetfish's purpose is to bring together the people willing to do something.
But wait, hold on a minute ...we're not quite there yet! There's no way in hell I could go about this alone, or even with the amount of people we currently have. Right now, we need to focus on the small stuff, get the ball rolling, and start attracting new developers.
Here and now.
First, we need to look at what's on the table. I have the RO Market Statistics site, which is getting over 2,500 page views and making about $0.30 from advertisements per day. If I could get 10 websites making $1 a day, that's roughly $300 a month. Sure, it might not be enough to pay rent, but it is enough to cover wetfish and food. Hell, having a few websites that look decent is normally all you need to get some freelance programming jobs online.
And hey, Project Wonderful isn't the end of the line. AdSense is pretty good when you have the kind of content Google likes—Treefire gave me $130 from the money he got from the ads on his site. The more projects we have, the better. You don't have to be totally dedicated, just having a couple sites could bring in a bit of money every month. And remember, that's money you get to keep, since it's from your site! Simply by having a popular site, you're bringing benefits to the rest of us, since more traffic means more money!
But what about people who don't program? I guess that really depends on the project, huh? Let's look at what we have right now...
Fish Wiki
--For people to use in projects, and for this damned site itself.
It would be a lot easier to write articles like this on a wiki!
Fish Forums
--I want to have basic software for people to use. Also, I want
to modify this forum software and use it as the base for
Wetfish Online.
--Oh hey, we need sprite artists for Wetfish Online.
Fish Blog
--More basic software for people to use on their wetfish accounts.
market.wetfish.net
--Need to write a new version. Anyone want to help?
anonimap.info
--I would really like to make AnoniMap more user friendly, and
add more web 2.0 features. Any ideas would be appreciated!
Browser Game
--I'm working on a simple browser game with this random guy I met.
It's going to need some background artists and artists to draw
all of the items and events and characters or whatever the fuck.
Dongshire
--This would be a web interface for our chatbots.
Anyone interested in chatbots should help with this!
WeedHat
--DRUGS ARE A GREAT WAY TO MAKE NEW FRIENDS
THERE'S A LOT OF STUFF, MOSTLY ARTISTS AND MUSICIANS
GOOD THING WE HAVE THOSE ALREADY, LOL
What you can do.
If there's been nothing covered so far you think you can help with, you're not out of luck yet. There may be other things people need your specific expertise in, they just don't know it yet! For now, you can go on IRC and ask around. Perhaps in the future there will be a wiki, where people will detail what their projects entail and who's needed to get the job done. And perhaps there will be a place for people to say what they're good at, but that is for the future, aye?
If you simply don't know a programming language, but wouldn't mind learning one, you can use the tutorial I wrote!
Know any friends who like to do stuff? WE WANT TO BE FRIENDS WITH YOUR FRIENDS, OMG
At the very least, write "wetfish.net" on every bathroom stall you shit in!
I dunno, I'm out of ideas. If only this page were a wiki, then you could add some of your own. :(