[EasyTarget]

reading through this I get the feeling that the disagreements on living in the past/moving forward are mostly just a misunderstanding of what is meant by each party.

When teck is talking about going back to the old days (correct me if I'm wrong) I don't think he's saying to roll the board back to be like vb version X and to get the same staff, etc. I think he means to make it feel like the old days. (I wasn't here, so I'm going from what has been posted) Make it so new members don't hesitate to jump into a discussion/ask a quesin, where there's a good ration of moderators to members so the moderators aren't over burdened, where respect and appreciation is the common characteristics between hackers and those who click install. Also make it so its easy to find what you're looking for.. Unless I've read this wrong, it seems like these were characteristics of the old .org

And when the mods are talking about change, I don't think they mean (correct me if I'm wrong again) that we need to change from that feeling, but we need to change things in order to get that feeling. The community has grown and in order to capture the feel that everyone is looking for some things are going to have to be done differently.

my personal opinion is that a graphics section is beneficial and that if more attention were given to it that it could thrive as well. I remember that .org was split into 2 websites before, one with styles and one with the hacks. I was new, but it seemed to me that the styles/graphics were pretty active, and I'm accounting this to the fact that there were probably enough people to put time into it.

As far as the paid hacks stuff I kinda hae a different idea than most people I think. I would love to contribute some $$ to all of the authors of mods that I am using, however, I'm using quite a bit. What I would love is for there to be some standard that hackers must meet and maintain and when they do then they all split the pot of donations. So I could donate say $5 a month or whenever I could, and it would be split among those authors who are interested and have lived up to whatever the standards might be. This way you're avoid the commerical aspect of the site while still allowing people to be somewhat reimbursed for their efforts. (I know there'd be lots to discuss and many obstacles to a system like this, I'm just stating what I think is a new approach to the problem)

I think tgreer made some great comments about moderator responsibilities (I'd only add the split function to move off-topic posts, unless the post has offensive content or whatever). If more moderators are needed so that the site can be comprehensively moderated is such a manner, then so be it.

As far as the attitude stuff, maybe more effort needs to be put forth so that new members realize that the hackers aren't employees here, they're doing this for free on their own free time for our benefit. I think its easy to look at this site as an extension of the .com and expect answers and support to unreasonable questions/demands.

As far as the coding discussions, I think if the hacks were put back in the forum database somewhat like they were before then this would encourage more questions and discussions about it. As it is now if I'm looking at hacks and what to make a general question I have to go to a totally different part of the site to do so.. making it less likely that I will.

Regarding the attitudes of coders toward new members, I'm not sure what to say, except maybe what has already been said, that a moderator could kindly/objectively step in. I think part of the problem may be that there are so many new members that we overwhelm the hackers with our questions.. which usually have already been answered, and after answering us back 1000 times they begin to tire of it and that's when the authors start coming across with the better than you attitude. So maybe some sort of reminder, if you have < 25 or 50 posts and you try to make a new post, which encourages you to us to use the search function first and completely read the thread before we ask a question. Also maybe that thread which tells you how to search more effectively can be brought up if they search and get too little or too many results, or if they have a small number of posts or activity level?


sorry for the essay.. continue.