Suggestions: How to bring vBulletin.org back to what it was before...

[KW802]

MarchoH64,

Did you mean to say "... have now gotten the green light..." instead? :cross-eyed:

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Originally Posted by KW802

MarchoH64,

Did you mean to say "... have now gotten the green light..." instead? :cross-eyed:

Thanks, changed.

[TECK]

Marco, what about this discussion segment?

Originally Posted by TECK

This is a really really really bad optique. Then, I'm not surprised why all good guys resigned recently and all hackers left.
We have paying/non-paying plugins available to sites... I like it simple, no time for my brain to warm it...
Soon, all of you who like the "simple things" will have to pull out all the time your credit cards and pay for the hacks... because they will the only ones who will exist.
You guys push it into this direction, can't you see it?

This is a really important matter, IMO.

I would like to see some comments related to this thread, comming from the rest of Staff also, not only you.
Are you the only person responsible at vB.org, in charge of official/unofficial answers? Where is the rest of vB.org Team?
I see many times mods and admins reading this thread but nobody says a word... Why you don't want to participate in this discussion?
Let's interact, it's for our own good.

Please avoid vague answers, instead tell us what you would like to look vB.org, viewed from your position also.
Being Mod or Admin is not an easy job. This will help the users understand better what you go through right now.

I want to know what you guys like to see changed on the site and how you think is best to do it.
Thank you.

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Originally Posted by TECK

Marco, what about this discussion segment?

This is a really important matter, IMO.

I would like to see some comments related to this thread, comming from the rest of Staff also, not only you.
Are you the only person responsible at vB.org, in charge of official/unofficial answers? Where is the rest of vB.org Team?
I see many times mods and admins reading this thread but nobody says a word... Why you don't want to participate in this discussion?
Let's interact, it's for our own good.

Please avoid vague answers, instead tell us what you would like to look vB.org, viewed from your position also.
Being Mod or Admin is not an easy job. This will help the users understand better what you go through right now.

I want to know what you guys like to see changed on the site and how you think is best to do it.
Thank you.

Ok you asked for it, now you are going to feel the "pain".

We recently had discussions where members of Staff gave their personal opinions. Often these personal opinions where not recognized as such , and taken for official Staff points of view or decission. This didn't help in the discussions, and only fed the "us against them" syndrom some people seem to be suffering from.

In threads made in the Feedback Forum, you will now see less Staff members expressing their personal opinions. The Customer Team is primarly responsible for the Feedback Forum. You will often only members of this team responding. If it is a simple question to which their a is a simple solution, then you might find other staff members also respond.

If a topic is not totally clear it will be discussed by Staff first and an official asnwer or point of view will be given.

This will often be done by either the Customer Group Admin (Danny) or one of the 2 Teamleaders in this team (Amykhar or me).

In many discussions staff will let the members discuss, and then will take a stand based on the member input and the opinions of the staff. If there are considerations that are not brought up in the public discussion, then a member of the Customer Team will often join in on the thread to feed the discussion with these considerations.

This might be too vague for you, but it is the best answer i can give right now.

[TECK]

Marco, probably I'm tired... I coded ASP all day at work, ya ASP.
But I don't see anything, related to my quote, in your answer?

I take as conclusion that you don't have an "official answer"?
I don't care about official answers, I want to hear you, a person, not Staff, what you would like to see changed at vB.org and I would like to see other mods and admins interacting with you in the discussion.

We are humans, not robots... and we can make mistakes if we say something wrong. Hey, I might said some bad things in this thread, but I'm glad to see that people saw only my good intentions and interacted with me.
I'm sure that nobody will judge anyone here, so far in this thread reings understanding and listening, as well the drive to change things towards better.

[MJM]

Hi Teck, much appreciate you beginning this discussion.
I think your answer is in the previous post
.......

I'm very happy to read what has been summed up in this thread and think this is a good day for vB.org.
The moderation rules are great. As a busy admin I just don't have time to get involved in off topic conversation in a thread not designated for this.

- very happy that staff will address their decisions in the way Marco has explained.

- very interested in the development of a paid directory as I will be needing to provide something similar to contributing members at our site and can learn much from how it will be implemented here.

.. and I appreciate that members like myself who have little to offer but ideas based on practical needs can be part of of the development of new mods for vB.

Finally, a suggestion:

Provide a page/link from our vB adminCP crediting all the wonderful people who have conceptualized the the free mods that are now becoming a standard feature in vB.
They much deserve this recognition, and this would make it easier for us to see what else they have up their sleeves.

Keep up the great work everybody!

Cheers,
Mark

[TECK]

Thanks Mark, I will read again the thread when I get home...
I'm tired, my head is spinning a little. Working on a large project for weeks, on the Intranet network.

[EasyTarget]

Originally Posted by tgreer

Now, I can admit that maybe I'm wrong, but none of the reasons I've seen put forth in defense of a private forum hold any water so far. I'm listening, though. Convince me.

Arguments I've already seen:

Rebuttal: Circular argument.

Rebuttal: One-dimensional, elitist thinking. The site exists for more than just hack-distrubution, and releasing hacks isn't the only valid way to contribute.

Rebuttal: Don't read them.

Rebuttal: Good-bye.

Rebuttal: At the expense of the rest of the community; grow-up.

With rebuttals like that its obvious you don't want to be convinced, as you suggest. Only your first two rebuttals were even valid. Why don't you just leave it at you would like the coders forum to be open instead of turning everyone's thread into your personal anti-coders forum soapbox. One post about it was enough, or do you figure the constant annoyance by one person will make up for the lack of support/interest by others?

Now, do you have any other suggestions for the site/thread?

[tgreer]

Oh, I admit, it would be difficult to convince me. I think all my rebuttals are valid: while I can be convinced, I won't be by, well, unconvincing arguments. If you don't agree with my rebuttals, that's fine... I'm open to counter-arguments: let's hear them. If you're going to quote my posts, please don't edit them. Otherwise you're just MIS-quoting my posts.

While I'm the most vocal about this issue, at least in public, I'm certainly not the only one who feels the coders discussion should not be private (or even have been created in the first place). Your assumption that there is lack of support/interest is completely unfounded. Review the initial announcement thread, the thread announcing it was made private, the thread on vbulletin.com, and even this thread.

But I agree with you this far: enough has been said, on both sides of the issue, for the administration to make a decision.

Other suggestions? You bet!

Here's one:

Consolidate the programming discussions. People are very confused about "General Modification Discussion" vs. "Custom Requests" vs. "vBulletin Programming" vs. "vBulletin Discussions" vs. "Programming Discussions", and yes, to top it off "Coders Discussions". With proper moderation, that could all be one forum. There are even modification questions ending up in the Lounge, likely because it isn't clear in which of the half-dozen mod forums it really belongs.

Another:

Create a "beta" release modification section, for plug-in authors who'd like other programmers to review their code, but who don't want it released to the general public. This wouldn't be closed/private, but would have ample disclaimers/warnings, just like any beta software. No one would be expected to ask for or give any support, no "Installs", no nominations for HotM, just programming feedback.

[Borgs8472]

TECK, I've only ever done any programming that's had practical use for my vbulletin sites. I'm a little hurt by your suggestion that vb.org shouldn't be a place to learn HTML.

Vbulletin and message boards are complex products drawing on people managers, moderators, skinners, people to do minor tweaks (like in the HTML), people to do major hacks and plugins, and people who make major additions.

Again, refering to the site's motto, the ultimate vbulletin resource, I like the fact that this site has everything I could ever want (except some paid mods which I barely hear about )

Frankly, if you want some purity of coding and development standards, I suggest you find one of the many coding forums that exists and ply your art there. In the mean time I like a shallow knowledge of php, sql, cpanel, admining, moderating, html, developing, piloting, bbcodes and the whole package that comes with being a vbulletin admin. Not being a dedicated programmer with a cause like it seems to me you are.