Thoughts on renaming OCD-Cleanup?

philmasterplus

Active member
Edit: We're holding a poll (Google Forms, requires login)! You're welcome to join in.
Edit 2021-05-12: Poll results are up!


I work on OCD-Cleanup, a fork of Bale's OCD Inventory Control. Recently, while gathering feedback for a major code change, I received requests to rename the project to move away from ableist language. I was personally unaware of this, but am ready to support this move.

Renaming a project raises two questions:
  • How should we handle technical problems?
  • What name should we choose? Two preliminary candidates are "Philter" and "InventoryCleanup".
Details are available on a separate GitHub issue. However, since the majority of KoLmafia (and OCD-Cleanup) users are not on GitHub, I'd like to request for comments here as well.

What are your views on renaming? Would you like to suggest a new name?
 
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MCroft

Developer
Staff member
I support renaming. While questionable names are a KoL tradition, this is one we can retire.

I was not joking (or not much) when I suggested "MarieKondo.js". The point of the script is "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up", so that's something.

I was joking when I suggested "MakeMeatFa$t!.js". The special characters would probably cause it to barf.
 

philmasterplus

Active member
I'm ambivalent to most suggestions, but I'm apprehensive on using names of real people[1], or names that are too long[2]. Besides, I live outside the states and have never heard of Marie Kondo until today.

[1] Legal issues immediately come to mind. Also, we'd be tying ourselves to the image of a public figure. What if something happens that causes the general public to view said public figure in a negative light? We would have to rename again, just to avoid the stigma.
[2] We have to remember and type in script file names.
 

Magus_Prime

Well-known member
I have no problem with renaming the script but I would avoid using the name of a real person. Either of the candidates in the first post would be fine: one is "punny" the other descriptive.
 

fronobulax

Developer
Staff member
After all my angst about script renaming and orphans and forking, I am convinced of my ability to find a problem that really doesn't have a practical solution.

The problem with renaming oldScript to newScript is communicating to the users of oldScript what they have to do if they want updates. There effort required to do that by code and script changes alone is not, in my opinion, worth it, so make the change and communicate the change to the communities you are aware of and let everyone else discover the change on their own.

There were once useful scripting conventions that a preference (or zLib variable) included the name of the script that managed it and and datafile names included the name of the script that created and used them. Since the concern is that "OCD" can be considered offensive the offense will not be removed unless the script, associated files and associated preferences/variable are also renamed.

That can be done but given what KoLmafia deliberately does not expose from the file system, I'm not sure I am clever enough to do it in a completely automated and bulletproof way.

Philter is clever but I think I'd go with InventoryManagement, InventoryControl, or InventoryCleanup.

And when it was done I would update mafia's repo file to eliminate references to Bale's original and add this in its place.
 

fronobulax

Developer
Staff member
Try again. I lowered the shields temporarily.
Done.

Just out of curiosity, what is the motivation for TidyJS? Tidy is an established cleaner for HTML and over the decades there have been code checkers or formatters for various languages that used "tidy". So TidyJS screams "I'm going to clean up your JavaScript source" to me.

Philter is cute but since it evokes "filter", for me, the name doesn't match the functionality. What would you expect a script named "Fronobulaxer" to do? Emit negativity? :)
 

philmasterplus

Active member
Beats me. Some names were suggested in the ASS discord and I don't ask questions :)

Philter is not my suggestion, either. In fact I didn't feel the need to suggest my own. I just thought it was generic enough to pass the rules. Plus, we can always claim that we took the name from the in-game item.
 

philmasterplus

Active member
The poll has been closed--a bit later than intended, due to me being busy. Hope no harm done here.

The results are directly viewable in the poll page, but I'll post them here as well:

1620811002604.png

The winner goes to Philter, which received 15 out of 28 votes (2 choices per person). Thanks for your participation!
 
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