This is a very tough question to answer. Certainly there are a lot of features in Wedge that many will not use - not every forum owner wants to have a blog system built in, for example. Nor the calendar, nor <insert feature here>
But big features like that - like blogging support, like the gallery, like the calendar - these are features we have in the core so that we can maintain them. All too often mods get neglected over time - having them in the core means they don't get forgotten about.
The calendar is a particularly odd example: many SMF users didn't want the calendar in the core, it being a feature they didn't use. But there is another group of people who would actually go elsewhere if the calendar were removed/left to be neglected. These people love having it available and want it to be more powerful than it was.
So the approach we've gone for is that we've added these features in, but in a way that we hope doesn't make it feel too big or scary - and kept the performance aspect too.
Interesting parallel, really, is Microsoft Word. Word adds new features every release, and while some consider it bloaty, the bottom line is that any user might only use 10% of its features - but if each user uses a different 10%, it caters to a lot more people as a result - and this is something we've tried to keep in mind.
We're not going to add every little thing we've thought of - and there are plenty of things we've rejected from being in the core for just that reason. But the goal we have is to make it easier to make them as add-ons that 'just work' and require little maintenance over time.
What will likely happen is that once the core is stable and the ability to expand it through add-ons is mature enough, I'll start turning some of the 'would be nice to have, but not in core' things into add-ons, but we'll see how that turns out - it really requires the core to be mature enough to achieve that first.
But big features like that - like blogging support, like the gallery, like the calendar - these are features we have in the core so that we can maintain them. All too often mods get neglected over time - having them in the core means they don't get forgotten about.
The calendar is a particularly odd example: many SMF users didn't want the calendar in the core, it being a feature they didn't use. But there is another group of people who would actually go elsewhere if the calendar were removed/left to be neglected. These people love having it available and want it to be more powerful than it was.
So the approach we've gone for is that we've added these features in, but in a way that we hope doesn't make it feel too big or scary - and kept the performance aspect too.
Interesting parallel, really, is Microsoft Word. Word adds new features every release, and while some consider it bloaty, the bottom line is that any user might only use 10% of its features - but if each user uses a different 10%, it caters to a lot more people as a result - and this is something we've tried to keep in mind.
We're not going to add every little thing we've thought of - and there are plenty of things we've rejected from being in the core for just that reason. But the goal we have is to make it easier to make them as add-ons that 'just work' and require little maintenance over time.
What will likely happen is that once the core is stable and the ability to expand it through add-ons is mature enough, I'll start turning some of the 'would be nice to have, but not in core' things into add-ons, but we'll see how that turns out - it really requires the core to be mature enough to achieve that first.
