Where vB is going wrong

[high]* Guest210212002 thinks Princeton should try the search.
[/high]

Originally Posted by peterska2

stuff

/applaud, well said.

As far as requests going ignored, one trend I've seen more lately than before (I've actually been a member here for almost 3 years, just a new S/N), is that people don't take the time to even properly format their questions.

"iwant to make vb pages work wit template wut shud i do??????"

I'm not an expert, but I've run vB sites for about 5 years and I know my way around the templates fairly well. 50% of the time, unless it's something quick, I ignore posts like that. Call me a grammar nazi, but if people can't take the time to type their requests in a way that I can read them, I'm not going to spend 10 minutes looking for an answer.

Additionally, any time I post a question (and I do, quite a bit), if I figure out a solution, I try to make a habit of going back and editing my post with the fix, so that anyone else searching will see my answer.

.2c

[PowerStroke]

The best thing to do to defeat this is to politely paste the thread they may be looking for and move on. There are PLENTY of times when I do a search and can't find what I am looking for in other forums, or if I don't get an answer that is specific to my question. My members do that also, "Do a search!", without even knowing whether they did or not.

Just my .02

Originally Posted by PowerStroke

The best thing to do to defeat this is to politely paste the thread they may be looking for and move on. There are PLENTY of times when I do a search and can't find what I am looking for in other forums, or if I don't get an answer that is specific to my question. My members do that also, "Do a search!", without even knowing whether they did or not.

Just my .02

Agreed.

If someone can take the time to reply with "Search on this", they should back up the fact that the search would actually be helpful by posting a link.

It's the nature of the internet unfortunately. Sometimes people just like to be rude to one another. :\ For a perfect example of threads that make me say "My goodness, what a bunch of jerks", take a look at some of the comments in Danny.VBT's myspace hack thread. It's full of people with no code experience insulting him because their free, beta hack isn't working/finished/etc. It's disgraceful.

And since we're playing the honesty game, I cannot understand why this is tolerated at all:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....64&postcount=6

[Cap'n Steve]

I think the changes are simply due to more people coming to this site. Quite a few of them, like many at other places on the Internet, seem to think that the whole site exists solely for their benefit.

I try and be nice and helpful when it comes to supporting my hacks, but I'll end up answering the same question 3-4 times in a single thread. A few times I've gotten questions that were actually answered in the install instructions, not to mention the people that basically want me to redesign their site for them. If you're not to take the time to learn HTML or download a WYSIWYG editor, you shouldn't be changing the templates! I don't know how people with more popular hacks can take it sometimes.

[Lea Verou]

This is because you are looking at it from a different POV.
It's really annoying to have to answer to the same question for the 10th time.
It's really annoying to try to explain to someone who doesn't even know what "upload the X file to the Y directory" means.
It's really annoying to be bugged by IM or PMs for support.
It's really annoying to read people reporting bugs that don't exist because they didn't read the instructions.
It's really annoying to read feature requests that are already in the product
It's really annoying to hear things like "how do I make a link in HTML?" by a forum admin! Gosh, someone is supposed to know some things before starting his own forum!!
And the list goes on and on and on...
Wouldn't YOU get mad???

(In fact I am mostly calm in such situations but some times I really wanted to swear to the person )

[Mark.B]

Originally Posted by Chris-777

Agreed.

If someone can take the time to reply with "Search on this", they should back up the fact that the search would actually be helpful by posting a link.

It's the nature of the internet unfortunately. Sometimes people just like to be rude to one another. :\ For a perfect example of threads that make me say "My goodness, what a bunch of jerks", take a look at some of the comments in Danny.VBT's myspace hack thread. It's full of people with no code experience insulting him because their free, beta hack isn't working/finished/etc. It's disgraceful.

And since we're playing the honesty game, I cannot understand why this is tolerated at all:

https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....64&postcount=6

Quite right.

I think the point is not that people should be forced to endlessly answer pointless questions, merely that the way things are said has beome rude.

If you think someone should have read the thread before asking, what's wrong with saying:

Hi. You'll find the answer to your question in this thread, might be towards the start but I can't remember offhand

As opposed to what we currently get, which tends to be:

Did you bother to actually read the thread before asking stupid questions?

With the best will in the world, faced with these threads with 500 replies, it's likely people might miss the odd post or two even if they DID read it.

[Brad]

Good thread Mark.

I see a lot of this going on now a days. Someone already mentioned the questions in release forums so I will extend on that.

Often I will open a reported post only to find a few people have already replied to it. Most of the time the thread looks something like this:

OP:

I've installed x modification and my threads no longer work

Reply #1:

Wrong forum!

Reply #2:

[high]

* Brad shouts wrong forum newbie

[/high]

Reply #3:

I hate it when people post questions in the release forums!

The odd thing is out of all three users that replied to the thread most of the time none of them sent the post report I followed. The ones that do report post simply do not reply, or they point the user to the correct forum and answer OP's question (knowing the thread will soon be moved anyway).

I understand people hate support requests in the release forums. I understand that some users don't know how to code and drive coders up the wall sometimes. I understand some people are new and are just trying to understand how things work.

With a mixed bag like this things are never going to room smoothly. But I think you will find if you make an attempt to be nice to each other you will be able to work together.

[Darat]

I recently asked a question about a problem I had with AndrewD's great "Links and Downloads Manager" mod. His support thread is huge - but yes I did read through the thread before I asked my question, yet still I *missed* the fact that someone else had asked the question and a solution had been posted but all someone did was provide me a very polite response with "It's answered in post X". Being rather used to forums it wouldn't have bothered me if someone had said "moron it's already been answered" but I found the reasonable response very helpful and surely if this is meant to a community supporting vBulletin hacks and the like helpful responses are what people should be aiming for? Therefore if you can't post a useful or helpful answer why bother to post something that isn't useful or helpful?

What might be very useful would be to allow the hack coder or the person who provides the support to somehow "collapse" parts of a long thread? I've noticed that some threads will be very long and a lot of it will be problems that have been solved in the latest versions of the hack so a way of hiding a range of posts that only refer to previous versions would help everyone looking for an answer to a current problem?

Another suggestion - what about vBulletin.org adding one the auto-link systems to the forum so that when someone types in "It's a phrase called "New_hack_words" the word "phrase" auto links to a FAQ or at least brings up a definition? That would help new people get up to speed with the jargon used here?

[Lea Verou]

Originally Posted by Darat

Another suggestion - what about vBulletin.org adding one the auto-link systems to the forum so that when someone types in "It's a phrase called "New_hack_words" the word "phrase" auto links to a FAQ or at least brings up a definition? That would help new people get up to speed with the jargon used here?

I second this

[Paul M]

Originally Posted by Mark.B

With the best will in the world, faced with these threads with 500 replies, it's likely people might miss the odd post or two even if they DID read it.

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.