[sabret00the]

This is an interesting thread, i especially found it interesting where it was noted some people would like to be paid for their hard work. you know at vb.org you can easily pay the coder in kind via for example helping out with minor issues in a release thread or if a hack is actually bringing in traffic or helping you in a major way it wouldn't hurt to pm them for their paypal address. ultimately i'm finally about to upgrade my site and as a result i have a couple hacks that are ready to be released such as the groups commune (blatant plug), however i know that with it's release will come feature requests, bug reports and all types of other time consuming stuff, not to mention i'd personally like to recode it anyhoo. coding is very time consuming, supporting hacks/modifications is even more so and ultimately it does not pay at all. you get people +++++ing because an unrequired phrase is missing and talking about professionalism, it's a joke sometimes.

all in all, i try and help as much as possible. i try and help more in the coding forums but the system isn't very accessible to me and the type of help i'm able to give in short amounts of time, i've pleaded on several occasions to improve that and my requests fall in death ears. i do not want to help someone asking about css because it's not my forte and i'll probably give bad advice, i do not want to do vBulletin option/plugin help because i'm not running the latest version. I can however give advice on PHP related problems all day long.

As for in a hack thread, if i have the time to sort out problems i will, if not i can't, i guess there should be a global switch to turn the support tick off. all in all everyone has to remember that with the maturity of this community the needs of the coders have changed, most of the core group of coders have grown up, some have moved on and some are still here, however i think 90% have more responsibilities than 2/3 years ago and while it was nice to be able to sponge and spend copious amounts of freetime in dedication to mods and stuff then, it's just not like that now, we have bills, the efforts we make are great ones no matter how minor they seem on the outside.