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

[TECK]

Originally Posted by gio~logist

They don't care what code is behind it. Even if they did, they can always resort to the plugin itself.

People used to care about the code and they were proud to learn and post their own hacks after. It was their moment of glory, as Reeve of shinra said in this thread.

Originally Posted by gio~logist

I highly doubt that releasing hacks again with 10-50 steps for an installation will help in any way to change vb.org's atmosphere to a positive one.

I totally agree with you, Giovanni.
The Staff must find something to replace the lack of interest that started to govern among hackers a while ago. basically, they are the ones who generate traffic at vB.org site.
I personally don't see anything else, beside code based discussions, that will attract hackers back.

So let's post some constructive solutions.
We are here to discuss them, not only to agree or disagree to certain people.
What do you think it should be done? Let us all know.

Thanks.

Originally Posted by MarcoH64

In the past vB.org Community consisted for a big part of people who where either a Coder or someone who wanted/needed to learn coding at some level. The active part of the community where communicating because they shared the same interest, or where forced to be interested if they wanted to run their boards how they wanted. This gave a common topic to talk about.

Nowadays Coders or people interested in coding are by far in the minority. Also a big number of the non-coding part of the memberbase has become more interested in receiving help/answers/solutions that don't require much effort from their side. All they want is a simple and direct answer to any question they ask. Also because they mostly don't talk the "same language" as coders anymore, you will get more and more misunderstandings or failures to communicate with each other. I think coders still want to communicate, and even want to help out people who don't know much about coding, but if 99% of the posts are not "interesting" to read/answer, their input will often be reduced over time, simply because they don't have the feeling they belong in this conversation. Or simply because there are nowadays so many posts each day, that they get overwhelmed, and stick to only reading/replying to those topics they find interesting.

Very good resume, Marco. Glad you are aware about vB.org biggest issue, IMO.

[tgreer]

There are people who wish to code their own plugins, rather than release them for the public. There are people who wish to learn the vBulletin source code, for their own reasons, not with releasing plugins as a goal. There are programmers who wish to speak to other programmers about vBulletin development, without releasing a plugin as a goal. There are people who wish to have design/coding discussions, who don't use any of the plugins here. There are people who could provide valuable insight into coding, PHP, MySQL, xhtml, css, graphic design... who don't want to release plugins. If vbulletin.org is to grow, it has to stop being one-dimensional.

[TECK]

Right on the dot, Tgreer.
All the events you listed above were done in the golden days, on a daily bassis. Any regular can confirm it.
However, this interest is gone now. Now, what people care more is why the "plugins" are not released for VB3.X, instead of asking/understanding why they are not working.

[Freesteyelz]

Originally Posted by TECK

What if I'm a newbie and I want to learn? Why would you outside me from the speciffic discussions?
As a matter of fact, we used to encourage newbies to learn so our hacker community grows stronger.

I like your statement here very much. The only way to successfully evolve and survive is to share the knowledge with one another. A great suggestion which can be found in this thread speaks about a program consisting of Mentors. Having such a program will be a positive for our community.

[Christine]

When I started posting here right after Chen opened the site, I spent hours upon hours pouring over the Help Me Finish forum. I learned so much about working with vBulletin that I can't even say. Remember the days before template conditionals?

I am not saying things should go 'back' per se -- as noted, back in the day, we were all hunting through thousands of lines of code to find that elusive undocumented function call we needed to write hack X. Good grief, I wrote a persistent Mark Forum Read for v3 that was 18 pages of instructions when printed -- 14 php files had to be hacked. LOL!!

Why didn't I release it here? Well, because of life and work, I didn't want to support the repeated questions by people who couldn't be bothered to read the well documented information -- or the thread itself.

So -- you can count me in as being part of the problem. Rather than dealing with it (and mostly a lack of time), I have only released things that are so plug-n-play that no one even needs to think to load them up.

I credit this as part of the problem you are mentioning, and no one to blame but myself. If I had more time and patience -- I would love to go back to the collaborative efforts of the Help Me Finish forums.

That said, with the software evolving as much as it has today -- most of the core hacks are already accomodated in the core release. What I end up doing is basically modifying things that are so unique to my own needs that I don't release them as most wouldn't find meaning in stuff like adding the sort on userid to the approve members list or adding the sort on usergroupid to the PM stats review.

Sorry this is so long -- just wanted to note that I know where you are coming from. I cut my teeth here back then as well. I also know that with the evolution of the software -- things change, needs change, and while my board is highly hacked -- it isn't the same kind of major functionality, team effort required stuff like back then when we didn't even have a workable PM system.

Originally Posted by Reeve of shinra

phpbb or ubb would release some mod or include some feature that vbulletin didn't have and being the proud types that we are - we rolled our own and tried to "one up" them in the process. It was competitive fun.

edit: that reminds me of another thing. Requests were more simplistic in the vb2 days. Karma was just an integer that was incremented or decreased by a button... today, people are expecting someone to replicate myspace for free. Thats an educational issue and we should do a better job of establishing expectations.

^^ Agreed...

[Freesteyelz]

Originally Posted by MarcoH64

it is ok to look back at our history, and try to take all the good parts from it. However it is in my opinion not possible to simply say let's turn back time, because then we had so much more fun, with such a changed memberbase.

Nice statement.

------------------------

Originally Posted by gio~logist

I highly doubt that releasing hacks again with 10-50 steps for an installation will help in any way to change vb.org's atmosphere to a positive one.

On the issue with hack-types: I love the plugin system. It really does simplify the installation process. Now I come from the UBB days where we hacked every .cgi and .pl file. That's how it was and I didn't question.

I appreciated the fact that to customize my board I had to get my hands dirty in the process. Many of the users felt the same way, novice to veterans. The process of hacking forced you to learn and gave you the motivation to expand your skill level.

When I came to vB I was amazed how different this software is to UBB. I was surely overwhelmed, like many here who've purchased vB without having a clue on how it worked. It was my UBB background, getting my hands dirty, that helped me sift through vB's routines to create and to modify.

The plugins are awesome but unless you look through the codes you won't benefit from it. You have a hack but didn't come out more knowledgable. Template hacks and hacks in general that require manual changes help in the long run because it provides an opportunity for users to ask questions, fix problems and apply the codes themselves. It also strenghtens authors' PR skills and patience. While we can benefit from all hack-types, sometimes the old-school methods do have its place in the growth of a community.

[d8tabyte]

I am pretty new here in comparison with all of you, but I know forums, and I know communities. Why sit around moping, whining about those who left and the new changes? What you need to do to make it like the old days, is take some personal responsibility.

You guys have a great community here, but the more you try to hold on to those who want to leave and the old ways, the faster this place is going to fall apart, like sand through your fingers. Let it go - move on and shoulder these ideals together - march on and rebuild the foundations that have broken and you will find that it was you all that made this community what is, not just those who walked away.

Every thread you post on this matter helps to destroy this community, not fix it. These conversations are better had behind the curtains by those who can make a difference, not by the general mob.

Just my opinion - and sorry if I step out of bounds giving it.

[Gio~Logist]

Originally Posted by TECK

People used to care about the code and they were proud to learn and post their own hacks after. It was their moment of glory, as Reeve of shinra said in this thread.

I totally agree with you, Giovanni.
The Staff must find something to replace the lack of interest that started to govern among hackers a while ago. basically, they are the ones who generate traffic at vB.org site.
I personally don't see anything else, beside code based discussions, that will attract hackers back.

So let's post some constructive solutions.
We are here to discuss them, not only to agree or disagree to certain people.
What do you think it should be done? Let us all know.

Thanks.


Very good resume, Marco. Glad you are aware about vB.org biggest issue, IMO.

Your ability to be so open minded is very much appreciated and that is what vb.org can use. We have those that are so set on how things used to be (i love how things were two years ago as well and would love the atmosphere to be the same, but understand that things change) and we have some people that are so set in their own ways that they don't put the effort for change. Being open minded and open to suggestions is what this site needs.

I personally only started coding because of this site as well and a lot of my customers that i get now are from this site. Those who chose to learn and expand their horizons with this site will make it far, yes. However, otherwise.. we cannot force people to learn. Therefore, trying our best to make this site more of a learning process for users is not to easy.

What this site can use it a better GUI and setup. A hack database is not just a separate page with a query pulling up hack forums and excluding them on the forumhome. The hacks deserve a better GUI, the install system should be more integrated to make users actually want to click the link, and something should be given to the people who contribute to this site (whether it be a coder or designer). Not saying give give give, but a few perks will lead to motivation. And the further integration of the install system will lead to more motivation as well because then people will actually click install and some coders will enjoy that and competing more and such. I think that we should have things a bit more code/design oriented. We have hack of the month, that's nice. However, how about coder/designer of the month? What about even a mod of the month? Motivation and dedication is all that's needed. Once that is put fourth, the rest will fall into perspective.

[Paul M]

Am I missing something ? We already have a mod of the month.

[cheesegrits]

Here's an oxymoron:

Do you really think a hacker will care that you like only plugins, being lazy to edit 2-3 lines of code in the actual VB files?

... and ...

3. A team of vBulletin programmers should be assigned for the site maintenance only, it should not be a burden for administrators to edit and upgrade every time to the latest vBulletin version.

First you say people are being lazy if they don't want to edit files directly, then you seem to be saying it's entirely reasonable to require a team of programmers to upgrade a vB site.

Why do you think vBulletin has gotten itself a reputation as being an absolute pig to upgrade? And why do you think the authors have gone to such trouble to create the plugin / hook / product mechanisms? Because of all those friendly neighborhood hackers encouraging everyone to merrily hack away on their PHP files, making upgrading a complete nightmare.

If you can possibly code what you need using the upgrade-proof API, you should. And I don't blame the vB authors for trying to encourage you to. If you take those shortcuts, it's not the people who don't want to install your hacks who are being lazy, it's you.

Just my $0.02. YMMV. Etc.

-- hugh