[Revan]

Originally Posted by tgreer

Define "newbie"? I'm an experienced, professional programmer, have been for many years. I'm new to vBulletin, yes, but not PHP or SQL, or web development in general. There have been several times when I've done a web search for a vBulletin topic/question, been directed to the archived Coders Discussion, come here to find I couldn't access it. In one such instance, I had to PM someone from the archive thread (who, it turns out, was very helpful; they just didn't read the "other" sections to know I had a similar question).

I define newbie as a person new to PHP/MySQL, or with such limited knowledge of said languages that vBulletin context provides a bigger confusion than standalone code.

Originally Posted by tgreer

I would turn your question around: what discussion in the private, hidden coder's forum, needs to be private and hidden? The question about which function detects spiderbots? The link to the sitepoint thread about OOP? I don't see any thread in there that couldn't/shouldn't be posted in a public programming forum.

To take the sitepoint OOP thread as an example, it couldn't be posted in the public "programming forum" because said place is not fit for discussion. That is for asking questions, or so I believe since the "PHP/SQL/HTML" forum has been eradicated in the latest forum restructure.
Now I am fairly certain that the coder posting the link (I havent seen the thread in question) didn't have some form of newbie question (read above definition) regarding OOP or that thread in general, and therefore it is only natural to assume that said coder wanted to open up a discussion amongst his fellow coders regarding what the article states and whether or not any coders planned to implement some of the strategies in said thread.

Originally Posted by tgreer

You assume that people who don't release hacks here are "newbies" and thus couldn't fathom your code. That's ridiculous. That forum should be closed and all of the threads moved to the "Programming Discussions" forum.

I find this offensive. Your assumptions of my thoughts or meanings are not only completely off the mark, but they also try to make me look bad. Please refrain from making such assumptions in the future. If you have any questions about some of what I write, don't be afraid to ask.
Now let me clarify: I don't give a shit if a member is a PHP developer (ie. deleveloping the actual software) or has 20+ years on his back in the computer business doing PHP and all other forms of web coding with or without vBulletin. If the member does not care to contribute to the community, I see no reason why said member should be allowed to partake in discussion between contributors. Not to mention the fact that the Coders Discussion forums can be used to discuss security vulnerabilities in one of the coders' hacks; information at least I would not wish to be disclosed to the general public. As an example, Alan-CIT yesterday helped me fix one such vulnerability in one of my hacks, and while this did not happen in the CD forum, it very well could have.