Wedge

Public area => The Pub => Off-topic => Topic started by: billy2 on May 4th, 2011, 11:14 AM

Title: generating interest
Post by: billy2 on May 4th, 2011, 11:14 AM
http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=84575

Thought this was quite true
Quick squiz at their posts tells me that the developers are kind of community-driven people... not driven by business.

Should turn out to be a very interesting project. That domain would be prime, too.
Title: Re: generating interest
Post by: Nao on May 4th, 2011, 01:03 PM
Made your link clickable (see no problem with that. Feel free to re-edit.)
Well it's the first time I see a mention about the domain name, lol. I had a hard time getting it. Compared to the dozens of other names I bought before it at least. :p

All in all, nothing to add to the conversation -- they've pretty much said what needed to be said.

And yes, we're hostile against SMF but it needs to be said again: only in reaction to their behavior *after* we announced we'd fork them. Before this happened, well... Between late August and early November '10, the relationship was pretty okay, we were going to release with a BSD license, and we thought SMF incorporating our code into their main codebase would be good for their project.
But they didn't play nice (to say the least), so we closed that door for them.
If the team changes drastically, and we make friends with them, we'll reconsider. But right now, it's a big no-no.
Title: Re: generating interest
Post by: DoctorMalboro on May 4th, 2011, 02:53 PM
I don't want to see many critics from that site... They rape SMF every single time someone puts a subject, you guys should prove them Wedge it's twice more than what they think...
Title: Re: generating interest
Post by: Nao on May 4th, 2011, 04:18 PM
Someone's gonna like Wedge ;)
http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/showpost.php?p=550980&postcount=6

I had a quick look at that board and didn't notice any SMF-bashing...?
Title: Re: generating interest
Post by: Dragooon on May 4th, 2011, 04:32 PM
Its a general observation, people generally bash SMF for its slow releases and lack of features relatively.
Title: Re: generating interest
Post by: Dismal Shadow on May 4th, 2011, 04:50 PM
Quote from Dragooon on May 4th, 2011, 04:32 PM
Its a general observation, people generally bash SMF for its slow releases and lack of features relatively.
That was always the case in software development .
Title: Re: generating interest
Post by: Arantor on May 4th, 2011, 07:50 PM
Well, considering that it's put out 5 RCs in over 2 years... that's generally bash-worthy. And, it's not vB, so it's automatically kind of doomed.
Title: Re: generating interest
Post by: Nao on May 4th, 2011, 09:48 PM
To me, everything that starts with "vb" is doomed...
Title: Re: generating interest
Post by: Dragooon on May 4th, 2011, 09:53 PM
Quote from Nao/Gilles on May 4th, 2011, 09:48 PM
To me, everything that starts with "vb" is doomed...
You may not like it but vB is one hell of a success.
Title: Re: generating interest
Post by: Dismal Shadow on May 4th, 2011, 09:58 PM
Quote from Dragooon on May 4th, 2011, 09:53 PM
Quote from Nao/Gilles on May 4th, 2011, 09:48 PM
To me, everything that starts with "vb" is doomed...
You may not like it but vB is one hell of a success.
Because it had "vB" name brand?  ::)
Title: Re: generating interest
Post by: Arantor on May 4th, 2011, 10:07 PM
Thing is, I'm really not sure *why* vBulletin is successful. I can't see anything enticing or endearing about it.
Title: Re: generating interest
Post by: DoctorMalboro on May 4th, 2011, 11:01 PM
BTW and totally off-topic: Thank you for the wedgers badge... I'm going to cry and fart of joy :')
Title: Re: generating interest
Post by: Kotonoha on May 5th, 2011, 06:12 AM
Quote from Arantor on May 4th, 2011, 10:07 PM
Thing is, I'm really not sure *why* vBulletin is successful. I can't see anything enticing or endearing about it.
Because it got all the hype as the main player in the forum software world after UBB's popularity started dropping. Also for a long time it had a lot more features than other software and gained popularity from that as well.
Title: Re: generating interest
Post by: live627 on May 5th, 2011, 09:21 AM
But now - what, is the popularity dropping, staying the same, or... increasing?
Title: Re: generating interest
Post by: Arantor on May 5th, 2011, 09:22 AM
At TAZ and a bunch of other places, there's a huge mindset that vB is best because it's most expensive - and nothing's going to change that. Not even as awesome as Wedge will be.
Title: Re: generating interest
Post by: Kotonoha on May 5th, 2011, 09:44 AM
Quote from Arantor on May 5th, 2011, 09:22 AM
At TAZ and a bunch of other places, there's a huge mindset that vB is best because it's most expensive - and nothing's going to change that. Not even as awesome as Wedge will be.
And there are a lot of people there who think that vB is awful. Every software has it's fans and it's foes.
Title: Re: generating interest
Post by: Arantor on May 5th, 2011, 09:46 AM
Oh sure, but in vB's case, I've noticed an abnormal trend towards fanboyism, moreso than I see from the other forum systems.
Title: Re: generating interest
Post by: Kotonoha on May 5th, 2011, 09:53 AM
That used to be really apparent, and I mean REALLY apparent. But these days there seem to be a lot of IPB fans and XenForo fans as well. And quite a few vB fans have been turning into fans of other forum software.
Title: Re: generating interest
Post by: Nao on May 5th, 2011, 10:00 AM
Quote from DoctorMalboro on May 4th, 2011, 11:01 PM
BTW and totally off-topic: Thank you for the wedgers badge... I'm going to cry and fart of joy :')
No problem... But if you could keep your farts to yourself it'd be appreciated!

Pete, I hereby suggest that we release a special Wedge package. For $5.000, you get the free Wedge package, as well as free installation on a server of your choice. And a free T-shirt. (Well, when I mean free... That's $5.000 plus postage fees, of course.)

You can always put a price on free software.  8-)
Title: Re: generating interest
Post by: Farjo on May 5th, 2011, 12:54 PM
When I was looking at forum software the assumption in my mind was that vB would be best purely because the others were free. I imagine most people think like this in most aspects of life e.g. I used to have a market stall selling perfumes and cosmetics. We were selling a mascara for 65p and it wouldn't shift - I increased the price to 95p and it sold out quickly. Why? Because people assumed that a 65p product was cheap & nasty but a 95p product was quality NB these are 1980s prices!

Also the expression "Nobody got sacked for buying IBM" rings true here. When we switch over to SMF 2 there will be plenty of pseudo-geeks spouting how I should have chosen vB (because it's the best), or xenforo, IPB etc. Whilst it would be easy to defend vB against SMF ("SMF if just free software so not as good as vB") it's less simple to defend SMF ("I did many hours of testing and found SMF to be the best in these features 1...... 2...... 3...... ").

Finally, vB only allow you to look at their product for 24 hours so whilst you have time to find the faults on SMF and phpBB, you may miss them on vB.
Title: Re: generating interest
Post by: Arantor on May 5th, 2011, 01:44 PM
Then we should find some other ways of competing with the big boys; price isn't everything.

What I do know is that if you go for the paid systems, they *do* have a better track record of providing support because they can pay people to provide support.

That said, a decent amount of the problem is in building it right in the first place; how many of SMF's support questions are manual related?

I'm also seeing an awful lot of encoding issues lately, which is something else we've already tackled.
Title: Re: generating interest
Post by: DoctorMalboro on May 5th, 2011, 02:15 PM
My farts are open source... :P

VB has made more advertisement than chrome, and the fact that when it was released was actually something pretty cool, it doesn't mean it still is...

I mean, all themes are just a variation of default, it has a big amount of updated plugins (or mods, I don't know how do they call them) and constants updates... But it's not a innovation anymore.
Title: Re: generating interest
Post by: Nao on May 5th, 2011, 02:58 PM
Quote from Kotonoha on May 5th, 2011, 09:44 AM
And there are a lot of people there who think that vB is awful. Every software has it's fans and it's foes.
Otherwise we'd all be using just the one software...
Title: Re: generating interest
Post by: spoogs on May 5th, 2011, 03:29 PM
As a former vB user I'll admit my decision was purely based on "you get what you pay for" so free wasn't so appealing at the time. for over 2 years a friend over-advertised the hell out of SMF to me and frankly I just didn't wanna hear it for the most part. The fact though that i was running a rather simple community means I didn't need about 50% of the fluff built into vB, so I decided to give this SMF thing a shot.

I don't doubt at all that some people just want that peace of mind that comes at the price of paying for something.
Title: Re: generating interest
Post by: Arantor on May 5th, 2011, 03:41 PM
Quote
I don't doubt at all that some people just want that peace of mind that comes at the price of paying for something.
That ties in with what I said before about support, actually.

There are companies I've worked alongside that love the idea of unbundling themselves from the rather expensive MS licence costs for Office in favour of OpenOffice, have no hidden technical requirements preventing such a move - and yet once it goes up to the board, it gets shot down pretty much unanimously because "how can it be free?"

I did, once, actually manage to get to sit in one of these meetings and defended it to the very best of my abilities, but I did feel like I was trying to convert the heathens, futilely at that.
Title: Re: generating interest
Post by: Pete on May 5th, 2011, 03:48 PM
It's just the mentality that free things can't be quality, and no matter how much you try to change it, it seems engrained in people.

Yesterday, I had a repeat client bring me their computer that their teenage son had (again) gotten infected with numerous viruses.  The last time I worked on it, I suggested Avast free, because that's what I've used for years, and it's always done its job well while not having a large memory footprint and pretty much staying out of the way.  I tell my clients, most of whom are unaware that there is free Antivirus software available, that the free stuff is every bit as good as the pay stuff, and they always look at me weird.

However, this client told me that he wanted me to remove Avast so that he could install Norton to stop these infections from happening.  His perception is because Norton costs money it will do a better job.  I tried to explain that the problem was not his antivirus software, but his teenage son's downloading habits, but I was unsuccessful in convincing him.  So, I removed Avast for him and he's going to install Norton when I give it back to him.

I wonder what will happen after he's paid $70+ for Norton's software and has to bring the PC to me again in the next 6 months with the same problem...   :whistle:
Title: Re: generating interest
Post by: Arantor on May 5th, 2011, 03:51 PM
Avast and Norton is probably *the* poster child for how free stuff does it so much better, -sigh-
Title: Re: generating interest
Post by: Pete on May 5th, 2011, 03:55 PM
Yep.

The funny thing is, this guy admittedly knows *nothing* about computers, and I am well recognized by many in our very small town as THE guy to fix your computer when it breaks.  Even our IT department here where I work refers all of our employee's personal home computer problems to me!  Yet people will still choose to waste their money, even though I warn them otherwise because, "it must be better because it costs money!"  Simply amazing.
Title: Re: generating interest
Post by: DoctorMalboro on May 5th, 2011, 04:43 PM
My Avast! didn't detect anything...
Title: Re: generating interest
Post by: Nao on May 5th, 2011, 05:10 PM
Quote from Arantor on May 5th, 2011, 03:51 PM
Avast and Norton is probably *the* poster child for how free stuff does it so much better, -sigh-
+1
Title: Re: generating interest
Post by: Dismal Shadow on May 5th, 2011, 05:16 PM
Free like Microsoft Security Essentials?
Title: Re: generating interest
Post by: dorje on May 5th, 2011, 09:48 PM
What is Microsoft? :P