Because you screwed up my job and the people who use it, I have a duty to answer you here.
All that you wrote here (very bad formatted to be clear) - I just did in the RO offline pack and saved a lot of nervous and time for a lot of people.
Why someone needs to do all of these things in the topic, if they just simply download, run, and everything will work out the box just fine?
I think you and many people like you don't understand why the topic exists.
Because of the secret in simplicity. Key = Keep It Simple Stupid.
While all existing solution = very bad.
Another problem: super hard entry point for newbies for the next reasons:
Almost all guides presented very hard to find (whole process)
Or Not actual most of them
Or Not accurate
Or Not correct at all
Or confusing
Or do not explain things very simple
Or boring to read
Or authors do not give a heck to answer in their support topics at all.
Or everyone run around money and want to keep the entry point as hardest as it possible for very primitive things. "pay me $$ I will set up everything".
And I do not talk about 100000500000 problems what people will have due to different operating system/software bundle, antiviruses, firewalls, etc.
It's what exactly done in this free package you don't need to pay anyone and will get absolutely ready emulator what you can run on your pc via single clicks without reading tons of useless weird structured documentation located anywhere (but not centralized and not structured) (or without documentation at all) with avoided pitfalls and everything else.
You just run, and learn in practice while having a complete and ready product for doing mistakes, errors, and learn on them.
I know already several guys which stuck on just setup process, and just right now write a lot of really great scripts, events, so on.
I think you just don't understand a really important thing and don't care about newbies at all.
For a lot of people super hard to learn something new without terminology or past experience.
People learn on examples and real practice much faster, then if they will read tons of useless theory.
And when even the theory isn't well designed, how can they learn something, even if the training/guides materials are extremely bad?
Go to my topic and read it again.
I wrote next there:
Now, analyze what you wrote in your topic And compare with the text above.
And now each mine new line = around 10-20 pitfalls/problems which will force people to stuck or even drop continuing doing what they begin to do.
Is it "newbie friendly?"
Do you even understand, that a lot of people have skype running, or different software which locks ports? Or antiviruses? Or simply don't know where to get the software?
Or they do not even realize what patches need to select in NEMO if they completely newbies?
Or they do ever hear about any great tools like SDE / GRF Editor?
You saying about contribution.
Where do you get the assistance from (contributors)?
If the entry point is too high - you will not have a funnel of people who eventually become developers, scripters, mappers, etc.
I'm sorry. Do you have a problem with that? Or what? You have not heard about portable solutions of webservers (USB-server)?
Or everyone must make dirty their computers with unnecessary garbage, solve dependencies and conflicts over the installation of standard software?
This is (OpenServer) super great software, one of the best in the market, which always just works and works just fine.
Windows very good operation system, that why it has 90% of people on it. Because it's very easy to use, and you can just focus on work, instead of on reading how to do primitive things, what in Windows I can do by a single click.
It does not work like that. The era when it was popular (torrenting/p2p networks) = over.
If you need contributors = you need to grow them from newbies. Newbies -> scripters -> src devs -> contributors.
You want newbies -> contributors. Cool, and how many messes you will see on issue tracker then?
Or what they can share if they do not know how to setup server?
imgur, keep links for years. Or you can use GitHub images properly =)
Proper guide with what reason?) And for who?) And what people will get? wasted a lot of time on things, what they can always learn in real experience with 1 click solution?)
How did you learn how to ride a bicycle, you first read a whole book about cycling, or you were just put on a bicycle, and then you were pushed, and then you learned how to ride after some falls?) This is exactly the reading of the book you suggest instead of just to sit down and ride, and in the process - to deal with everything, having an example when everything works, and thus (reading the manual) you cut off tens of thousands of people. I understand that Linux has imposed its thinking on you, but as you said yourself, 90% of users choose Windows over Linux =)
Peace <3