Then of course there are folk like me, who are in the process of learning vB. I've written several useful mods for my site, and am in the process of writing three more. I could just throw something out there so I can get the keys to the Magic Kingdom, but I'd much rather take my time and make sure my code is up to par, and as upgrade-proof as I can make it, before putting something out for public consumption.

I would love to be able to participate (or at least lurk and search) in the Coders forum, to help me improve my vB specific coding chops before I release anything. But if the only way in is to release something ... well, can you say Catch 22?

BTW, I had no idea till I read the last few posts that there even was a super secret, cone of silence protected, Coders Discussion forum! How exactly does one get the necessary secret decoder ring? Send in five vBulletin mod box tops and sum up in 12 words or less why I want to be a vB coder?

-- hugh

I'd rather have the site administration recognize that a private coding discussion is in direct conflict with the official purpose of the site, and rectify the situation.

A poll is useless; this isn't a "majority wins" issue. Right is right and wrong is wrong. Now, I can admit that maybe I'm wrong, but none of the reasons I've seen put forth in defense of a private forum hold any water so far. I'm listening, though. Convince me.

Arguments I've already seen:

Reason: We need a private forum because members bug us in public with useless posts.
Rebuttal: Moderate.

Reason: We need a private forum because sometimes we discuss security issues with our hacks.
Rebuttal: Your users deserve to hear about these security issues and how you plan to address them.

Reason: We need a private forum because the public ones aren't any good.
Rebuttal: Circular argument.

Reason: We need a private forum because we are the reason the site exists and are the ones contributing.
Rebuttal: One-dimensional, elitist thinking. The site exists for more than just hack-distrubution, and releasing hacks isn't the only valid way to contribute.

Reason: Most people don't want to see these discussions.
Rebuttal: Don't read them.

Reason: We want one because we want one, don't have to give a good reason, and if it's made public we're leaving, and taking our hacks with us.
Rebuttal: Good-bye.

Reason: It's a perk for hackers.
Rebuttal: At the expense of the rest of the community; grow-up.

I'm not here to convince you. I was here to add my 2 cents on 'making .org like it use to be'.

The Coders Forum was created to thank the contributors of the site. There is nothing stopping posts from being made in programming discussions or one of the other handful of forums for those that want to discuss programming.

Maybe change the name to 'contributers forum' or hell, make it a public joinable group automatically joined when someone releases a modification (or for those that dont want to release anything). In the end, ranting and raving about a forum for contributors not available to non contributers doesn't really seem to hold much H2O.

Well it's been fun :)
...and that's my cue to exit!

Nice synopsys of what i was trying to say. :D

Marco, please read post #76 and let us all know what vB.org will do (related to the third issue especially) about it.
I'm very curious what it was drawn so far on the table. Can you post some updates in the Announcements forum?

Will vB.org let us know their plan before the decissions are fully made, so we can express our oppinions?

Thanks.

Yes Staff is actively trying to improve things. About hte moderation style, we came from a semi-unmoderated style, the site was ran like a community of friends, and that worked for a very long time.

Like with many growing "organisations" the policies and moderation style stayed the same for a very long time while the community was growing and changing.

One day you wake up and find all is a huge mess, your friendly undermoderating style don't work anymore, so suddenly you must change. I know for sure that we will have many many more discussions before we will have things running smooth again, but for the time being one of the changes must be to take back control of what happens and how. We will probably get complaints from (older?) members who feel that we will be taking away their "freedom of speech", but i am confident that this will be only temporary until everyone is used to the change in climate.

Bottom line is that no matter what direction we will go in the end, the process of changing will always be causing some pain, but you just have to take that pain if you're confident that it will lead to something better in the end.



PS: Lol what was it that i wanted to say?

This being the third topic in post #76?

I strongly recommend to make the users be aware what exact changes will be made and ask their oppinion about those changes.
In this way, you will avoid "some pain". :)

Ya. :)
Thanks Marco.

If the "pain" is caused by a policy change, then this will ofcourse be announced to all members. An example is the stronger guidelines on how to use the Feedback forum. The "pain" in this case is that we will no longer allow off-topic posts.

About your question on the status of a Commercial directory, i can give you the following unofficial status-reoprt:
- Based on the input that was given over a longer period of time and after a Staff and Jelsoft discussion we have now gotten the green light to implement such a directory. So there will definatly come a place to post/advertise commercial offerings.
- It will be a loose integration with vBulletin.org. This meaning that we will not be mixing free and commercial postings or offerings. It will become a totally seperate area. How this exactly will be implemented is not decided yet. It could be a page with a link in our menu, or maybe it will become an independent site linked from here.

What is still unclear:
- How we will technically implement it. We have a slight prefernce for writing our own custom page, but it is still also possible that we would use a third party product. There are a lot of projects active at the same time now. Implementing a Paid Directory has priority, but we are trying to gain some fast improvements with smaller projects or projects that would benefit i bigger group of members first.
- The criteria to request to be listed are also not decided on yet.

Conclusion: Yes it will come, it has a high priority but not highest.

Once we get closer into deciding more of the details and implementing it, there will be made an announcement by administration.

MarchoH64,

Did you mean to say "... have now gotten the green light..." instead? :cross-eyed:

Thanks, changed.

Marco, what about this discussion segment?
This is a really important matter, IMO.

I would like to see some comments related to this thread, comming from the rest of Staff also, not only you.
Are you the only person responsible at vB.org, in charge of official/unofficial answers? Where is the rest of vB.org Team?
I see many times mods and admins reading this thread but nobody says a word... Why you don't want to participate in this discussion?
Let's interact, it's for our own good.

Please avoid vague answers, instead tell us what you would like to look vB.org, viewed from your position also.
Being Mod or Admin is not an easy job. This will help the users understand better what you go through right now.

I want to know what you guys like to see changed on the site and how you think is best to do it. :)
Thank you.

Ok you asked for it, now you are going to feel the "pain".

We recently had discussions where members of Staff gave their personal opinions. Often these personal opinions where not recognized as such ;), and taken for official Staff points of view or decission. This didn't help in the discussions, and only fed the "us against them" syndrom some people seem to be suffering from.

In threads made in the Feedback Forum, you will now see less Staff members expressing their personal opinions. The Customer Team is primarly responsible for the Feedback Forum. You will often only members of this team responding. If it is a simple question to which their a is a simple solution, then you might find other staff members also respond.

If a topic is not totally clear it will be discussed by Staff first and an official asnwer or point of view will be given.

This will often be done by either the Customer Group Admin (Danny) or one of the 2 Teamleaders in this team (Amykhar or me).

In many discussions staff will let the members discuss, and then will take a stand based on the member input and the opinions of the staff. If there are considerations that are not brought up in the public discussion, then a member of the Customer Team will often join in on the thread to feed the discussion with these considerations.

This might be too vague for you, but it is the best answer i can give right now.

Marco, probably I'm tired... I coded ASP all day at work, ya ASP. :)
But I don't see anything, related to my quote, in your answer?

I take as conclusion that you don't have an "official answer"?
I don't care about official answers, I want to hear you, a person, not Staff, what you would like to see changed at vB.org and I would like to see other mods and admins interacting with you in the discussion.

We are humans, not robots... and we can make mistakes if we say something wrong. Hey, I might said some bad things in this thread, but I'm glad to see that people saw only my good intentions and interacted with me.
I'm sure that nobody will judge anyone here, so far in this thread reings understanding and listening, as well the drive to change things towards better.

Hi Teck, much appreciate you beginning this discussion.
I think your answer is in the previous post :)
.......

I'm very happy to read what has been summed up in this thread and think this is a good day for vB.org.
The moderation rules are great. As a busy admin I just don't have time to get involved in off topic conversation in a thread not designated for this.

- very happy that staff will address their decisions in the way Marco has explained.

- very interested in the development of a paid directory as I will be needing to provide something similar to contributing members at our site and can learn much from how it will be implemented here.

.. and I appreciate that members like myself who have little to offer but ideas based on practical needs can be part of of the development of new mods for vB.

Finally, a suggestion:

Provide a page/link from our vB adminCP crediting all the wonderful people who have conceptualized the the free mods that are now becoming a standard feature in vB.
They much deserve this recognition, and this would make it easier for us to see what else they have up their sleeves.

Keep up the great work everybody!

Cheers,
Mark

Thanks Mark, I will read again the thread when I get home...
I'm tired, my head is spinning a little. Working on a large project for weeks, on the Intranet network.

With rebuttals like that its obvious you don't want to be convinced, as you suggest. Only your first two rebuttals were even valid. Why don't you just leave it at you would like the coders forum to be open instead of turning everyone's thread into your personal anti-coders forum soapbox. One post about it was enough, or do you figure the constant annoyance by one person will make up for the lack of support/interest by others?

Now, do you have any other suggestions for the site/thread?

Oh, I admit, it would be difficult to convince me. I think all my rebuttals are valid: while I can be convinced, I won't be by, well, unconvincing arguments. If you don't agree with my rebuttals, that's fine... I'm open to counter-arguments: let's hear them. If you're going to quote my posts, please don't edit them. Otherwise you're just MIS-quoting my posts.

While I'm the most vocal about this issue, at least in public, I'm certainly not the only one who feels the coders discussion should not be private (or even have been created in the first place). Your assumption that there is lack of support/interest is completely unfounded. Review the initial announcement thread, the thread announcing it was made private, the thread on vbulletin.com, and even this thread.

But I agree with you this far: enough has been said, on both sides of the issue, for the administration to make a decision.

Other suggestions? You bet!

Here's one:

Consolidate the programming discussions. People are very confused about "General Modification Discussion" vs. "Custom Requests" vs. "vBulletin Programming" vs. "vBulletin Discussions" vs. "Programming Discussions", and yes, to top it off "Coders Discussions". With proper moderation, that could all be one forum. There are even modification questions ending up in the Lounge, likely because it isn't clear in which of the half-dozen mod forums it really belongs.

Another:

Create a "beta" release modification section, for plug-in authors who'd like other programmers to review their code, but who don't want it released to the general public. This wouldn't be closed/private, but would have ample disclaimers/warnings, just like any beta software. No one would be expected to ask for or give any support, no "Installs", no nominations for HotM, just programming feedback.

TECK, I've only ever done any programming that's had practical use for my vbulletin sites. I'm a little hurt by your suggestion that vb.org shouldn't be a place to learn HTML.

Vbulletin and message boards are complex products drawing on people managers, moderators, skinners, people to do minor tweaks (like in the HTML), people to do major hacks and plugins, and people who make major additions.

Again, refering to the site's motto, the ultimate vbulletin resource, I like the fact that this site has everything I could ever want (except some paid mods which I barely hear about ;) )

Frankly, if you want some purity of coding and development standards, I suggest you find one of the many coding forums that exists and ply your art there. In the mean time I like a shallow knowledge of php, sql, cpanel, admining, moderating, html, developing, piloting, bbcodes and the whole package that comes with being a vbulletin admin. Not being a dedicated programmer with a cause like it seems to me you are.

What I ment was putting focus on the actual hacks, not to learn how to make a HTML table, for example.
Sorry for misunderstanding. I thought the words "flower design" will reflect that.
One detail:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/

This was designed in the golden time by a guy called nakkid.
Do you know him? He was involved in HTML and graphic design at vB.org site, not only in hacks.
He put a lot of heart to the vB.org users, just to make this place a better one, asking nothing in exchange.

EDIT: Someone deleted a part of this post... it was important, not considered off topic.

Hacks, Coders? Aren't they the same?

Some people love to be called Hacks or Coders!

When you make a hack, ur consider a coder. Even if you don't like to be called a "coder" or a "hacker."

I say it should stay like this.

Why the mods deleted a part of post above? Related to the thread advertising posted by another user?
Ahh, I guess the offtopic rule is enforced. :)

However, it should it stay, because it was highlighting an important point, related to advertising commercial hacks all over this board.
Please do not delete those posts that have a tangence with vB.org rules. Thank you.

What's that intergalactic theme? ..
... to go places where we have never been before

May be it's time to close this chapter and move on to the future.

Honestly don't you think that everything that's been said here has been said before?

Since you editted the same post after that, i can not see who or why edited your post anymore, not do i know what was removed.

I suggest that if you still remember the name of the Staff Member who edited it, you PM him/her to ask for an explanation (that is if you where not sent a PM).

The HTML Discussions within this thread have been moved to a new thread, here: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=118710

Please try and keep on-topic :)

Chris

I just posted something similar in another thread, but you are very correct on this. Once paying for hacks becomes the norm, some people will sway from vBulletin because that was one of the reasons they chose VB in the first place, which is for additional code at no cost. I'd have to think the heads over at vBulletin realize this as potential income loss for VB, and are keeping a very close eye on the situation over here.

Yeah, I see this from certain people - I mean, if you are just starting to install code and ask a question for the first time and get a rude response, it sure won't help get very many people off to a good start here which can lead to the degradation of vb.org.

Great tip - this will definitely help the community here.

That's a complete and utter load. People still pay for vBSEO don't they?
It is foolish to think that the moment someone will have to pay to advertise their paid hack here, everybody will turn their little 1 liner hack into a paid hack for which the "rent" is larger than the cost of the hack.

"No paid hack discussion" is a thing of the past which will have to end if vBulletin.org is to re-claim the title as the ultimate vBulletin resource, which at the moment it is not.
You didn't see paid hack discussions back in "ye goode olde dayse" because people didn't know they *could* charge for vB hacks.
It's quite moronic to think that the vBulletin coding community is exactly the same as back 5 years ago.

Stop being so narrow minded, please.

All this talk about the good old days. honestly when i think of the good old days, the only person i can think of who tried to uphold those values was Boofo. The good old days are gone, dead. there is nothing here no more, except for mods and extensions. renamed in order to appeal to a wider market who weren't comfortable with the fact that modifying your source code for the benefit of your community voids your right to moan to jelsoft.

the good old days? oh how it's so easy to moan and want to relive an era long lost? how are you going to get back to the good old days with half a moderating team that doesn't deserve to be there?

coders talk about feeling appreciated and it's a farce, you either do what you do because you enjoy it or you do it for the reward it's that simple. knowing that someone clicked installed isn't going to fix anything bar inflate your ego, knowing someone appreciated using something you made and shared isn't the same as clicking a button.

and all of paid hacks are evil crap is crap, long before any of us hacked vBulletin we paid for it, ok some folks warez'd it first but you get my drift, whether you want to say they shouldn't be available on here or not is another issue but paid hacks are far from evil.

the funny thing is, to the best of my knowledge if my license ran out tomorrow despite my however many hundred installs i wouldn't be able to download hacks or get support here any more, now that's real gratitude for you.

the thing is you all need to wake up, you got a mix of teenagers from a get everything now culture which is being incubated by the ease of plugins and then you have the corperates who act like they're paying for your work. this place as a community is dead get used to it.

whether people like it or not this is a PHP community and yet PHP has zero focus on the outside, what community is there for PHP discussions? and coding help? it doesn't exist. you can't have a community without the community spirit. you post a dilemma here, at sitepoint and on lj's php comm's at the same time and i promise you, you'll realise just how much of a community spirit there is here? it's like people are like don't bump your threads too regularly, well guess what if it was else where you wouldn't have a chance too because community spirit exists.

This isn't any sort of vBulletin resource, it's a smash and grab 5000 greedy admins come on here every day without reading instructions just wanting, wanting, wanting, no one wants to give back. of course there are exceptions i've seen amy and christian in a couple threads for mods. the bottom line is no one here helps unless you help them.

there is no striving for excellence no more, no encouragement, no appreciation of the code, no appreciation of the concepts, everyone just want, and when they don't get they throw tantrums.

The worst thing that could've ever happend to this place was for Jelsoft to take control because Jelsoft see it as a good given right of an addon to there flagship product and thus the onus on who to please is the end user and the bottom line is, this place should have remained like taboo.

This is supposed to be about coders and the code and perhaps the most signifcant conversation i've seen on the code was actually on sitepoint. yeah times change and that's good and dandy but this?...

Not true unless you have a leased license

but the rest of my post is? ;) :p joking.

ok. all yee who read that post, know that the bit amy quoted is untrue.

I didn't disagree with a lot of what you said. The other parts that I did disagree with, I kept my mouth shut about :D I'm learning to behave. It's not easy, but I'm learning.

I don't have the same vision for this site that Tech does. My vision of what I want this site to be exists here - it's called the coder's forum. As long as that's here, I can tolerate most other things that I may not be thrilled about.

The main thing for me here is that there are people I like to talk to about vbulletin coding here. I also like socializing with my fellow vbulletin admins. That part is still here and never went away.

The vb.Org Customer Team's Team Leader's vision for the site is a private forum to discuss code with only people she likes?! I'll hold the rest of my comments for the promised "Town Hall" thread, but couldn't resist pointing out the irony and shocking disconnect between your staff role and your "vision". Wasn't there a screening process during staff selection?

Amazing isnt it.
















All that empty space is the drain, and this sentance is Vb.org going down it.

I have to say, I agree.

That was by far the dumbest comment you've added to your trolling of that issue.
Since when is Amy the one who decides who gets to be in the Coders Discussion forum? It was created to serve as a way for contributors of the site to discuss techniques and further contributions to the community.
And those that cannot access the forum are those that does not contribute to the community. If they have something valid to say in the threads, they have something valid to contribute to the community, at which point they should.

Nice post Sabre.

I agree....

This embodies the whole clique/club attitude that has been destroying this site for years.

Seems like we need more staff changes to make this the "open" development community it is touted as.

Any existing staff members that share this sentiment should leave too for "personal reasons".

Fact of life ...
The more people learn a trade or skill, and the more professional their career becomes, the more likely it is that they will move on to greener pastures.

vB.org is not an old peoples home for geriatric (and disgruntled) coders.
It's also a place for newbies to cut their teeth and prove their worth through the contributions they make to the site.