On the topic of contributors and/or a lack thereof:
I've seen this topic raised many times, by Thom and others. It's an interesting argument in which I can see both sides. Devs I'm sure feel under appreciated and somewhat alone in their efforts as they see dozens of 'regular' people utilizing their hard work and in some cases criticizing it.
On the other end you have users that most likely feel initially overwhelmed with the complexity of a system they barely understand and feel like they can't or shouldn't ask questions for fear of being chastised. To me, the fact that the original poster's title is "pls dont nuke me, I have a question" speaks volumes about how the average user feels about this forum and it's a shame.
From the perspective of a technically computer savvy person, yet not savvy with Linux or Programming at all, I can tell you this; I'm attempting to learn about the guts of LMCE while simultaneously trying to learn how to program so that when I am able to contribute it's not horrible code to be made fun of. I have already contributed a little with a couple of wiki's and trying to help out others, but it's not the big dev help we need.
So, what's the hold up? As I've said before, LMCE's boon is also it's bane. It's a HUGE, COMPLEX system. For my part, I simply had no idea where to start. I don't have a solid understanding of Linux let alone the complexity LMCE adds to it so I had to start at the bassist of levels and it's very slow going (I, like everyone here, can only work on it in my spare time). The main issue is the 'where to start'. If we had available to us some sort of specific overview of the mechanics of LMCE it would go a long way toward inciting users to 'dig in'.
An example of this is the Video Looping (
http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Video_Playlist_-_Enable_Looping) article I added. 90% of the time I spent trying to make that work was spent just trying to find out what part of the software was responsible for the playing of video. A forum post had some suggestions that didn't work, IRC was helpful in terms of the mechanics of building a dev environment, compiling code, etc., but no one knew definitively where to look for looping video. That part was pure trial and error on my part. The process was literally one of me staring at the dev files and opening anything that looked like it dealt with video then searching the file for anything that looked like it might pertain to looping, eventually stumbling on the xine file in the article. I'm sure everyone will agree that if that were the process necessary for any dev improvement even the most staunch supporters would become discouraged.
So, what's the point to all that rambling? The people that 'know' need to help the people that don't understand the system. If there were more information about the construction and interaction of the different systems in LMCE, I think more people would be inclined to 'dig in'. I'm not talking about setup help, I'm talking about dev information, i.e. What exactly is DCE and how do the different subsystems interact with it? When someone plays a movie, what systems are engaged, in what order do they engage?
I think if we as potential contributors had more information on the workings of the system we'd have an idea of where to start and where to start is often the most difficult part of any undertaking.
