[amykhar]

I think a lot of problems with angry .orgers could be solved if we came up with some rules of etiquette that are community enforced (politely) more so than mod enforced. (I have no stand on the advertisement of paid hacks here. I think it's Jelsoft's site and they can do what they want with it.) I am more concerned about the burn-out and disgruntlement that this site can cause.

The coders are a minority here. I did the math once, and fewer than 4 percent of this site's users have ever released any sort of mod. Another slightly larger minority helps out in the threads and answers questions on mods they did not write.

A large majority of the users are silent. They don't click install, they don't post for help, they don't post period. They are starting to be one of my favorite groups

Another minority of users is very vocal, unfortunately. And it is them that are causing the problems. They don't read before they try to install. When they run into problems, they scream that the code doesn't work. They never admit to the fact that they messed things up. They install more than one mod at a time - badly - and end up with errors that they don't know the cause of. They post new threads for their questions instead of posting in the mod thread. They don't read the support thread to see if their question has been answered before posting.

It is these users who make it no fun at times to release code. I am not in the software support business. I wouldn't be if you paid me. That's why I don't write commercial mods. I do some custom work on the side, and those users get my best efforts until things are to their liking. But, code released here is me sharing an inspiration or idea with fellow coders. It is not a shrink-wrapped release.

So, if we can get the vocal minority to behave, I think you all will see the release of more mods. You will see developers like me not get so irked that we don't share our improvements and code changes.

It is a pain in the patoot to package up code for release - even with the product system. I am willing to do it because discussing code gives me pleasure. I am not willing to do it to satisfy a mob's demand for it. This is why my updates and feature additions are so slow. That vocal minority sucks all the fun out of releasing anything for the community.

Hence, the need for some rules of etiquette AND the need for the community to help support those rules.

I would never presume to make those rules. I think they should, of course, include the site's official rules. But, they should also be more. When somebody sneezes, we bless them because it's polite. Not because it's a rule. I think we need some of those polite codes of behavior here.

We need a way to civilize that very vocal minority and let them know that if they want to participate here, they are going to have to act like adults and not 12 year olds who forgot their morning Ritalin.

Otherwise, more and more developers are going to burn out and more and more mods won't be ported to newer versions of vbulletin. Or, the mods will start to cost you money. I strongly suspect that y'all lost the cash and shop mod because of burnout. I know for a fact that I haven't been motivated a drop to do any major modification updates and releases.