i've taken-back some of these abandonned hacks lately, and i can tell you that the coders who i contacted always had some strange stories to tell... some even had fights on this site so they were frustrated enough to delete everything and leave... it's not always harm on their part, it is usually because there is some situation...

and yet, i'm not on a side or the other... there is a lack of balance somewhere, sure... point out the real solution is complicated.

Wow, suprised that the staff here aren't at least acting as if they'll listen to the argument, you don't have to act, but pretend you care about what we have to say.

Anyway, I think the suggestions earlier in the thread make sense, if a moder wants to /ragequit because they've been in an argument the least they can do is leave a note on how to remove their application. I mean I'm sure there were some people who installed it who were perfectly nice and helpful, they don't deserve to be left stuck because the moder /ragequit'd.

I understand that all the moders here work really hard, and I think everyone here appreciates that, at least most of us do. I also think the decent moders here wouldn't mind an extra two - three minutes of work if they choose to remove their mod. I doubt anyone here is malicious enough to want to leave their users stuck in a messy situation.

I for one am more than appreciative and grateful for their hard work. While I won't boast about my offerings, a handful times I have made donations, offered donations for a little extra help and requested paid modifications a good number of times. I take no one for granted. In return, some consideration for our work we put into our forums is only understandable.

It kills to even see that such a simple request as retaining the original download files has to go back and forth as if its a mind boggling, complex situation. But it isn't.

I wish I had a good example to give to compare this with, but my brain is exhausted and my mind is overwhelmed with other things now to sit here and spend another second debating with staff members who treat you like crap and make excuses after excuses while others continue to claim vb org has nothing to do with the offical VB company or site.

I don't know why you are saying we aren't listening, I know I've read this thread and listened to the arguements. I understand the frustration of the OP. However, I don't think you guys understand that many times a mod is moved to the Graveyard after it is noticed that the developer deleted the files. Sometimes they are nice enough to delete the files and then report the post to tell us to move it to the graveyard, but often the files are just deleted and we find out some other way that the mod no longer has any files attached.

It is impractical to not allow the developer to delete the files because very ofter there are fixes/upgrades to the original mod and it gets confusing to have a non-working version and a working version attached to the thread. It's also impractical to demand that all developers supply uninstall instructions in the thread. They won't do it. They'll simply not release their modifications if there are too many rules. And, try telling the unpaid mods that they are required to download a mod and figure out how to uninstall it just so they can move it to the graveyard (on the off chance that the product file was left behind)? Well, um, I know I won't be asking for that promotion.

I would suggest keeping a copy of all the modifications you download on your harddrive, somewhere on your server, and also on the offsite place you put your backups. And, when you backup your computer documents, backup your vbulletin files also. If you do this, then hopefully you have it covered. (And with gmail allowing so much space, email them to yourself also if you think all four of those methods could fail at the same time.)

Thanks for following up Lynne. You're the nicest person I've dealt with within the staff, appreciate your humble spirit about you.

You do make good points about saving locally, even Gmail. Unfortunately, in many cases its too late for a good portion of mods that have already been wiped out and moved to the Graveyard. So there's no going back on those.

As far as this goes:

We're talking solely about graveyard. When a mod is move there, the files should be kept intact for reference purposes. It has nothing to do with overwriting the old version with a new one. Just graveyard itself, with the last uploaded version of the mod.

I personally do not care for that myself since you'd expect the install instructions to be included in the zip file, or inline in the thread itself so you can just reverse those. Simple.

No reason to add rules in the plural sense. Just a rule: keep the mod files when moving to the graveyard, or have deletion requests soft-deleted, or just request deletion placed in queue. Latter is probably more work, but I don't understand why any mod author should let their personal emotions get in the way of others (at least based off some of the defense comments mentioned in this thread).

On a side note, some of the staff should stop lying about not being affiliated with the official company. We're customers and we're not brainless. We can connect two dots together. In the end, it is Jelsfot's responsibility to get their act together and stop slamming down customers ideas and making excuses for everything that comes their way. I won't even get started on my own experience.

Who exactly are you calling liars ?

The situation has been made quite clear to you, the domain is owned by Jelsoft - the server we run on is provided by Jelsoft. The staff are not Jelsoft employees (except for Marco, who is our link to Jelsoft). Calorie now also works as a support person for them, but that has nothing to do with her moderating duties here.

You are NOT paid customers of this site, vb.org is completely free, no one has paid a single penny to join this site. Also, as has been made clear to other members in the past - throwing tantrums wont make the slightest difference to whether something gets implemented or not.

Just a side note here...

If we pay for licenses, and this site requires a valid license to view, then it's at least my opinion that are paying to access this site. As a developer, I know the only reason I renew my license is to hang around here and chat / help out.

I wouldn't call the situation clear at all, because of
1) Marco's presence,
2) the requirement of a license, and
3) it being an official site.

It seems like it's only official site or affiliated with Jelsoft when promoting vBulletin.

Exactly what are you saying siradrian. Let's say my license ran out tomorrow I wouldn't have access here (let's say) to support the contributions I released here?

As far as I remember the answer is no. Honestly if this is the case, I am not renewing it again, so let's hope my memory is off!

Thanks for the info Siradrian. I'd appreciate a response from the staff on this.