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WTF?!?
Surely he should be saying "About fucking time!!!"
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=437401.msg3070667
:whistle:
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I think folks would have been more appreciative had this release really been worth something. The bug fixes are not that huge, no new features, so really, the big difference is that the team won't be issuing updates as big upgrades any more, which they could have done anyway...
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http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=437328.msg3071132#msg3071132
:niark:
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http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=437328.msg3071132#msg3071132
:niark:
On another note, where did this 'Gold' thing come from?? Is it officially going to be called SMF 2.0 Gold?? (If so, that's a fail right there!)
Posted: June 12th, 2011, 06:26 PM
I think folks would have been more appreciative had this release really been worth something. The bug fixes are not that huge, no new features, so really, the big difference is that the team won't be issuing updates as big upgrades any more, which they could have done anyway...
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No, it's just 2.0.
Gold is a technical term originating from the earlier days of media where you create the single master copy and for CDs at least (and quite possibly vinyl), the master was on a gold disc to protect it from wear versus the duplicates made. Once something 'goes gold', it means the master copy has been produced from which all distributed copies are made.Exactly, the way people are talking you'd think there was something new, almost as if they think all the problems with their forums are going to be solved with this release, which of course they are not!
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No, it's just 2.0.
Gold is a technical term originating from the earlier days of media where you create the single master copy and for CDs at least (and quite possibly vinyl), the master was on a gold disc to protect it from wear versus the duplicates made. Once something 'goes gold', it means the master copy has been produced from which all distributed copies are made.
Once the sycophants die down, you'll see people start realising that.
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That's what I thought, but I think the Lemmings are going to expect the word 'Gold' in the footer!
It's almost worth NOT deleting my account over there just to see what happens!!
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Don't need an account to watch ;)
That's my account gone then, 2005-today! :eheh:
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If you want a laugh, and see how not to do it, http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=436504.0
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Don't need an account to watch ;)
That's my account gone then, 2005-today! :eheh:
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If you want a laugh, and see how not to do it, http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=436504.0
I will certainly be commenting in the morning!
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I don't see any point deleting my account there. Even if I don't use it too often, that will give me the chance to express my opinion if I want to.
For example, I moved from Mambo to Joomla in 2006 and stopped using Joomla too a couple of years later (when they had problems with the bridge between Joomla and SMF) but I still have my accounts there.
I don't use them too much now-a-days, but if I ever want to say something there I can do it.
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For me it's a way to break with the past. I won't be needing the account, I have nothing further to say, and even if I did, no-one appears to be listening to what I'm actually saying anyway. For instance the last couple of comments from Brad and Flamer regarding my less than wonderful view about contributions... it's really simple, in a volunteer environment, you volunteer for things to do. They're not assignments, they're things you've indicated you're going to do. If you say you're going to then don't, you shouldn't have taken it in the first place.
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The way you were involved with SMF and the way they treated you is completely different to the way I have been involved or have been treated.
I suppose if I had ever been so committed myself to work for the community and they had done to me half of the things they did to you I would be VERY VERY angry, but they couldn't really tell me anything wrong as I have never been a part of the team there (apart from the translation team).in a volunteer environment, you volunteer for things to do. They're not assignments, they're things you've indicated you're going to do. If you say you're going to then don't, you shouldn't have taken it in the first place.
After I wrote the anti-spam mods I feel a kind of obligation with the people using them. Most of them (99% at least) are normal users with no relation at all with the SMF directive. It's not their fault if I don't agree with the directive. They are just people with spammers in their forums who trusted me to help them fight the spammers.
I will love to tell all of them "You want a forum free of spammers: Forget SMF and upgrade to Wedge" but I cannot do that yet. Maybe after Wedge is ready my account in SMF will be no use for me any longer, but in the mean time I need it to sort bugs in those mods and to answer the people with problems in the support topics.
===========
[side note]
You may have noticed I have been using the word "upgrade" in the last week every time I talk about changing from SMF to Wedge. It implies the idea that Wedge is not a competitor of SMF, but a superior version of the same codebase.
[/side note]
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It implies the idea that Wedge is not a competitor of SMF, but a superior version of the same codebase.
I don't disagree with the other points you've made - and until 2.0 final came out, I still felt a little obligation to those people who were totally innocent bystanders.
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It started out that way but it's become clear over time that it's going to be so much more than simply a better version of the code. There's whole new ideas being introduced, not so subtle changes of mindset.
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Yes, but the evolution that brought Microsoft to the point of Windows 7 also came out of changing of mindsets - notice that, for instance, we don't have a bar of icons+text with a bar representing each application... W7 wasn't just gloss on top of an existing mindset, it moved the goal posts from the previous 15 years of Microsoft development. I want us to move the goal posts from the last 6 years of SMF development.
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Totally agree. That's why I wrote 98 and 7 in the example. Both OS are coming from the same place but they are very different because they have changed a lot of the ideas (goal posts). If I had put Vista and 7 in the example it wouldn't have been the same, as they only sorted there all the things they have being doing wrong in Vista (bugs) and only a few new ideas really.
But W7 is not a competitor of W98. It's just a lot better system (an upgrade).
If for example I tell you that I prefer Ubuntu to any Windows OS (as I do) then I am talking about a competitor.
Anyway I suppose I should have forgotten already about it, but I cannot stop thinking about the time when they told me to erase the link to Wedge from my signature in SMF because "it's not legal to put links to competitors in your signature". ;)
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I have to say a little too. I know I usually stay silent on the potentially controversial matters. :eheh:
I see the same thing with the innocent users of SMF. The userbase will remain strong no matter how great Wedge becomes, and unfortunately, the biggest majority of those forum owners have no concept of what happens behind the scenes, and most really wouldn't care if they did. They simply want their forums to work, and in the case of snoopy's mods(all mods actually), they want help in keeping the spammers out. I look forward to seeing Wedge in operation myself, but I doubt I will ever completely leave SMF either. I have no ambition to be on the team, but I do want to help out on the support boards when I can, simply for the sake that there were those that helped me as a newbie, so I want to return the favor. I see so many support questions that sit and get ignored, so I try to put myself in the their shoes and wonder how that makes them feel. Of course, there are a lot of them that I simply can't help on, so I do not post either.
In your case Arantor, I can fully understand and appreciate your stance. I don't know all the details, but don't need to. I saw enough to know that I would be pissed as well if it were me.
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Let me just add one thing into the equation.
There are a large number of requests that occur regularly, whose cause is simply the consequence of not fixing issues in the design.
Now, there are three things you can do in such a case:
1) Answer people when they ask about it
2) Create documentation so the question is answered once, authoritatively, and direct people to that answer
3) Refine the design so it doesn't need to be explained again
SMF's answer is invariably 1 and occasionally 2, and it's better now that there is the wiki but it doesn't solve the problem, it solves the symptoms - it answers the question, rather than trying to eliminate the need for the question to even be asked in the first place.
For example, Who's Online. How often does the question get asked about that, when admins see people accessing things they're not supposed to, and they start panicking that SMF is broken? Solution 1 happens consistently, solution 2 hasn't happened yet as far as I know, and I implemented solution 3 - if the user got an error, that fact is logged. If they were asked to log in, that fact is logged as well.
Maybe there will still be a question about it but I can guarantee I won't get the same number of questions that would normally come up - because I've taken the time to observe that there is a problem and the time to do something about it.
Another example is the Member Options in Themes configuration. How confusing is that? I haven't yet decided how to approach solving it but I know that breezing over it with a lick of paint as happened between SMF 1.1 and 2.0 isn't the answer. It's beyond unintuitive, and again solution 1 is common, solution 2 is not yet happening thoroughly.
Consider that when helping people, that the team have taken the view that it's better to answer peoples' questions and write documentation than it is to actually solve the problems that emerge. Honestly, it's like a doctor that is only too happy to prescribe painkillers to treat a pain than to investigate what's causing the pain and prescribing treatment for that.
In the discussion that occurred about removing the manual in 2.0 RC5, there were a lot of naysayers about it, and some people pointed out that if the UI were better designed, you wouldn't need a manual. Thing is, that's largely true. People point to things like Google when they want to find a site with 'help' but the thing is, the help doesn't tell them how to do the fundamentals of using it, it tells them how to do clever things or answers questions that have cropped up. (Seriously: how many sites do you know that actively have documentation about how to register on them?)
The bottom line: if you need documentation to explain how the basics work, you really are doing it wrong.
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Off Topic: I must give Snoop some props
I have the Httpbl mod installed on my forums and it has been awesome.
Along with Stop Spammer and the Anti Spam verification questions mod
I don't not have spammer registration issues at all anymore.
Looking around the forum here, have not run across any mention of Wedge using the Honey Pot?
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No, it won't be using the honey pot out of the box but it should be fairly easy to port the honey pot mod (and not require patching for versions!)
There are some anti-spam methods in the core, though.
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Excellent!
I don't use many mods, less than 5 probably
I would say that HttpBl and Stop Spammer are easily the most important and the ones I cannot do without.
Of Course Aeva lite is up there on my fav list also.
I noticed that my Dick Dale Wedge Youtube link properly embedded in another post.
Me likey :eheh:
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As I have already said in a few places before, I don't think we will need to use any of the spammers databases (Project Honey Pot, Stop Forum Spam, Bot Scout, etc etc) here in Wedge.
Check inside the Features list inside the category "Security": http://wedge.org/pub/feats/security/
The security measures already build inside the core of Wedge by Arantor are so strong that I doubt very much any spammer will be able to pass them.
Of course I cannot be 100 % sure about it until we make a live test, so the first thing I will do, as soon as we get a first alpha version of Wedge ready for testing, will be to do a test forum and advertise it in a few spammers sites I know so I will get hundreds (or thousands) of spam-bots coming every day to that test forum trying to get into it.
I will create there a log system to be able to see what they manage to do and what they don't and then I will decide if (as I suspect) the security measures here are enough or if I need to import any of my anti-spam mods from SMF to here.
Of course we all know the spammers are always inventing new bots and looking for new ways of getting to us, so we will need to be also inventing new things as well. The good thing about it is there are already enough brilliant minds here thinking about all the possible problems we may find, so I think we are OK. :eheh:
After saying that, you all know I enjoy very much doing plug-ins and mods and I will like to learn how to build good ones for Wedge, so I may anyway port mod httpBL for Wedge even if I decide we don't really need it just as a practice exercise to see more clear how Wedge plug-ins work.
We will see. :eheh:
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Well, Aeva Lite is already part of Wedge under the guise of Aeva Media fully...
I think the animated CAPTCHA will prove interesting - of course, it's just another tool in the arms race but it'll make a difference, I think!
The plugin interface I'm still building, still deciding a few things about that at the moment, but more on that in due course.
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Well, Aeva Lite is already part of Wedge under the guise of Aeva Media fully
Aeva is already on board here and I like that very much.
Edit: I like the idea of ani captcha.
And you are right, it's just one more tool in the arms race.
It's great for bots, but the honey pot and stop spammer mod combine nicely and weed out situations like this:
A human spammer can still get past a captcha
A member may not be a spammer now but later on.....
Any number of other scenarios involving real humans.
Humans can change behavior at any time.
Had several forum members many years ago that joined, laid low for a while and then began causing trouble.
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Only just noticed the edit :/
Anyway, yes, humans can and do get past the animated CAPTCHA, but add this fact to the calculation: when they're passed to the solving farms where people are paid to solve them, they're paid by the number solved. If it now takes longer to solve them, it erodes the value of doing it.
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...Had several forum members many years ago that joined, laid low for a while and then began causing trouble.
Verification Questions seems to be one of the most effective, and simplest, anti-spammer tools for the reasons Pete said.
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I have a verification mod installed on my forums that ask 5 questions
That stops bots but it's easy for a human to answer them.
These are the 3 mods I have installed on my forums and I find that each one is needed
Anti spam verification - stops bots but not humans
Stop Spammer - pre checks humans in a database
HttpBl - very important for humans and bots
It takes all 3 of those to keep my membership clean.
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Ya, human spammers are the only real problem I have as well and those can get past any reasonable level of verification. The only defense at that point, that is practical, is just having 24 hour coverage of moderators in various time zones so the SPAM gets removed in a timely fashion.
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Anyway, yes, humans can and do get past the animated CAPTCHA, but add this fact to the calculation: when they're passed to the solving farms where people are paid to solve them, they're paid by the number solved.
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Sure there are, though such techniques aren't that prevalent any more, not when you can bulk buy batches for 1USD per 1000 solved. It's idiotically cheap now, such that it would actually be cheaper to do that than to mess about developing your own framework to do so.
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Different site owners have different ideas but I also use Admin Approval.
Someone mention porn..? :yahoo:
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Different site owners have different ideas but I also use Admin Approval
I must approve all members, no one can automatically sign up and start posting.
When I see a member is awaiting approval, the Stop Spammer mod tells me if they are listed in the database or not.
They are checked by Ip, email and user name.
If they are using a dirty IP, or a listing in the HoneyPot, HttpBl will not even show them the registration page.
All honeypot victims get shown the honeypot spiel page.
I run honeypots on all my web sites.
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I am partial to "platinum". Please send jewelry...
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Are you a spammer?
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I am lost on that one? :hmm:
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A comment spammer by the look of his posts (the schools chuck'em out early nowadays)
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No...just a lover of platinum jewelry...and not gold software.
Posted: June 28th, 2011, 05:25 PM
A comment spammer by the look of his posts (the schools chuck'em out early nowadays)
Posted: June 28th, 2011, 05:26 PM
And BTW a user of SMF since like version...before G-d.
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Hmm, nice subtlety : Wedge is like platimum jewelry as against SMF's (puts money in swear box) so-called gold. :)