Wedge

Read the full debate. I was actually asked to leave by one member in public, asked by another (non admin) member in private. So after it came to a head, I left. Same as what happened with sm.org, I was actually asked by a team member (who, as I now understand is a team leader) to leave because it brings drama. Newsflash: people who are passionate about what they do, they care about it, and that creates drama because they care.No, but ViennaBBS is more than a theme, right? It's a fork, which means if people use it, it's not just their theme they have to replace if you get fed up with it, it's the entire platform, including vulnerabilities and everything else. Which means when you abandon it, people will have to uproot and move to other platforms, including having adequate converters.

Or it is just a theme that people can move to or from with little real hassle? In which case, go nuts, because when you inevitably distribute it and withdraw it due to boredom, people only have to find new themes, rather than move platforms.Oh, I'm aware of your recent illness. It's just that if you take money from people for something you produce, withdrawing it at no notice and no explanation is beyond unprofessional and it's why I conclude you're unreliable and bordering even on untrustworthy. Brutal, yes. Even when I withdrew the things that I did, I gave a lot of notice to people, I discussed it with those who'd paid for support, and when it closed it was not a surprise. Even then for months after there was an explanation posted in place of arantormods.com.

This is the thing that people seem to forget: I don't know much about you other than what you present online. I've seen the years you put into SMF and TinyPortal and felt pretty strongly about respecting you and the effort you've put in. But the last year or so, you've dithered and disrespected people that looked up to you. What, then, am I supposed to think?Oh, believe me when I say I understand about these things, having recently separated from my partner and having to adapt everything in my life around that face. And while I understand that health and happiness are important (and it was to preserve those in my life I closed arantormods.com), doing so by essentially disrespecting people is not really the way to go. But if you're happy insulting people who respected you, carry on, I mean that's what you're doing here - even after all this crap, I still have respect for your skills, which is why - incidentally - the last skin I made for Wedge was heavily inspired by one of your themes for SMF.There's a mutual incompatibility there: if you're building it for yourself, other people are not going to respect that. They'll want it for themselves and expect you to provide it for them. And if you distribute ViennaBBS as a fork, you will end up facing this incompatibility. This isn't me being a 'know it all', it's looking back at everything you've done - your work with SMF, your work with TP and BlocWeb, time and again you put the effort in and expect to hand it off later or it disappears into nothingness.

The same incompatibility is faced by Wedge, and SMF, and each of them have dealt with it differently. And that's interesting to note how they've independently reviewed the circumstances and come to different conclusions about how they've dealt with it, but I daren't go into what each has done, lest you think I'm somehow saying one is better than the other. Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages, and one is ultimately more community-centric compared to the other's much more cynical take on it.Loudness is relative. People who know the field should be considered more loudly than those who are new to the environment - but both should be listened to. And we do listen to both veterans and regulars. Most of the relative loudness is because the people who've been there and seen it and done it, they've encountered the problems and found solutions. We listened to the problems you raised about how themes don't have so much power, and we took measures to try and solve them, our approach isn't the best out there, but it represents what we consider to be the best compromise between everything, and naturally we want to share those details in case it helps others.

That's the thing, the 'know it all' attitude that I've displayed is actually a reasonably unselfish attitude, it's wanting to provide what I learned so that you can make something better from what I learned. I'm sorry that interfered with your pride, and there is a certain wisdom in making your own mistakes, but consider the alternative: if everyone stopped to make their own mistakes every time, we'd never get anything done because we'd always be continuously reinventing the wheel.

It was out of respect that I wanted to share that information with you, to help you shape things to solve all the issues that had to be solved, not out of some misplaced superiority complex. And the way you reacted, it might as well have been a request to leave, because you made it clear you weren't interested in what I had to say, so if you aren't going to listen to what I am going to say, what is the point of my staying?

Now here's the thing, you're making it clear that you're not going to listen to us, yet you're hanging around here, preaching about how things should be? Do you really have that little happiness in your life, that you claim to want so much, that you have to criticise me for my failings while displaying the exact same behaviour yourself, in some attempt to score some points?

I hope that you're enjoying this, I really do, because the more you continue down this route, the more you reveal how shallow you really are, and how little you really respect those who looked up to you.Except for the blatant hypocrisy in Bloc's rantings? He's calling me out for certain behaviours and carrying each of them out himself, in a textbook case of double standards.

If anything it sounds like he's lashing out to compensate for his own failings. You know, the same way it is the bullied that become the bullies.

Maybe we should move the Like button out of being next to Quote and Modify and put it at the foot of the post (next to where the 'x, y, and z others like this' message would be)

If you're going to argue with me, get your facts straight. I have not joined the forum of any other fork, I was already a member of BlocWeb before that. I'd argue the other points regarding offering advice but I already explained that and it still falls into the fact that you're still too far up your own arse to see what I was getting at. A lot of my criticism of SMF is actually at the fact that too many people consider it "good enough" without stopping to see if it can be improved at all.

As for you distributing ViennaBBS, why is it my business? Well, apart from that fact you do still have good ideas, and competition causes everyone to stay on their toes, I have to consider the strong likelihood that people will use it, you'll abandon it and it'll be SMF, Wedge and others that will have to clear up your mess.

Except that there are a lot of people who actually like having a physical QWERTY keyboard on their phone, for example. Just as there are people who would actually quite welcome that.

Here's the thing: things sometimes stay as they are because no-one thought to improve them, and sometimes they stay as they are because it's reasonably optimised as it is.

Not everyone wants a touchscreen phone, I don't own one, I own a smartphone with basic keys on it, but I know plenty of people who actively use a Blackberry for that reason.


You know what's really weird though? Google+ works how we're leaning towards - you create circles for things, which is a form of groups, and control which groups see content. In fact, if you look at the way things are, it's even closer a model to what G+ does than anything else, but I guess that's wrong and we should implement purely for the lowest common denominator, despite it not being the general baseline that works best? (Specifying a list of names for each topic is pointless, especially if it's the same list of names each time. Surely then a group would be a FAR better solution?)

Well, the problem is as my first post - if you look at the Public Area category's boards on the main board index, they're in a different order to when you view them in the category itself.

It's right everywhere *except* the category specific page.

Btw, I've locally fixed the issue regarding categories being hidden and collapsed at the same time.

(2 files, 1KB)

Revision: 1545
Author: arantor
Date: 06 April 2012 21:35:52
Message:
! Use the definitive Host header instead of any we may have manipulated. Should fix spurious errors with splitting topics and BB external form tests. (QueryString.php, Security.php)
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Modified : /trunk/Sources/QueryString.php
Modified : /trunk/Sources/Security.php

And now I understand why it is broken. Your browser appears to not understand how to process HTTP/1.1.

The log shows that the request includes a Host header:
Host: wedge.org/pub/bugs

This is contrary to the specification in section 14.23 where it is only supposed to be the *host*. This trips the test because the Referer begins with http://wedge.org/do/splittopics as it should - and wedge.org/pub/bugs/ is not a substring of wedge.org/do/splittopics.

I don't yet know *why* this occurs but it does at least explain the problem.

(1 file, 2KB)

Revision: 1544
Author: arantor
Date: 06 April 2012 19:42:53
Message:
! Log BB hits even for admins. Also make the POST logging slightly more sane in the process. (Security.php)
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Modified : /trunk/Sources/Security.php