MyBB Hacks

@Lich_king2:

May i correct your sentence a little bit :

"Sure. Half of issue and complaints about MyBB, from kids unwilling to pay for them, are because of paid plugins. I'm not the only one.".

You have to know that more than 90% of the MyBB active forums members are kids...

Now if you consider mature users using their forums for something else than fun, i never saw any complaints from them. I can tell that they are always searching for professional developpers to give them what they need and are happy to pay for it.

Now if MyBB make believe that they will give everything to you for free and are not developping the proper plugins themself and do not support them throught time and version changes, you cannot blame external developpers to supply the people in need with paid development.

If we would not be there, then those users would simply leave MyBB for any other forum application that would suite more their needs.

Can I just make a point about the unapproving threads things.

Sometimes when a thread is unapproved (I'm not saying this applies to all of them), multiple people have reported it or raised concerns about it, because it's turning into a flame war and people are handing out personal attacks, so we close it and give warnings if necessary. Then, the people involved or those who reported it are happy. But then people come out saying it shouldn't have been unapproved, all the stuff people are saying here. OK, thing is, if we didn't, the people who reported it would complain that we're not doing our job. So what do we do then?? There are some people who say we should moderate less, be more lenient, let more things go, ban less, warn less. However there's other people who say we should moderate more, be stricter, let less things go, ban more, warn more. So then what the hell do we do?? This isn't just me going "boo hoo, no matter what we do we can't win", I am being completely serious. Every action we take will satisfy one group of people and anger another. Let's just say for a moment we did exactly what people here want, say we didn't unapprove/close threads as much etc, everything you want, I can pretty much guarantee that before long a different set of people would start saying that we're being unprofessional by moderating less than what they deem necessary, as opposed to you thinking we moderate more than what you deem necessary, and that undermoderating is damaging our image, as opposed to you thinking overmoderating is damaging our image. On more than one occasion there has been a thread saying we moderate too much and a thread saying we moderate too little, in a single day.

So what do you do in that situation??

(07-18-2010 05:12 AM)Lich_king2 Wrote: [ -> ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISXiFJS9D5A This video is exactly the type of MyBB behavior.
@Pirata Nervo: Yeah but not if the bulletin board authors request that you remove them from your site, because he could say that you're hurting his intellectual copyright.

You're wrong. MyBB 1.4 is GPL and I can do everything I want with it. I can sell it for 1 billion dollars as long as it's still GPL. I can do it and you can't do anything against me as long as I respect the license. The same applies to extensions to GPL software, I can still sell them if I want to as long they remain GPL and you can't do anything. MyBB can get me to remove all my plugins if they want to but since they're moving to LGPL it doesn't make much sense.

(07-18-2010 06:29 AM)MattR Wrote: [ -> ]Can I just make a point about the unapproving threads things.

Sometimes when a thread is unapproved (I'm not saying this applies to all of them), multiple people have reported it or raised concerns about it, because it's turning into a flame war and people are handing out personal attacks, so we close it and give warnings if necessary. Then, the people involved or those who reported it are happy. But then people come out saying it shouldn't have been unapproved, all the stuff people are saying here. OK, thing is, if we didn't, the people who reported it would complain that we're not doing our job. So what do we do then?? There are some people who say we should moderate less, be more lenient, let more things go, ban less, warn less. However there's other people who say we should moderate more, be stricter, let less things go, ban more, warn more. So then what the hell do we do?? This isn't just me going "boo hoo, no matter what we do we can't win", I am being completely serious. Every action we take will satisfy one group of people and anger another. Let's just say for a moment we did exactly what people here want, say we didn't unapprove/close threads as much etc, everything you want, I can pretty much guarantee that before long a different set of people would start saying that we're being unprofessional by moderating less than what they deem necessary, as opposed to you thinking we moderate more than what you deem necessary, and that undermoderating is damaging our image, as opposed to you thinking overmoderating is damaging our image. On more than one occasion there has been a thread saying we moderate too much and a thread saying we moderate too little, in a single day.

So what do you do in that situation??

As you can imagine, I was not referring to that kind of threads. Even I have participated in threads were I could not find any flaming and it got closed just because the moderator didn't want it to be open.

Edit:WHen I said "MyBB can get me to remove all my plugins if they want to but since they're moving to LGPL it doesn't make much sense." I meant that because my plugins are not GPL.

(07-18-2010 06:55 AM)Pirata Nervo Wrote: [ -> ]As you can imagine, I was not referring to that kind of threads. Even I have participated in threads were I could not find any flaming and it got closed just because the moderator didn't want it to be open.

What about just in general then. How do you propose we keep everybody happy when some people want more moderation and some want less??

@MattR :

First, i would respond that you have to choose which audience you want to keep on your MyBB support forums, is it the kids or the mature members?

What is the main purpose of a technical support forum?

If you finally make a choice, you will never be divided in the way you should interact and moderate.

Mostly because ludic and serious cannot go too well together in the same place as well as 13 year old and 35 years old...

I can understand your chalenge, but the problem was running for so long that i understand that you would try to save the goat and the cabage. Unfortunately you will have to sacrifice part of your audience and i hope that you will not keep the kids, because the future of MyBB would be quite impaired of this choice as well as all developpers around it making it more interesting to mature users.

Homogeneous things are easier to manage than too many disparate things, experience come with time, when fair rules are provided it is more easy to apply them. But when each staff member interpret the rule differently or if a staff member abuse of his autority things can explode and leave unforgettable damages.

Just for example : The scamming thread posted by Jesse S. having the sole purpose to protect other users against a scammer selling free product against the license description of the script author was deleted. Deleted without even telling the thread author that it was deleted and why. Do you consider this good moderation or good management?

I am quite sure the thread in question was deleted solely because Bob Jansen was implicated in it, trying to protect the scammer in question and accusing the victim of beeing "stupid"! The motive behind the deletion are quite evident, the method used is quite inacceptable. Covering fellow staff members tracks by deleting a thread created to PROTECT users is outrageous.

Like i wrote before, it is not easy to moderate with good conscience and have 100% of the users happy with it, but there is quite a margin between this and what is actually happening on MyBB recently!

Sincerely,

Exdiogene

P.S. May i politely remember you that i eagerly wait your answers to my two PMs!

(07-18-2010 06:57 AM)MattR Wrote: [ -> ]

(07-18-2010 06:55 AM)Pirata Nervo Wrote: [ -> ]As you can imagine, I was not referring to that kind of threads. Even I have participated in threads were I could not find any flaming and it got closed just because the moderator didn't want it to be open.

What about just in general then. How do you propose we keep everybody happy when some people want more moderation and some want less??

I guess exdiogene's response explains exactly my thoughts too.

(07-18-2010 06:57 AM)MattR Wrote: [ -> ]What about just in general then. How do you propose we keep everybody happy when some people want more moderation and some want less??

Nobody likes "Goodbyes" but when its time to say good bye to a certain crowd... It can be rather a new beginning and a time to clean up the act over at MyBB. The kids are in the back of MyBB and are playing PSP or there chit chating about eating humans!!!
  
MattR, do you NOT think it's time for a Change or new Direction????

Indeed its time to say good bye to the old ways of MyBB. I dont believe there is any other way. This is looking at it straight into the futur!

Yes, MyBB is free and more and more kids are coming. I'm not saying it's a bad thing if they're mature enough to be part of the MyBB community (notice that people don't need to be part of it just because they use the software!) but when kids are not mature enough to be part of the MyBB community, they just should not be welcomed, otherwise mature people and adults (even though not all adults are mature) will leave and maybe move to something else. That is what will happen and since good PHP programmers are usually not kids, you can't expect any good plugins if the mature developers leave.

WOW.. Tons of drama and i am not involved.. lol

Couple of things..

I see nothing wrong with developers under 18 HOWEVER i do think the team needs some balance and thus would advise seeking some older people be it just for a PR liason. Sorry but that is a must. I believe this is why we have threads such as this. Many young people don't get/understand why alot of what goes on at MYBB looks foolish/unprofessional to those who are older and vice versa.

I also think MYBB would be better served with having moderators to moderate so the developers/support people are not put into these kinds of situations. Not saying that support/developers should not interact with the rest of the community forums but i think moderators should be doing the moderating. Plus this crap becomes time consuming for support/developers who could be giving support/developing rather then having to deal with stuff like this so often.

So, if I get you right, being member of FOSS community equals to being mental sick? Sorry those guys contributed a lot to the software freedom.
Oh and Pirata: Yeah but that means that anyone that gets your plugin can redistribute them for free since they are under GPL license