I can see that my statements about the staff might cause all sorts of objections. It's always hard to say what you want to say, and get the "tone" correct. I don't know any of the staff personally. I'm sure they are great people, for the most part, trying to do a job as well as they can.

However, this site and the function it serves for vBulletin and the vBulletin community are too important to be run this way. Jelsoft owns it, but takes a "hands off" approach to running it? So instead you have an adhoc staffing community drawn directly from the membership, complete with all the baggage that must necessarily ensue in such an environment. I think that's wrong. I think vbulletin.com and vbulletin.org should be merged, and that JelSoft employees should staff it. Then you wouldn't have thinly disguised personality conflicts derailing the site's operation.

The private "coders discussion" serves to promote and reinforce the elitest, entitlement mentality I sense among many of the plugin authors. That mentality creates a barrier between hack authors and hack users. You say the site is about the coders? Hmm. Without someone willing and wanting to use your hacks, there'd be no reason to release them. Many want to seem to have a private "hackers only" club, and I think that is anathema to the site.

While I agree that there have been times where personal agendas have intervened with what is correct and what is not to do with moderation duties (I know I am guilty of this at times, so I'm not taking this from a "mightier than thou" standpoint ;)), for the most part the staff here are very fair and are simply following the procedures and rules set out for us...

The main issue is lack of communication - There is little communication between the staff and the members generally, meaning that information about how this site and it's features are progressing is left in the dark, and it aggrivates a situation easily solved by spending 10 minutes maybe once every two weeks writing out a post and informing people how things are progressing...

Wherever you go, paid or volunteer, you are going to encounter personal differences between staff and members; While I agree that for the most part, employing staff to moderate this site would perhaps lessen the confrontations we have seen over recent months, it would not irradicate it entirely; When you are dealing with a site as specific in content such as this, part of a Moderator's duty is to know the in's and out's of this site, meaning taking from the active experienced membership is the only way of ensuring that a basic level of competance is achieved...

Chris

I've said it before and now I'll say it again.

It should NOT be about the coders. It should be about the code.

Emabrace the code and the coder becomes secondary. After all, you are here for the functionality of code. Not to become the coders buddy.

Embracing the coder manifests the elitist attitudes. Open up the free code to the community, as the org is intended, and the code dominates, not the coders.

Very well said brother noppid! You have hit the perverbial nail on the head regarding this issue! :)

It's all about the coders, imo. Without the coders, there would be no code to embrace.

A double edge sword. Quite the conundrum. :confused:

HUH? I come here to escape reality. :D

do people actually know what they are complaining about on here - VB.org has been quiet of late and can see why - what with everyone whinging about one thing or another - get a grip on the matter here,who cares if some decide to pull their hacks - more will come to replace them.
Put the coders in a different usergroup and call em CODERS - should keep em happy and put us mere users in a usergroup called - BEGGING for HELP

that way they feel good when they help us and everyone will be happy then :)

It shouldn't be all about the coders OR the codees (is that even a word?). Without one, the other wouldn't exist. It needs to be about the community. We all need to work together as one and stop working against one another.

I dunno, Boofo. The "BEGGING FOR HELP" is rather catchy. :lick: