Michael Parducci
12/12/21
Social Software
Professor Tusman
Final Project
My experience in this class was a great one. I have learned many new techniques when I started social software and working with open source software. I was able to have a better understanding on how filezilla works since we needed it to create blogs and show them to the world. I learned how to create a website for a blog which was a lot of fun and helpful because I can show the world the posts I make on my website. I also was able to learn how github works such as making pull requests, making issues, how to fork a code, and many more. Learning these skills was very useful and I look forward to teaching other people these skills that I learned.
The open source project that I decided to contribute to is EverOddish/Westwood. The way that Westwood works is that it’s an open source project that stores high-quality Pokemon game data in human readable format that is easy to extend and use. The type of code that we use to contribute to Westwood is Python. The users that contribute to Westwood are EverOddish, TheSuperNoob (Lars), dependabot, and derek-j-pitman. The issues that are present in Westwood are Pokemon related. For example, you can work on adding egg move data for all generations, add gym leader data for all games, add move tutor data for sword/shield, and add encounter data. I did wish that they didn’t have too much info when I started that way I could have done other issues that I wanted to do like add aloan and galar pokemon. I also would have liked to add mega evolutions and gigantamax pokemon. I personally liked working on this open-sourece project and while it wasn’t perfect I still had fun doing research on one of my favorite video game series.
The open source software can be used in any Pokemon software project that requires Pokemon data and it does not enforce data representation. The community is very interesting because anyone can contribute to the code or create issues that they see in the code and would like to be fixed. The contributors are very helpful and while they take a while to give their feedback they do explain the mistakes we make and how to fix them. The reason that I wanted to contribute to Westwood is that it was working on a project that involved one of my favorite games and that it requires a lot of time to research them whether it’s pokemon, items, trainers, gym leaders, champions, and many more. I also liked how they were working on every generation (Generation 1-8). The contribution that I made was adding move tutor data for the Pokemon games sword and shield. What I did was I looked up all of the move tutor’s that were available in Pokemon sword and shield. I also did a contribution on adding all gym leaders team data from generations 1-8. I looked up all the games where you battle the gym leaders. Some of the barriers that I have experienced were how much typing that I had to do in order to contribute to the work, I was having a little difficulty understanding how Westwood worked and that finding some of this information wasn’t easy. What I learned from this was that I have a better understanding of how Westwood worked and I hope I can work on it again real soon.
Working on the open source software was actually rewarding because I had a fun time learning how to do a different type of code that while I had a bit of experience on I didn’t know it entirely. It was amazing to work on a project that would not only help me learn new codes but it was really fun. While it’s great to contribute it’s not entirely perfect since when you put out a pull request or issue it doesn’t get merged or resolved quickly. Another problem with contributing is that some of the codes that have to be used aren’t really good unless you really know how to use them. It’s really bad when you find a software you want to contribute but you don’t understand how the code works. A way that I would make the open source community more welcoming is I would try to give new participants easy issues to work on and I would keep them updated to let them know how they’re doing. I would also make sure that the code I use would be easy enough for any beginner that is working on an open source software will have an easy time understanding it. I had a good time contributing to this software and I look forward to doing more contributions.
https://github.com/EverOddish/Westwood/issues
https://github.com/EverOddish/Westwood/pull/25