In theory I can see exactly what your saying and why your saying it.

I think part of the problem is simply that a lot of users either don't see that it is a beta, or don't understand what a beta is.

However...

It is a nightmare at times, when you go to a thread for a hack beta or released and have to troll through the same question a hundred times, just to get a little bit of info, when if these people had simply bothered to look, the questions being repeatedly asked would have normally been answered numerous times. Made worse when you have some poor user with a genuine problem who posts his question and it ends up going completely ignored and unanswered as a result of it being lost in these multiple repeat questions.

Now this is where my question on this would be raised...

Is all of this the fault of the user in need of help or the developer for not making his initial post and hack instructions clear enough?

Anyone that's been a regular user over here for a fair period of time knows the way hacks are formatted, the way the initial hack post should be laid out and how hacks work, but how often do people actually make the instructions clear enough, actually include a update of what work and updates, fixes and what not have been done and include a clear enough set of instructions that anyone using vBulletin could understand. I like to see a coder include a difficulty rating in their initial post, it helps know how long and how hard the hack would be to install and get running properly, I think all coders should include one of these as standard, maybe there should be a tutorial "How to release a hack for everyone" and "How to make your hack instructions clear".

The way I look at it though... We have all been a newbie at some stage or another and just because we learn and move on and become more advanced, new newbies come along and have to go through our exact same experience. My experience as a coding newbie was seriously bad, I remember being repeatedly ignored and laughed at for not knowing stuff that some others did knew, when a little bit of simple guidance instead would have gone a lot further and would have helped me progress much faster and would have stopped me having to ask the same question repeatedly. Personally I think a lot of coders become really arrogent with time and experience and they think they are above everyone else and that everyone should automatically be to their standard of coding, or if not, they shouldn't bother and should stop using a computer immediately, that's certainly what it feels like reading through a lot of posts on this site put it that way. How is anyone going to learn and progress if nobody is prepared to assist anyone else?

Regarding seperating newbies from advanced coders and experienced users... I think that would be the worst possible move that could possibly be made, there is enough segregation as it is, without putting an even bigger devide up. Not that I think it would be possible anyway, a post count certainly doesn't give any kind of guauge as to how good your experience is. After all, someone with a huge post count may have that post count simply by needing to ask questions on every single hack, or at the same time it oculd be from a friendly coder who goes out their way to help everyone they possibly can. I think it is something that would be impossible to guage.

you know what would be kind of cool and maybe not too hard to do?

Have an addon (kind of like the current tick boxes) that appears at the bottom of the first post as a 'quick links' to common questions/posts/etc... Only dont make it part of the collapsable box as many keep this collapsed (I do frequently).

Then again - maybe not. It may be a bit messy and it may be irrelevant with the new 'hack' db we have been hearing about for 6 months ;)

This post comes across as snobbish and of you having a complex of thinking you are better than a Newbie. Putting down new people on a message board is a lowsy way to get new people to become active in threads. I haven't used vbulletin very long but I'm certainly to the point that I can figure out how to do most anything I need. Just like doing anything you are new at it takes a little time to get used to it and having someone that's done it longer try to look down upon you doesn't make it any easier.

Not snobbish at all, fairly practical though. Read the thread link I posted above and tell me how much time you think was wasted on some of those nitwits?

Then call me a snaob.

Ok some of them were bad but I don't think it can all be attributed to them being newbies.

OMG trackpads I just read the thread and I'm furious!!!
Gosh, how some people are like that???
Poor Danny, if I was in his shoes I would've lost my temper from the first posts... :(

In my opinion if you want your betas to be for experienced users only then you need to have a closed beta process where you pick who you give it to. Plain and simple.

If you post it here, then it is free game to all members.

I agree with Wayne, but I do understand the need for public betas aswell. Now that we use a checkbox to seperate them from normal hacks it is harder to tell them apart right off.

I don't see a problem with a small message under the thread title noting the fact that it's a beta version. I'll put it on the to do list. :)

I think that part of the problem is that some people are used to the public betas put out by Jelsoft, Adobe and Microsoft (who calls theirs "release versions"), and don't realize that the "betas" here are often much closer to alpha releases than they are to FC releases.

I don't think it would be out of line to automatically put some sort of prominent warning label across the top of threads on beta software. I suspect that such a thing could be accomplished with a template conditional.

--don

Main problem with Betas (closed or public): Almost nobody does test them and does report bugs, they only complain that there are bugs (without telling which ones).