[Aman]

As the board is new and all the writers of hacks have to move their postings over to the new board and a new version of vbulletin was just released that requires many hacks to be changed, as well as the novelty factor, I would expect a short surge in threads and posts. However, I would be more interested in seeing a longer-term measure of statistics and the comparison of the old hack forum statistics. Keep in mind also that there is a new lounge and general discussion area that would borrow interest from the chitchat forum on vbulletin as some of the biggest posters are interested more in hack development. Moreover, I believe stats on "views" is also very important because many new users of vbulletin may feel they are just learning and so don't have much to say on posts while being very interested in actually reading them.

My argument is that the split in boards may also cause a split in the vbulletin community where basic license holders and advanced hackers are more segregated and so don't benefit as fully as they could from each other (hackers getting less feedback and interest in their code and newbies getting less senior advice on setting up their boards to their full potential).

As I mentioned, I could easily be wrong. However, the logic that the more work and more time required to toggle between two different boards will dissuade people from sharing information and interest between the users of both boards to the level they would if both communities were integrated (with fewer clicks, one registration, and added simplicity), has not yet been shown to be incorrect. I am just saying that the experiment to separate the boards should be monitored closely as the hacks forum is critical to vbulletin innovation and I would hate to loose any percentage of the human resources available to strengthen it. The metaphor I would use is it is as if amazon.com changed their one click shopping to 14 click shopping with really cool features and beautifully designed pages and expected the move to generate more sales. I believe adding more complication, clicks, and work is a recipe for less overall users. But then, and I sincerely mean this, you are all smart folks so I will respect your choice as I am sure it was made analytically and pragmatically. I know that in the end we all just want the best for our favorite board vbulletin and it was in that spirit that I shared my views. Cheers - I do love the new look and feel of the board!