Where vB is going wrong

[davidw]

I'm just tired of reading all the profanity in these forums. I've reported a few posts, but it doesn't do much good because it doesn't prevent future incidents.

[jilly]

Originally Posted by Michelle

EXACTLY!!!
It really gets on my nerves to see a forum admin that doesn't know how to upload a file or some basic HTML. How do they expect to succeed then??

There's something called a learning curve. I know several admins who started forums knowing NOTHING about html, css, templates, coding, etc. They learned as they went along.

Why be so harsh on people who are on their way to learning? Why assume, automatically, that new people are lazy and selfish? When I first came here in 2002 I knew almost nothing about coding, and several of the 'smarter' members here were very kind and polite to me, and helped me out, and I was very grateful. A little kindness and patience goes a long way.

[TruthElixirX]

Originally Posted by jilly

There's something called a learning curve. I know several admins who started forums knowing NOTHING about html, css, templates, coding, etc. They learned as they went along.

Why be so harsh on people who are on their way to learning? Why assume, automatically, that new people are lazy and selfish? When I first came here in 2002 I knew almost nothing about coding, and several of the 'smarter' members here were very kind and polite to me, and helped me out, and I was very grateful. A little kindness and patience goes a long way.

That is me. I knew nothing when I came into this. I thought I did; but I didn't. But I learned. I read books and studied. I'm by no means an expert on PHP but I can figure some stuff out.

I think the problem is people wanting to be walked through it instead of being helped to learn it.

[Talisman]

I have to question the comment made here that vb.org should be for advanced admins only. Is it really necessary to promote such an elitist position at a forum created for the purpose of sharing hacks and coding advice with fellow board owners?

Originally Posted by Talisman

I have to question the comment made here that vb.org should be for advanced admins only. Is it really necessary to promote such an elitist position at a forum created for the purpose of sharing hacks and coding advice with fellow board owners?

Not at all. But something to the tune of X posts to be able to post in the hacks forum at the very least would be nice - even if it's only something like 15.

[Regs]

The whole point really of having plugins and such in vB 3.5 is so that one doesn't need to be an advanced admin...

I also agree with the poster who said hiring a rep for Jelsoft here fulltime would go a long ways in really getting this site to realize it's full potential.

Here's my suggested steps:

1. Hire a new rep for Jelsoft here
2. Expand the staff and cull staff members that haven't done anything or been here for long stretches of time.
3. Institute rewards for coders and their plugins
4. Stop the habit of closing threads when 1 poster gets out of hand - give them a warning and a .org time-out
5. Somehow change the coders vs non-coders caste system here. It really does inhibit any sense of true community if that is one of the goals of the site.
6. Hire a coder for a full month to get this site upgraded once and for all. Not a slag, yes, it takes time for people who have a real life, but the site just seems so outta sync with the rest of the vB world.

Cheers,

~Regs.

[Lord Angelus]

Originally Posted by jilly

There's something called a learning curve. I know several admins who started forums knowing NOTHING about html, css, templates, coding, etc. They learned as they went along.

Why be so harsh on people who are on their way to learning? Why assume, automatically, that new people are lazy and selfish? When I first came here in 2002 I knew almost nothing about coding, and several of the 'smarter' members here were very kind and polite to me, and helped me out, and I was very grateful. A little kindness and patience goes a long way.

I definitely fit into this. When I started working with forums I knew very little. I still know little, kinda. I know what I learn from trying out the things I want to do on my forum or webpage. On a scale of Beginner to Advanced, I'm definitely at least a Beginner.

I've looked around at the number of threads with people asking for help(My previous posts have been asking for help) and it really doesn't seem like help is being offered. Reading the thread and searching work, but it's also as effective as the person's ability to find the right keywords to search for. You wont always get results related to what you want. And of course, if a person lazy or looking to get right to the answers, they'll skip that process entirely.

Personally, I couldn't find the specific help I needed from reading the originating thread(all 15+ pages of it) for what I was doing, if asking for help a few times(With quite a bit of time in between each attempt) doesn't get me anything I no longer feel too inclined to bother asking further.

[Cap'n Steve]

There are thousands upon thousands of sites where you can read tutorials and ask questions about PHP, HTML, MySQL, etc. This is not one of them. I'll be happy to answer questions about my hacks (although attempting to find the answer before asking would be nice), but I'm not here to redesign your site for you.

[Revan]

Originally Posted by jilly

There's something called a learning curve. I know several admins who started forums knowing NOTHING about html, css, templates, coding, etc. They learned as they went along.

Why be so harsh on people who are on their way to learning? Why assume, automatically, that new people are lazy and selfish? When I first came here in 2002 I knew almost nothing about coding, and several of the 'smarter' members here were very kind and polite to me, and helped me out, and I was very grateful. A little kindness and patience goes a long way.

Those people shouldn't extensively modify their hacks with other people's code then.
The introduction of plugins helped make installs easier, but I beleive the main reason was that they wanted to make upgrades easier and support still valid without too much hassle.
Im not trying to be elitist, but people should really try to learn themselves before asking questions, which isn't the general mentality of some members. I learned this lesson 2 years ago when I asked about a while() problem and got no answers. I decided to learn for myself, which has served me well ever since.

when we buy a first car, we're supposed to have licenses... at least. even if we don't have much experience, because it's our first car, we have to learn how to drive it... we follow a course for that...

managing a software we don't know is the same... even if i was already a coder before trying vbulletin, i read the main Docs of the software to know what was inside, and where to search if i had bugs with the existing system...

actually, everybody that buy vBulletin doesn't care about reading the docs... they just think that buying it make them powerful over a team of coders that are paid for their interests...

the image of vBulletin.org is one of those sites where clients have freelancers to their wills... i've had many of my first clients here that thought they did not have to pay me for special requests because they paid 160$ for their software and that was enough...

this have to change... and i'm quite sure nothing will be done for that... so this is completely useless to debate that kind of thing.