Where vB is going wrong

[Brad]

Originally Posted by Paul M

Yes indeed. I'm quite sure I could cut a lot of old & duplicate posts from some of my hack threads if I had the ability. Alas, unless your hack(s) get a premium forum, this isn't possible.

I know it isn't the best way of doing things. But if you send me a private message I can "prune" a thread for you if needed.

Please provide as many details as you can, thanks.

maybe a great feature to add would be the STICKY POSTS,... author of the thread/hack can then stick some great posts that have answers, and they appear firsts in the thread... we can even add some style to them, so they are colored in red or something...

[Paul M]

Originally Posted by Brad

I know it isn't the best way of doing things. But if you send me a private message I can "prune" a thread for you if needed.

Please provide as many details as you can, thanks.

A kind offer but it's not really practical for me to makes notes to pass onto someone else, that would be two/three times as much work for me, a load of extra work for you, and no doubt it would need revising a few times due to errors etc.

[Mark.B]

My own view is that there is no need for new rules, procedures, protocols etc. All that's needed is for people to be nice to each other. Users need to be respectful of the fact that hack authors have busy lives and can't always help with every little problem, and hack authors need to understand that some people don't understand php fully. I don't, for example, but I have learned some basics over the years, But we all have to start somewhere.

Additionally, neutral people who are not the hack author need to stop posting rude things in threads where people ask for help.

In short....BE NICE! Even if you can't help or don't want to help, be nice about it. It costs nothing.

what i see, and what i tried to avoid lately, is the reaction of old members that are bored by all these newbies asking questions all over again... they start flaming each time someone create a thread in the wrong place - i know i've done it myself...

point is that these members - and i received a lot of pm about this, are bored of the innaction of some moderators that wait days to move threads that spoil their forums... sometimes i even see applauses from some members that are happy that a thread is deleted because OT...

the search engien is a trash, we all know that, but each time someone try to find something and there is no result, he:
1- post a request in the releases
2- post a request answered already in the request forum
3- post a complaint in the Feedbacks telling the search is a mess...

... i think that 50% of the convivial problems will be solved when the 3.5 version of vb.org will be set and working... and that trash of search engine fixed...

so this is Public Relations only...

and yes, i think there was hundreds of complaints about upgrading this board, it's the first time that it goes that far, and for a reason.. this is not only for upgrading and have the real upt-date version, but to fix horrors like the search engine... and some other lame complaints.

if you can't deal with a non-upgraded board, why continue visiting here until it's done? why continue spoiling discussions like this one to tell what all know?!

Public Relations / Public Communications is not always the best in any forum or community... there are some leaks here like everywhere else... so be patient, or simply do something else during the wait...

-- you can even try to overtake the board, you will have a lot of time to do it, without talking about the search engine!

[MRGTB]

I was not around here years ago, so I can't reflect on how things were back then compared to now. But here is what I thinks going wrong to some degree from my own experience.

Some people are still running vB 3.0 boards and have not chosen to upgrade to vB 3.5. Or maybe there running two boards using (vB 3.0 and vB 3.5).

Because of this - people are still looking for support answers for vB 3.0 hacks. But it seems very few authors now who created these vB 3.0 hacks are willing to support them anymore with the introduction of vB 3.5. So there are problems arising because of that for starters.

Another thing I see quite often is plenty of hacks being released for vB 3.5 with little backup in some cases. As soon as the hacks released there advertising it as un-supported right from the off. This is problematic because later down the line people are finding bugs as expected and the hack is not supported. Other coders seem un-willing in most cases to help support these hacks they didn't create (which is understandable for a few good reasons).

For example, they might be working on there own hacks and don't have the time to help support another persons hack. Or maybe they feel the author should have added support it in the first place better and don't feel it's there place to step in and take over.

These are just a few things I've taken notice off. And with the possible new category being created were people can sell hacks. My guess is most good coders are gearing up now for this to happen, concentrating on creating paid hacks for the future. And are now slightly more un-willing to support free hacks like they may have done before.

I must admit I do get frustrated sometimes when I see a good sounding hack released, then read the whole thread before choosing to install, only to find people asking for fixes (which are un-answered). This puts me off installing the hack. And personally, I think we see this same situation all to often.

[Mark.B]

Originally Posted by Gary Bolton

I was not around here years ago, so I can't reflect on how things were back then compared to now. But here is what I thinks going wrong to some degree from my own experience.

Some people are still running vB 3.0 boards and have not chosen to upgrade to vB 3.5. Or maybe there running two boards using (vB 3.0 and vB 3.5).

This is certainly true, but there's a reason many people are in this position.

3.5 offers virtually NO additional features to members. However, many of the simpler 'tweaking' hacks have not been ported, such as smilies in quick reply and quote highlighted text. People like myself are not prepared to go to our members and say we've upgraded the site, you get no new features and in fact you'll lose features and have a worse board!

However, whenever we ask for these hacks to be ported, we are met with responses such as 'tell your members to get real and deal with it' or 'tell them to do without and get a life'....either that or we're totally ignored time after time.

If anyone thinks responses like that are helpful to anyone they need their head examining. I for one am not prepared to put years of hard work at risk to perform an upgrade that I neither want nor need.

This brings me back to the point of my original post - people in my position (and I'm not exactly a newbie at this) are left high and dry because we are largely treated with contempt by the experienced coders. And it will gradually put people off. I know it is me.

My community is successful because I never lose sight of the fact that it exists for the benefit of the members, not for me.

[Paul M]

Originally Posted by Mark.B

This is certainly true, but there's a reason many people are in this position.

There's also a simple reason many authors no longer support 3.0 hacks as well - they have upgraded to 3.5 - so no longer have a 3.0 forum.

[TruthElixirX]

Also if someone wants to port a 3.0 hack to 3.5 we have to get permission fro mthe original author, and if the original author cannot be found then we are not allowed to. I fidn that ridiculous. There needs to be something coders agree to when they release their hacks here that say "if I mysteriously leave and someone wants to port my hack to a new version they can". I ported a hack that had like 30 installs. It is a nice hack; but I can't release it because the original owner just disappeared.

[hiiped]

look at this persons attitude HR3rdGen
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?p=879085

started here
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=82930 post #458 and on

can we say ignorance ?

some may not have said anything about/against him simply because they want his myspace profile layout, but this is the type of poster that may have prompted this type of topic discussion



my 2 cents