Where vB is going wrong
 

This post saddens me, but I've been tempted to post it for a long time. Now the time has come.

I love vB as a product, and there's no problem at the official support forum (vb.com) but over here things have gotten silly.

First of all, let me say I fully understand that people provide support of their own free will. It's not a slur on anyone like that, it's more a general observation.

Several years ago when I first came here there were plenty of people willing to assist and help people who may lack expertise. Such help was offered gladly and politely.

Lately though, things have changed for the worst. For example, look in the 'hack requests' forums and see the HUGE number of totally ignored requests, or ones responded to with a curt 'use the search button'.

Then go into some of the hack threads. You are lucky to get any response at all these days, and when you do, it's often 'read the thread' or 'read the rules' or 'learn to code before you ask'.

It is extremely unfriendly and off putting, and I have to say that other forum software now has much better hack support for the less experienced user.

Obviously this isn't universal but it's a growing trend. If this isn't to become an elitist community for experienced coders only, then people need to start being a bit more understanding of the fact that not everyone is an experienced php coder and not everyone has managed to read every single rule/sticky/announcement on here before posting.

In short, there's no need for people to be rude or 'off' with people for simply asking questions.

I support Mark.B's comments with one exception. It has long been the unwritten rule with forums that if you wanted to find out something you did a search first as your question may have been already covered.

The trend now seems to be not to bother to read the thread but ask the question. This then increases the size of the thread and makes reading through it for info more difficult, as some threads here are over 20 pages.

Bob

/me click not-install

to me, the level of support comes with the level of ability for members to be independant and able to do things by themselves... i've seen a lot of these requests lately, made by the same guys, that are not able to do a simple search... we have to do the search for them and show them how to...

it's easier for them to complain that they have no answer for their somewhat strange requests sometimes too... when you require to rebuild half of vbulletin for your own needs and think you will have someone that will gladely do this for free in the minute, you are wrong... and we have seen that in the last days...

if you think that other softwares have better support for their hacks, remember something here: vb.org is not managed by vb.com, and is completely unsupported by the company... this is the opposite of all the other communities you know...

anyway, this is another complaint thread that will turn into a flaming ground soon... see ya!

I know what thread triggered this, and tbh, it's only the fact I don't have that particular hack installed that stopped me commenting when I read it - "Read the rules" was not a very helpful reply to a question.

Not that I agree or disagree, but its not exactly easy to find stuff around here now a days. Hopefully that will change when the "hack database" comes out.

I have to concur with the original thread. I have a few hacks I wanted to release but I am still a bit put off over the war about paid mods or not.

Three years ago this community was a community, if someone asked a redundant question it was either nicely pointed to the right thread (with a link) or help was given.

There is no reason for anyone to think they are so much better that they can have an animosity to another member who may be new and lost, perhaps what he is looking for has came up in search with 3000 results, so he sifts thru not understanding what is what.

As for those who think the new members need to learn to use the search option better or to become as expert as them over night, if it upsets you so badly why not just ignore the thread and not cause more aggravation in an already tense community.

Posts that flame or back handed comments are rapid here as of late, not like it was 3 years ago. People just seem to trash this community and not even think to just keep their mouse to another thread link.

Then you get the coders who still really care about the community and the original reason it was made (to share and to help) who work hard to try to help others, they support their hacks, and even try to bring out new. And from the already cut throat mentality to the newer people, they now come back and fester the threads with information of new hacks with turmoil.

Now while there are many good staff here who do very good job, or try to bring the threads back into the right track, they can not do it alone. It is up to the community to actually re-learn the caring and the reason why .org is even here. If this does not happen it will just spiral more.

That's certainly valid, and there's no harm in checking that people have tried searching first, but it's the WAY it's said, too often there's a sort of arrogance and superiority that comes over and that never used to be there.

I don't want to start flame wars, I am trying to be constructive. I don't dislike this site at all, it's still great, but it seems to be heading in a way that isn't pleasant, and that's the users rather than the moderators or admins.

Yes, you're right in that that is what finally triggered me to post this, but it's something that's been on my mind for a while. It has not happened to me so much because I rarely post for help, but I have seen it done so many times to others and I think 'that is not fair'.

I would like to say though that Paul M is a shining example of how it SHOULD be done, his hack support is incredible...efficient, polite and to the point. I have a couple of Paul's hacks installed.....way to go!

(From: https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...493#post851493)

But i do agree to some point. And this already starts by 10 people 'advicing' someone that he should not have posted in a hack forum, instead of just silently reporting the post and let a moderator have a chance of moving it to the correct forum without setting a negative tone.

Well obviously in the post you refer to I was being humourous rather than constructive. :D

I *still* hate auto-merging...it has happened to me in this thread too. But that's for another topic....

Something that has always bugged me is that in the event where someone releases a hack that has already been released.

Someone will always have to jump in and say, "Already released.... :link to thread:"

Maybe I'm just reading/taking that in the wrong way.. but I find that rude. Chances are that the person already knows about the other hack but didn't find what they wanted out of it so they made their own and decided to share it here.

Aside from that, I think it's obvious that as the years go on.. more and more children get vBulletin licenses. That's why you can say things like, "Three years ago this.. and four years ago that.." I just see a lot of immaturity here anymore.. Sometimes I'll open my mouth, but most of the time I just ignore it and move on.

These are the growing pains of a community this big.

More people + More people not using search + More threads posted asking a question that's been answered already = less accurate search results.

It probably doesn't help that the site has search problems atm.

I'm going to jump in here and admit that I've not been quite my normal helpful self earlier today and have been borderline sarcastic with a couple of posts then.

In saying that though, on the whole, I give links where appropraite. Sometimes I'll tell people exactly what terms to search for and what options in advanced search instead of just searching for it myself and giving them the link, but usually that is with people who I have already given loads of links to already that day, or have been around long enough to know better.

As for support for my mods, I always make an announcement if something is coming up that is going to affect the support I can give. An example of this is the thread in the longue saying that I'm going back to school next week and have other things happening too so support time will be limited at least for a couple of weeks.

With regards to posts in the wrong forums, I tend to find I'm reporting a minimum of 5 posts per day for this exact offence at present. Sometimes I'll post explaining which forum would have been better suited, but not all the time. The biggest cuplrit for this at the moment seems to be service requests being posted in the modifications requests forums and even in general vB questions! Of course this changes a lot and flutuates between 'releases' that are requests, and services requests elsewhere.

IMO, it's getting a little 'too many chiefs and not enough indians' around here at the moment. I know that the majority of us are admins ourselves, but does everyone really need to be moderating this site? Sometimes it feels like the 150 logged in users are 10 lurkers, 40 users, and 100 moderators/admins, when in reality there are just a couple of visable staff members logged in. If something isn't in the right place or against the rules, report it. Don't be going off at the poster. If you want to run about with your admin/mod head on go to your own site and do it, otherwise take a chill pill, introduce yourself to the report post button, and enjoy the ride.

With regards to KTBleeding's post (post #10):

There are occassions where similar releases occur. This can be quite irrattating (sp?) when you release something then within sometimes as short a time as 5 mins someone releases something practically identical. There is nothing that you can do about that though. There are many coders here who are all looking at the same requests forum. Unless someone actually says that they are working on something, then it's pretty much a free for all, and different people can release the same thing at the same time but coded differently.

Of course there are also occassions where the exact same code is released by different people. Yes, there are only so many ways of dong things with templates, but for three different people to release the same thing for versions 3.5.0, 3.5.2 and 3.5.3 with the exact same code is just silly. Often this is done by newer members who think that this is ok as they haven't read the rules about releases being your own work and not copied from someone elses. It can be inspired by, but not a direct copy.

In addition to this, some advanced and master coders get too big for their boots and think that they are better than everyone else. TBH, they are just the same as everyone else.

The difference between a member and a coder?
They coded something and got a handful of installs. Wow! It's not rocket science, but some think they are God's gift.

The difference between a coder and an advanced coder?
They got a big break or two and got a lot of installs for some plugin or other. Good for them. It doesn't make you more of a person though, you just happened to tap a need before anyone else did.

The difference between an advanced coder and a master coder?
The've had a lot of installs for a lot of assorted code mods, usually over quite a period of time. Congrats to them, but it doesn't make them any better a person than the new person who has just completed their registration and is asking how they edit a template.

Every single person here has been the newbie who doesn't know anything about vB at some point. It might have been relatively recently, it could have been right back in the vB Lite days. The thing is that we all had to learn. Can anyone honestly say that they knew what every single option in the ACP did and what every single template controlled the very first day they installed vB? I know the answer to that, No. Everyone played with the settings, probably broke something and panicked, messed up a template or other, it's the way human beings learn.

So basically, what I'm saying is everyone should give everyone else a break. Help when people ask for it. Be tolerant with newbies. Answer the same question 10 times in one day. Who cares? It's not the end of the world. Relax and enjoy the ride.

Anyway, I'm getting on my high horse a bit here and I've got a lot to do (plus the kettle's just boiled) so I'm going to stop here before I end up with a mamoth post (it's big enough already!).

If you agree with me, fine. If you don't, fine. I'm not in charge, I don't make the rules, I just see it as I see it. Take it or leave it. Everyone has a part to play in this site, but everyone has to remember that if they have got their staff head on then they are best staying at their own site and not coming here as they are not staff here but just the same as everyone else.

i agree with that there.. but i still try as best i can to hunt down for what "i've seen" or imagining would be here as im sure im not alone in the 'need' of a hack or answer..

Yes..

you know when i had submitted some time ago a ticket with ASO, before it submitted my request, i guess it wrapped the keywords in the ticket text area and presented me some possible topics which might have helped me.. guess what? one of them did help.. hence no ticket being submitted (canned help).

so.. they can come to vb.org click the new topic as freely as they normally do, but when they click onto post it; they are presented a search of results which match some content of their post and then they must click like 'no this doesnt help' and then the thread is posted. this would be ONLY for new threads

I'd also imagine this might be a big task and maybe huge resource hog kind of hack??

But, this would cause then great reason to get the knuckles out and lash the n00bs :)

just my thoughts..

Lenny :)

hmmm, i don't have to big of a problem,, sure sometimes there is something I haven't found with a little searching. but, 97% of the time I can find the answer without asking..


I've almost been here one year and it seems the same today as it did when I joined up :ermm: good or bad..

Hello,

I have been a member here for almost 2 years now. I can also say that things have changed. I feel that most of the problems I have seen stem from new users not reading anything. They tend to just post questions wherever they want.

I myself am tired of visiting the site only to see "new releases" that are nothing more than some user posting a question as a release. It completely defeats the purpose of having a forum structure when the new users aren't using it.

I understand the frustration that alot of the users have displayed recently.

Threads being posted in the wrong forums is so frequent now, I decided to just add my response in my signature. Its THAT frequent and THAT annoying.

My first post :)

read this and had to have a say ;)

the search on here is kind of a nightmare when looking for things.. altho with some time u do find wat u wer looking for... but it can be annouying at times :(

but remember.. thers never a stupid question.. just stupid answers ;)

My only complaint is how many people have left the vb.org community with their hacks for 3.0. It's really frustrating seeing so many great hacks for 3.0 but completely no support for them in 3.5.x; I actually regret upgrading one of the forums from 3.0.x that I did because half of the hacks that we wanted to use aren't 3.5.x compatible, and now we're left begging in threads for someone, anyone to take their knowledge of 3.0 and 3.5 and converting the necessary install files. And it's not like we're talking about people taking the time on their own and not being paid for it. I know in one thread, there were multiple people saying they're so desperate for someone to just take the time and create a database install file and an AdminCP file for 3.5.x (templates and the main .php file has already been converted from 3.0 to 3.5.x so people that already have it installed from 3.0 can run it on their 3.5.x sites, but no one can do a fresh install) that they'd gladly pay for someone to do it for them... alas unanswered. That's my only complaint, of course this coming from someone that doesn't know the beginnings of where to start when it comes to coding PHP and vBulletin.

The biggest problem here is that everyone is crying about SOMETHING ... for god sake ... stop the violin (playing in the background) and start being productive!

You need something done / upgraded / etc ... put your request in the SERVICE REQUEST forum and hire someone. Yea, it really is that simple. If you only have $10 to spare then don't come crying here for support. Everyone here is a volunteer; everyone here has a life!

You want to change the attitude around here ... well let's start with you. That's right I said YOU. :ninja:

Be helpful! Stop spamming the site with etc, etc...

You get the idea.

It's the same ole' song playing over and over again.

Go ahead spam this post with something productive ... you won't get a reply from me.


BEER DISCLAIMER: This is just a general observation and I thought it was time to speak my mind.

i am still steadfast in my opinion that you should not be modifying a board if you do not even have knowledge of the language it runs on. some people who have been administrating bullentin boards lately do not even know simple web languages such as HTML. also these new users do not even read forums or their descriptions and have an attention span of someone with a severe case of A.D.D. they can barely wait for something to develop, it either has to be what they want or its 'garbage'. i frankly find them rude. i actually have stopped posting "wrong forum", i just report it now. what happened to the big message at the top of the release forums that said "THIS IS ONLY FOR HACK RELEASES, DO NOT POST QUESTIONS." anyways that is my opinion, continue on.

[high]* Guest210212002 thinks Princeton should try the search. ;)
[/high]

/applaud, well said.

As far as requests going ignored, one trend I've seen more lately than before (I've actually been a member here for almost 3 years, just a new S/N), is that people don't take the time to even properly format their questions.

"iwant to make vb pages work wit template wut shud i do??????"

I'm not an expert, but I've run vB sites for about 5 years and I know my way around the templates fairly well. 50% of the time, unless it's something quick, I ignore posts like that. Call me a grammar nazi, but if people can't take the time to type their requests in a way that I can read them, I'm not going to spend 10 minutes looking for an answer.

Additionally, any time I post a question (and I do, quite a bit), if I figure out a solution, I try to make a habit of going back and editing my post with the fix, so that anyone else searching will see my answer.

.2c

The best thing to do to defeat this is to politely paste the thread they may be looking for and move on. There are PLENTY of times when I do a search and can't find what I am looking for in other forums, or if I don't get an answer that is specific to my question. My members do that also, "Do a search!", without even knowing whether they did or not.

Just my .02

Agreed.

If someone can take the time to reply with "Search on this", they should back up the fact that the search would actually be helpful by posting a link.

It's the nature of the internet unfortunately. Sometimes people just like to be rude to one another. :\ For a perfect example of threads that make me say "My goodness, what a bunch of jerks", take a look at some of the comments in Danny.VBT's myspace hack thread. It's full of people with no code experience insulting him because their free, beta hack isn't working/finished/etc. It's disgraceful.

And since we're playing the honesty game, I cannot understand why this is tolerated at all:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....64&postcount=6

I think the changes are simply due to more people coming to this site. Quite a few of them, like many at other places on the Internet, seem to think that the whole site exists solely for their benefit.

I try and be nice and helpful when it comes to supporting my hacks, but I'll end up answering the same question 3-4 times in a single thread. A few times I've gotten questions that were actually answered in the install instructions, not to mention the people that basically want me to redesign their site for them. If you're not to take the time to learn HTML or download a WYSIWYG editor, you shouldn't be changing the templates! I don't know how people with more popular hacks can take it sometimes.

This is because you are looking at it from a different POV.
It's really annoying to have to answer to the same question for the 10th time.
It's really annoying to try to explain to someone who doesn't even know what "upload the X file to the Y directory" means.
It's really annoying to be bugged by IM or PMs for support.
It's really annoying to read people reporting bugs that don't exist because they didn't read the instructions.
It's really annoying to read feature requests that are already in the product
It's really annoying to hear things like "how do I make a link in HTML?" by a forum admin! Gosh, someone is supposed to know some things before starting his own forum!!
And the list goes on and on and on...
Wouldn't YOU get mad???

(In fact I am mostly calm in such situations but some times I really wanted to swear to the person :p)

Quite right.

I think the point is not that people should be forced to endlessly answer pointless questions, merely that the way things are said has beome rude.

If you think someone should have read the thread before asking, what's wrong with saying:
As opposed to what we currently get, which tends to be:
With the best will in the world, faced with these threads with 500 replies, it's likely people might miss the odd post or two even if they DID read it.

Good thread Mark.

I see a lot of this going on now a days. Someone already mentioned the questions in release forums so I will extend on that.

Often I will open a reported post only to find a few people have already replied to it. Most of the time the thread looks something like this:

OP:

Reply #1:

Reply #2:

[high][/high]

Reply #3:

The odd thing is out of all three users that replied to the thread most of the time none of them sent the post report I followed. The ones that do report post simply do not reply, or they point the user to the correct forum and answer OP's question (knowing the thread will soon be moved anyway).

I understand people hate support requests in the release forums. I understand that some users don't know how to code and drive coders up the wall sometimes. I understand some people are new and are just trying to understand how things work.

With a mixed bag like this things are never going to room smoothly. But I think you will find if you make an attempt to be nice to each other you will be able to work together. :)

I recently asked a question about a problem I had with AndrewD's great "Links and Downloads Manager" mod. His support thread is huge - but yes I did read through the thread before I asked my question, yet still I *missed* the fact that someone else had asked the question and a solution had been posted but all someone did was provide me a very polite response with "It's answered in post X". Being rather used to forums it wouldn't have bothered me if someone had said "moron it's already been answered" but I found the reasonable response very helpful and surely if this is meant to a community supporting vBulletin hacks and the like helpful responses are what people should be aiming for? Therefore if you can't post a useful or helpful answer why bother to post something that isn't useful or helpful?

What might be very useful would be to allow the hack coder or the person who provides the support to somehow "collapse" parts of a long thread? I've noticed that some threads will be very long and a lot of it will be problems that have been solved in the latest versions of the hack so a way of hiding a range of posts that only refer to previous versions would help everyone looking for an answer to a current problem?

Another suggestion - what about vBulletin.org adding one the auto-link systems to the forum so that when someone types in "It's a phrase called "New_hack_words" the word "phrase" auto links to a FAQ or at least brings up a definition? That would help new people get up to speed with the jargon used here?

I second this :)

Yes indeed. I'm quite sure I could cut a lot of old & duplicate posts from some of my hack threads if I had the ability. Alas, unless your hack(s) get a premium forum, this isn't possible.

I know it isn't the best way of doing things. But if you send me a private message I can "prune" a thread for you if needed.

Please provide as many details as you can, thanks. :)

maybe a great feature to add would be the STICKY POSTS,... author of the thread/hack can then stick some great posts that have answers, and they appear firsts in the thread... we can even add some style to them, so they are colored in red or something...

A kind offer but it's not really practical for me to makes notes to pass onto someone else, that would be two/three times as much work for me, a load of extra work for you, and no doubt it would need revising a few times due to errors etc.

My own view is that there is no need for new rules, procedures, protocols etc. All that's needed is for people to be nice to each other. Users need to be respectful of the fact that hack authors have busy lives and can't always help with every little problem, and hack authors need to understand that some people don't understand php fully. I don't, for example, but I have learned some basics over the years, But we all have to start somewhere.

Additionally, neutral people who are not the hack author need to stop posting rude things in threads where people ask for help.

In short....BE NICE! Even if you can't help or don't want to help, be nice about it. It costs nothing.

what i see, and what i tried to avoid lately, is the reaction of old members that are bored by all these newbies asking questions all over again... they start flaming each time someone create a thread in the wrong place - i know i've done it myself...

point is that these members - and i received a lot of pm about this, are bored of the innaction of some moderators that wait days to move threads that spoil their forums... sometimes i even see applauses from some members that are happy that a thread is deleted because OT...

the search engien is a trash, we all know that, but each time someone try to find something and there is no result, he:
1- post a request in the releases
2- post a request answered already in the request forum
3- post a complaint in the Feedbacks telling the search is a mess...

... i think that 50% of the convivial problems will be solved when the 3.5 version of vb.org will be set and working... and that trash of search engine fixed...

so this is Public Relations only...

and yes, i think there was hundreds of complaints about upgrading this board, it's the first time that it goes that far, and for a reason.. this is not only for upgrading and have the real upt-date version, but to fix horrors like the search engine... and some other lame complaints.

if you can't deal with a non-upgraded board, why continue visiting here until it's done? why continue spoiling discussions like this one to tell what all know?!

Public Relations / Public Communications is not always the best in any forum or community... there are some leaks here like everywhere else... so be patient, or simply do something else during the wait...

-- you can even try to overtake the board, you will have a lot of time to do it, without talking about the search engine!

I was not around here years ago, so I can't reflect on how things were back then compared to now. But here is what I thinks going wrong to some degree from my own experience.

Some people are still running vB 3.0 boards and have not chosen to upgrade to vB 3.5. Or maybe there running two boards using (vB 3.0 and vB 3.5).

Because of this - people are still looking for support answers for vB 3.0 hacks. But it seems very few authors now who created these vB 3.0 hacks are willing to support them anymore with the introduction of vB 3.5. So there are problems arising because of that for starters.

Another thing I see quite often is plenty of hacks being released for vB 3.5 with little backup in some cases. As soon as the hacks released there advertising it as un-supported right from the off. This is problematic because later down the line people are finding bugs as expected and the hack is not supported. Other coders seem un-willing in most cases to help support these hacks they didn't create (which is understandable for a few good reasons).

For example, they might be working on there own hacks and don't have the time to help support another persons hack. Or maybe they feel the author should have added support it in the first place better and don't feel it's there place to step in and take over.

These are just a few things I've taken notice off. And with the possible new category being created were people can sell hacks. My guess is most good coders are gearing up now for this to happen, concentrating on creating paid hacks for the future. And are now slightly more un-willing to support free hacks like they may have done before.

I must admit I do get frustrated sometimes when I see a good sounding hack released, then read the whole thread before choosing to install, only to find people asking for fixes (which are un-answered). This puts me off installing the hack. And personally, I think we see this same situation all to often.

This is certainly true, but there's a reason many people are in this position.

3.5 offers virtually NO additional features to members. However, many of the simpler 'tweaking' hacks have not been ported, such as smilies in quick reply and quote highlighted text. People like myself are not prepared to go to our members and say we've upgraded the site, you get no new features and in fact you'll lose features and have a worse board!

However, whenever we ask for these hacks to be ported, we are met with responses such as 'tell your members to get real and deal with it' or 'tell them to do without and get a life'....either that or we're totally ignored time after time.

If anyone thinks responses like that are helpful to anyone they need their head examining. I for one am not prepared to put years of hard work at risk to perform an upgrade that I neither want nor need.

This brings me back to the point of my original post - people in my position (and I'm not exactly a newbie at this) are left high and dry because we are largely treated with contempt by the experienced coders. And it will gradually put people off. I know it is me.

My community is successful because I never lose sight of the fact that it exists for the benefit of the members, not for me.

There's also a simple reason many authors no longer support 3.0 hacks as well - they have upgraded to 3.5 - so no longer have a 3.0 forum.

Also if someone wants to port a 3.0 hack to 3.5 we have to get permission fro mthe original author, and if the original author cannot be found then we are not allowed to. I fidn that ridiculous. There needs to be something coders agree to when they release their hacks here that say "if I mysteriously leave and someone wants to port my hack to a new version they can". I ported a hack that had like 30 installs. It is a nice hack; but I can't release it because the original owner just disappeared.

look at this persons attitude HR3rdGen
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?p=879085

started here
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=82930 post #458 and on

can we say ignorance ?

some may not have said anything about/against him simply because they want his myspace profile layout, but this is the type of poster that may have prompted this type of topic discussion



my 2 cents