Lack of Designs in SMF?

[vbgamer45]

It's active they just find minor things to change. I really just want them to wrap up and get a release out. There will always be minor bugs and things to improve. I rather have more updates/releases than none.

 

[Deprecated]

2.1 does make some modding easier with more hooks etc. but it's about 5 years late.

I've "hookified" most if not all of my mods, including the original mods on the mod site that weren't hooked. The feature is alive and well in 2.0.15.

Perhaps 2.1 adds new hooks, but there is nothing to stop any modder from modding in their own hooks, or copying new 2.1 hooks.

I'm pretty sure all my mods that aren't trivial are now hooked. And their snotty site denied their members my upgraded mods.

I'm pretty sure I had 23 mods before I deleted them all, one of them held back for a security report that IMO was specious.

 

[Deprecated]

It's active they just find minor things to change. I really just want them to wrap up and get a release out. There will always be minor bugs and things to improve. I rather have more updates/releases than none.

Hey 'Gamer! You are or were pretty hot in the ranks of the modders too! You did some pretty good mods!

IMO the devs are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

 

[vbgamer45]

I am still big in modding just do not like some of the mod site policies so mostly stick with paid mods.
I had the GDPR mod submitted about a month ago no progress yet, no downloads to review. So I just released it on my site instead.

I have asked to work on the SMF mod site no reply, probably the only part i regret leaving the team is wish I had more say. I am a person who gets things done and run multiple companies. I see the issues and could fix them if given the chance. But they need someone really to take control, it is hard now since they have an organization structure but just leaves things to votes/meetings and not much progress. The github development is going well just no some of the issues in the minor releases should have been handled better. Mainly the php 5.3 support issue and login fix for themes.

 

[XinYenFon]

I am still big in modding just do not like some of the mod site policies so mostly stick with paid mods.
I had the GDPR mod submitted about a month ago no progress yet, no downloads to review. So I just released it on my site instead.

I have asked to work on the SMF mod site no reply, probably the only part i regret leaving the team is wish I had more say. I am a person who gets things done and run multiple companies. I see the issues and could fix them if given the chance. But they need someone really to take control, it is hard now since they have an organization structure but just leaves things to votes/meetings and not much progress. The github development is going well just no some of the issues in the minor releases should have been handled better. Mainly the php 5.3 support issue and login fix for themes.

So cute of you to think that they'll reply, they probably opened a topic about it and leave it rot.

 

[Deprecated]

I am still big in modding just do not like some of the mod site policies so mostly stick with paid mods.
I had the GDPR mod submitted about a month ago no progress yet, no downloads to review. So I just released it on my site instead.

I have asked to work on the SMF mod site no reply, probably the only part i regret leaving the team is wish I had more say. I am a person who gets things done and run multiple companies. I see the issues and could fix them if given the chance. But they need someone really to take control, it is hard now since they have an organization structure but just leaves things to votes/meetings and not much progress. The github development is going well just no some of the issues in the minor releases should have been handled better. Mainly the php 5.3 support issue and login fix for themes.

So cute of you to think that they'll reply, they probably opened a topic about it and leave it rot.

Oh so funny. I was admitted to the mod squad, I served my probation, then one of the stick-up-the-arse die hards said to extend my probationary period... just because (evidently) he didn't like me. I told them to shove it and remove me from the mod squad.

They lost a talented modder, if you will excuse my hubris.

My intention was to enforce CRLF/tabs and not changing the source code in any way that fscks up the formatting. Noting that many mods get an LF or tab wrong, and fsck up later mods, or removing earlier installed mods. I wanted to enforce formatting although I never got to express that during my tenure.

If you want an unpaid job that sucks up your time and involves you with sucky people then by all means apply. 'Gamer, your are fortunate that they didn't suck you in.

I got couple hundred $USD contribs for my mods, considering couple thou $USD for time spent. About 10 cents/hour. That taught me that SMF members are leaches. Sure, put them on your website. I applaud SMF Hacks that they offer paid mods. I might even join them one day.

I go where my skills are appreciated. I leave where they are not. I pull my content when I am insulted.

 

[Pete]

But they need someone really to take control,

They then need to let said person actually do things without it being endless debate. Which will never happen.

 

[Pete]

Why is it 5 years late? I see the project on GitHub is kinda active

Because it wasn't never meant to be anything more than a stopgap release where all the big stuff was to be added in 3.0. But all the time they keep doing "improvements" (which often have bugs and things that weren't considered) rather than actually shipping a release, they're just making it look worse.

In the time it's taken 2.1 to be built and get through 4 betas, XF 2 was built from the ground up, and packs more modern functionality. 2.1 might have been modern-ish 5 years ago but now it's just backsliding.

 

[Deprecated]

Oh Pete, you have the SMF devs so nailed down it's amusing! This is the first I've heard of 3.0, but I haven't been on their site in many months. I like getting my info one step removed. I don't visit them any more except to search mods or DL later releases of 2.0.

 

[Pete]

3.0 "Saguaro"? That was talked about a decade ago. There were rumours about 5 years ago of it being an experiment based on the Symfony framework, but nothing ever went beyond someone talking about it AFAIK.

But 2.1 was meant to be a "small incremental release" while the real planning went on for 3.0, and 3.0 was the dumping ground for all the ideas too big or scary to be done in an incremental release.

When I rejoined in autumn 2013, an alerts system (like XF had in 2010) was still too big and scary so I just straight up built it. I figured the pushing back was worth it for a release whose greatest features were "a new theme, draft posts, slightly better features for modders and a new editor". That was 2013. Here we are in 2018 and that same list is pretty much what's in 2.1. Sure, it has <list of minor quality-of-life improvements> e.g. ReCaptcha support, but that's not enough to entice people to upgrade.

As I said at the time for justifying the alerts stuff, an insipid release is worse than no release. Unfortunately I think they misinterpreted what I meant by that...

 

[Deprecated]

Maybe SMF 4.0 is XenForo. What would happen if SMF threw a release and nobody came? I think the good days of SMF are passed. I think they fell on their spears. Hoist on their own petard. Repelled members by heavy handed moderators.

I guess my last straw was when one of the mods who was also a modder got mad at me when I mentioned I might release another mod and move ahead in the #10. She released a mod just to spite me. I deleted all my mods because I got tired of this one-upmanship. Not interested in a tango with the moderators.

You know the devs better than I do. In fact most of what I heard of the devs came from you. I never met any except those who came out and joined in discussion topics not related to next release stuff.

ReCaptcha could be added to 2.0 as a mod if it isn't modded already.

I think they heard your words "insipid release" and shut their ears after that.

It's plain and simple for me. I'm staying on my fork of 2.0. I have about 20 mods on my site, 70% written by me, 20% written by my partner, 10% from the mod site. I usually rewrite mods I got from other modders to suit me. Colorizer is the only mod I ever got that was perfect out of the box. Love it! It's all hooks, no code changes. Highlights your member class e.g. Administrator with the group color. My partner looks cute with her nice orange Manager title.

I might steal code from 2.1 and backport it with mods into my 2.0. I just love Open Source! Our whole server is powered by code that cost exactly $0.00 USD. Take that, Microsoft IIS! I don't understand why there is a single server in the world that runs IIS except the MSFT mother ship. Maybe corporate bean counters think if it's free it must not be very good.

 

[Pete]

I don't understand why there is a single server in the world that runs IIS except the MSFT mother ship.

Two reasons: liability and interoperability. If you're a business, you want someone to be able to sue/be compensated by when critical systems stop working. Sure, there are companies that have business models around doing this for open source, but it's a much harder sell (source: I work for a company that does exactly this around the Moodle platform).

Additionally, if you have a platform that runs on ASP.NET, or you do stuff on C#, or you run stuff on SQL Server (which isn't a bad idea, there are plenty of things it's been able to do that MySQL might catch up to in the next ten years, maybe, if they hurry), IIS is a natural web hosting environment.

There's other stuff - if you happen to be in a tightly regulated industry (think healthcare), good luck getting open source stuff through the regulatory hurdles. Sure, it's possible, but it's *hard work*.

Beancounters don't just look at the cost of software, they look at the cost of implementation - yes, you can get the software for free, but getting people who can muster suitable arcane arts to do things with it costs a bundle more, often by a surprising amount, because getting IIS/SSIS etc. running isn't particularly hard. It's easier to get Windows Server running with IIS/SSIS than it is to run Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP. And I speak as someone who has, only today, been fighting with making this stuff work on my work laptop. I've been doing Linux on and off for nearly twenty years - and I'd still rather admin a Windows server any day.

 

[Mr Jack]

Out of curiosity Pete, you say you rejoined SMF team on 2013. When did you leave it again?

 

[Pete]

February 2014. (You may know me from the simplemachines.org boards as Arantor if that helps any.)

The reason? I first pitched renaming 'Child Boards' to 'Sub-Boards'. This was a multi-page debate between 'we regularly get people saying this is confusing' and 'this is how we've always done it and we see no need to change'. In the end I just did it. I then got accused of overstepping my authority as a developer, because deity forbid I should want to improve the platform.

This also encompassed a point where I was told that my opinion didn't matter, I should build what the users ask for and that because I'm 'only a dev' my opinions are worth squat. Never mind that at the time I was running forums, no, I couldn't possibly be a dev and a user, doesn't happen, doesn't exist.

Immediately after that I suggested a bigger change for 3.0: revamping the recycle bin. It has two major problems: firstly, it's off by default (and making it on by default requires making the installer make and configure two boards) and secondly it's possible to really screw things up (e.g. delete a post, have it move to the recycle bin, delete the original board, observe obtuse error message when it fails to restore correctly)

I suggested instead of splitting posts out of topics, we leave them there and just mark them deleted. Deleted posts could be hidden away except from moderators if they so desire to see them (and then they can see them in context). And for seeing 'all the deleted stuff' a la the recycle bin, have a new area in the moderation panel that lets you quickly find deleted posts/topics.

In short: absolutely no functionality lost, but with much less user confusion, and without weird behaviours. This was also a multi-page debate where everyone was complaining about 'the things we'd lose' despite having every possible function available in just a different place. But there are elements in the team that despise change so much, they will shout down any possible improvement in favour of the status quo.

I then realised that it was a waste of time trying to move things onwards. Between 2014 and 2017 I did some help, argued with people who were determined to tell me that things were impossible to fix (you remember 2.0.14 that broke logging in for custom themes? I was told it was impossible to fix what was changed without editing themes, so impossible that I knocked up a mod in about 15 lines of code that fixed both themes and mods e.g. SimplePortal in one go. But yeah, sure, impossible.)

2.0.14 was the point at which I realised I no longer trusted the SMF developers, such as they were. I like most of them as people but I simply don't trust them to build anything robust any more. I tried to bring in changes throughout 2017 from 2.1 into StoryBB and in the end gave it up as a bad job.

 

[Deprecated]

Two reasons: liability and interoperability.

Thanks for the explanation Pete. Yeah I guess I sort'a understood that on some level. And they got their MSCEs. MSFT can look a lot different from a PC user than as an IT professional. I made my bones on LAMP (with fantastic, unselfish help from a good friend who is also amateur IT) and living and breathing LAMP (now LNMP: Ng

inx) you get accustomed to the way things are done. What I can't do though is have physical access to my server. I'm not sure if my server support staff could image me to a later version of Debian, although they could always mount my 2TB as a second HDD over a nice SSD imaged with Stretch, Buster, etc.

I worked as a HW/SW/FW developer/engineer for a medical devices company where LAMP would have never worked, and worse, all our stuff had to be HIPPA. Talk about regulation!

The reason? I first pitched renaming 'Child Boards' to 'Sub-Boards'. This was a multi-page debate between...

Right there is enough explanation what's wrong with the devs. In this topic you can't be a dev and a user {forum operator}. In another topic I can't be a user and a seasoned forum operator. "Must be some kind of newb if none of his members threatened to kill him yet."

The fact that they would have such a huge discussion of such a piddly thing is very telling. The true answer is that it never mattered what you called it, and if you change it now it will confuse the forum operators. I think I can laugh and cry at the same time.

You left SMF because of brainless dev leaders and/or team. I left SMF because of brainless moderators. I see a parallel here, and when I add it all up it amounts to the whole damned SMF thing is brainless. Too bad, they had a nice open source software, until they "hired" enough smart people to ruin it. Most excellent pay to. You get to shoot your mouth off and push devs and members around. The people who are running the project are killing it, and it's forum operators who are the victims.

I'm sure those who can afford it are switching to vB or XF. Sometimes free software written by volunteer labor is worth exactly what you paid.


Here's a question: Do you think 2.0.15 will be the last 2.0 release? I'm wondering now if they aren't progressively ruining 2.0 too. I guess I'm already forked and I can stay forked. Maybe see if there are any security fixes and mod them into my fork. As far as I'm concerned, 2.0.15 isn't broken, so why fix it?

 

[Pete]

It depends if another security issue is found, really.

It also presumes they don't convert the create_function calls in Subs.php to closures (already done in 2.1) for 7.2 compatibility. If they do, things will likely go wonky because bbc mods won't update so quickly and the act of doing it is not immediately obvious.

Every 2.0 release isn't broken until someone finds a way to break it.

 

[Deprecated]

I'll read the 2.0.16 release notes carefully and maybe diff the code. If nothing alarming is found I can put up a test forum and see if it breaks my mods. If it does I'll track down the security fixes and write a mod for them.

I wonder if the mod squad would approve such a mod...

 

[Bigguy]

An RC version is at 96% complete now. So I hope in the next few months it may be released....I hope.

 

[Pete]

So that's 96% of a list that will change over time, if history continues to be carried out.

 

[Deprecated]

/me chortles @ Pete's comment.