[peterska2]

Another $0.02 from me here (I told you this thread was getting expensive)

I've not been around for a bit, and on easing myself back in again I have noticed that a few of the regulars have disappeared. Is this co-incidence?

BTW, it is nice to see 3.5.4 here now, but I was quite happy with 3.0.7 too, so that really wasn't worth all the complaining because the upgrade didn't happen overnight.

IMO, there are problems here simply because there are people who have been using vB that long that they have completely forgotton what it is like to be a newbie.

It is great that there are people who can rattle off code mods and plugins really fast because they are that comfortable with the code and have used it that long that they know every single function practically off by heart.

It's great that designers are finally recognised, but, speaking soley for myself, writing any code based stuff at all can take hours - if not weeks. Why? Because designing generally doesn't involve touching the php code. Saying that though, I can help where it's something within my knowledge.

With any site that has been around a while, there are always the ones who know the ins and outs of everything to do with it (including modifying it here), but there has to be the new users. This is where a lot of understanding and patience has to come in from the 'old-timers'. Getting frustrated because someone isn't sure what someting means doesn't help, it just causes bad feelings.

It's the bad feelings that are getting to me. Over the last couple of months I have actually considered on numerous occassions removing all my mods from here. I've not been in a position to support them, and have had loads of PM's and emails asking for help with them. Despite putting a notice in my sig and unchecking the supported boxes everywhere, the questions are still coming in. I write my mods then quite often get someone else to have a go at installing them on my test board. I get someone who knows nothing at all about vB to install them simply by following the instructions I give in the install file. I'll help with things like finding the style manager and how to get into the template to edit it, but apart from that I leave them to it. If they can install it, then it's suitable for release.

Generally speaking, I have lots of patience and will help anyone I can. If it's a php question that's been unanswered a while, I'll have a go. I always say that I'm not strong in php and that my solution may not work, but I try. Often someone else then comes along and i my solution is incorrect they will post a correct one. I don't get offended by this, I try and learn something new from it.

One thing that I notice more and more, is that if I ask a question I get answered with things like 'you should know that' and 'search for it'. Now being as I am always answering other peoples questions using search and 9/10 times know the exact terms to search by, I can find this quite insulting. I never profess to being a php coder, so when my questions are php related, I should be able to get an answer and not a page of insults.

I've got to the point where it is quicker and easier to get one of my site staff who is linked with my licence to ask the question for me even though they don't have a clue what they are actually asking. It really is a bad state of affairs when it gets to that stage.

I'm in the limbo period at the moment where support for any of my stuff is practically non existant as I will be moving the support elsewhere simply because I don't apprecaite being told that my work isn't good enough. If it wasn't liked, no-one would have installed it so I wouldn't have wrote anything else. I'm all for feedback, and appreciate constructive criticism, but ripping into someone and giveing a load of abuse is completely unprofessional.

Thats my $0.02 (even if it has taken an hour to do it coz the phone keeps ringing) and hopefully my last words on the subject.

At the end of the day, we are nearly all admins, and we all started out not knowing anything at all. Some people don't even know HTML when they
first start out. I was one of these people. This isn't anyones fault, it's just that people know different things and learn others as they go along.