I think I've had enough

[Logikos]

My site is for resource purposes only. There was a demand to have a coding community not controlled by jelsoft, so I made one. The main point of my above post is to show that I'm not competing with vB.org and I would like to help change the way things are around here.

[Oblivion Knight]

Originally Posted by LiveWire

The first thing is turning the hack authors profile into hack authors profile. Here is a PhotoChop mockup of the idea I had In mind. Users who release modifications should get a profile like this.

Attachment 47510

That?s something I threw together. Obviously this is just an idea/suggestion and could room for improvement.

I really like that concept idea..

[Erwin]

Originally Posted by gio~logist

I'm sure a couple of you all new my post was comming as i too have posted a thread like this that got similar posts ... By the way, i leave for about a week or so and you guys start this without me!? Hehe. Anyways, here's my $0.02:

The History?
When i first joined vb back in the 2.3.x days it was all about firefly, chen, etc. From the simple quick reply hack that became beyond popular and already implemented to Lesane's store hack who's concept still holds today, it is obvious that coders have built the foundation and dare i say "backbone" for the vbulletin.org in which we know today.

[HIGH]The Present
[/HIGH]It has become nothing short than obvious that personal vendettas have led to community disputes for a long time now. Like many people here mention, us coders are part of the reason in which users come to vbulletin and the only reason a user would even think about comming to vbulletin.org Also, as someone mentioned, without coders, there would be no vbulletin.org to hold modifications made by us. Without the extra modifications made by us, the expansion and a lot of the already implemented add ons in which our coding has resulted in would not exist. That being non existant means vbulletin being nothing more than an ipb or phpbb or even an ezboard.

The Present Issues
It is obvious that us coders seek just a little bit more in return. If not for the money in which we have made for vbulletin or the optomization in which we have made possible for users to have, then atleast for the time and dedication put into each bit of coding.

[HIGH]Zach[/HIGH] - I believe that you made the statement about coders not making up the community and the users being the blood of this forum. Answer me this question, without us coders, why would users come here? You also made the point of people comming and leaving being a cycle, in regards to that, ask yourself how much faster this cycle has been going as vbulletin.org has gotten older. Need i say more?

[HIGH]Tony[/HIGH] - I agree with you as far as you not showing lack of professionalism by being blunt and atleast attending to issues regardless of the cause or solution (if any). However, at times your ability to be so blunt and at times possibly ignorant has led to a bit of dispute.

My Suggestions
Ask not what your coders can do for you, but what you can do for your coders?

• A hack database - Hopefully all of this anticipation will lead to an actual result. This will allow for a more organized modification thread and way of handling bugs and such, which then will lead to less complaints of users not being attended to.
• A place for commercial scripts to be posted - We help you, why not help us? We are allowed to post the light versions, is having an area to promote or premium version so bad?
• More input and idea spread amongst from all usergroups - It's always coders vs staff vs members i've noticed. If everyone would input and put yourself in eachother's shoes, a relation can lead to a resolution.
• Coder of the month - It's nice to show what hack has been most useful, but why not make it more personal?
• Vbulletin Coder Teams - Lets learn to work with eachother more. Why not form our own development teams and such and have competitions? Perhaps a purpose for a modification can be set and the team who codes and designs it best wins and stuff. Competition creates more work and fun as well as more communication.
• Keep Personal Issues Personal - Pretty Self Expanitory.

The Vbulletin Meeting/Chat
Let it be known that i too (right with Revan), will be going to war if i am not part of this chat . Hopefully my years of experience with vbulletin as both a rookie user to a rather experienced coder will help as far as what i can input and bring to the dialogue. Just send me a pm here or email to gio@dopegfx.com

For a young man you are very wise. I agree with your observations.

As for the hack db, it is being coded, the coder had to take some time off for personal reasons, so let's be patient. In any case, the hack db is not really the root cause of all this I am pretty sure.

[Gio~Logist]

Originally Posted by Erwin

For a young man you are very wise. I agree with your observations.

As for the hack db, it is being coded, the coder had to take some time off for personal reasons, so let's be patient. In any case, the hack db is not really the root cause of all this I am pretty sure.

Thank you for your kind comments.

As for the hack db, feel free to put it in the hands of some coders over here if you'd like. I'd be happy to help out, as i know for a fact that a lot of people are anticipating the release.

[amykhar]

With regards to the liasion status, the general public is not likely to see it in action. I do not think it is appropriate, in most cases, for me to publicly criticize the staff on personal issues. I will comment on board-wide issues, but when it comes to things with one specific staff member, I prefer to discuss issues via pm with the site admins or in the staff forum with the group.

What I try to do is to ensure that staff follows the rules established for the members. For the most part, staff does a damn good job at keeping one another in check. If one staff member becomes frustrated, another invariably steps up and helps calm him down and tries to take over the moderating until the staff member can cool down. A lot is said about the negative things staff does around here, but you have to remember, they do an awful lot of basic forum cleanup - mopping up after misposted stuff and such.

But, I don't want to divert from the topic at hand. For me, the coder's forum solved a lot of the problems here for me. I no longer release code in the release forums because I don't have time to support it. But, I can share stuff in the coder's forum with people who don't need help. This works quite well for me because I don't care about install numbers and such.

[Floris]

About the meeting:

The vBulletin.com staff have meetings from time to time to discuss certain things. These are private meetings and no vBulletin.org or other staff members are invited. This wednesday is another one and I use that oppertunity to address the vBorg-matters. I am getting privmsgs from users that they all want to get invited: NOT gonna happen.

I only personally suggested that I want to address this at upcoming meeting, then recommend to have a meeting with vborg/com staff together, and if needed to invite a few users in a follow up meeting.

[Revan]

Floris, we aren't talking about your vBcom guy meeting. We are referring to a meeting where some "top coders" to quote Scott in this post would be allowed attendance.

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Revan,

Scott said that he would discuss the option of organizing such a meeting with Wayne. I think he posted further on that he would speak Scott at a Jelsoft meeting (wednesday???)

Edit: Oops forget this post Revan, now i misread yours.

[Floris]

The thing being he said 'I think'.. which suggests he was thinking outloud
and he said 2 meetings, not the upcoming one which was already planned before this happened (wednesday). As in my summery .. we take it step by step and unfortunatly this means the community has to wait a bit. Wednesday there's a planned staff meeting for Jelsoft, after which we will know more. I also suspect that a meeting between vborg/vbcom staff will take place. And I can't disagree with Scott that another meeting might be handy where users are invited.

And are invited doesn't mean that people can invite themselves. I will not respond to private msgs. It hasn't even been wednesday yet. Who knows .. maybe we resolve this wednesday.

[sabret00the]

I'll post my general thoughts on all this.

Last time i checked i was an advanced coder however i haven't reallly released anything in a while. mainly due to the fact i don't feel i can test code suffiently without it being run on my live board and until i bring my live board upto speed, i won't have the time to release mods i'm not using. as a result i'm not even supporting my mods at present, i ported what i could and allowed people to build on them. if there was an open source tick box i'd tick it on most of my 3.5.x releases.

While it seems that people don't feel appreciated here, i haven't got a clue about all that, i find users to be a pretty mixed bag anyway, some will promise you donations that never arrive while others will show you the world of gratitude without ever mentioning money. different people show gratitude in different ways.

IMO the problems with vBulletin.org vary. On one hand, there's the fact half the moderators here shouldn't even be mods, whether it's something simple like them being in the employment of Jelsoft, whether they don't post or whether they were appointed using a selection process so advanced, i won't understand it for another fifty years. i'm not saying that i feel anyone here sucks persay, just that i don't feel half the mods need to be moderators. you can look in there forums and to find them seems to be a near impossiblity, being a moderator requires presence and i don't feel the current team for the most part do this.

that said, maybe i'm not the best judge of all of this, my requirements and needs have changed near 180 degrees in the past year. As i see it now, i'm more interested in talking about code, in fact and all things PHP. i spend most of my time reading about people with code problems on the conceptual level and i enjoy it. i thought that teh new coders forum was a great idea, but as Ken mentioned, you can release a hello world script and get access, imo it should be restricted to Advanced coders and should get it's own PHP forum.

I hear people talking about community spirit and what not and you're right it has gone, in my time here i feel like i've had several coding mentors and i've thoroughly enjoyed being taught the little things that make my code nicer an better. one of my best moments in a while was just the other day and the discussion about ctype_digit() vs is_numeric() and in my opinion this is what vBulletin from a coders standpoint should be about.

Instead theres some real segregation, it doesn't really feel like anyone works with anyone else and with several mods on the existing php forum an incredible amount of threads go unanswered there. i spent a while making it my pesonal mission to make sure this isn't the case, but i honestly just felt it was fruitless, especially when you can do all that, go to post an issue you have and wait like a week including bumps just to get an answer.

yes we do have a few mods that suck and yes things could be improved in regards to attitudes around the site. but i feel that the biggest issue here at the moment is that the community in regards to coders doesn't exist. it's not about releasing work, it's about getting coders to want to be here and that doesn't happen, it's not really gonna happen unless some sort of action is taken either. and from my experiences here, there's really not about to be a moderator who's gonna jump up, take the bull by the horns and thread any of the forums into a brighter future. that in itself is a problem.

coders are the be all and end all of this site, whether anyone likes it or not. the amount of moderators that release stuff her is minute, so what is being done to ensure the future stream of hacks? if you want to ensure that the end user has an easy ride then appoint a team to deal with that, but the core of the site IMO should concentrate on making sure the coders are here.