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Arantor

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Plugins I refuse to do
« on November 2nd, 2011, 04:08 PM »
Right, I've been asked (here privately, and elsewhere) about a few plugins that apparently Wedge 'must have', and instead of answering the requests individually, I thought I'd collect them here.

NOTE: I am not preventing anyone from writing them. Just that I will not write them for Wedge and no amount of bribery or anything else for that matter will convince me.


Hide mod

This is apparently one of the most 'important' mods. The notion that hiding some content away from users until they post is a good way to get their attention and get them posting.

Yes, it generates posts. It generates stupid one line posts where people make the post solely to see the content, and invariably don't even bother replying afterwards to *actually* contribute something meaningful. You turn the problem of lack of participation into a problem of crap participation. I'm not going to condone or encourage it.

Look but no read

This is to allow guests to see into a board and see the names of topics but not let them into the topics themselves. Apparently this is a good incentive. Oh, it's an incentive alright, to discourage search engines from visiting your site - if a search engine visits, they're only going to see what guests see. And if you fudge it for search engines, apart from the fact you just gave users a reason not to sign up, search engines have been known to send out requests that don't identify themselves as search engines, and if the content is different, you can be penalised.

Stop Forum Spam

Although it's gotten better in recent times, it's still somewhat unreliable as far as submitting data goes, and it's still too easy to get unvalidated "I just thought it was a spammer" entries in there. There are better methods of keeping spammers out, it just requires a little more effort on the admin's part (like spending 30 seconds writing a question and answer)

WordPress bridge

Seriously, why would we do this? We have blog support built in...


There may be more, but that's it for now at least.
When we unite against a common enemy that attacks our ethos, it nurtures group solidarity. Trolls are sensational, yes, but we keep everyone honest. | Game Memorial

Antes

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Re: Plugins I refuse to do
« Reply #1, on November 2nd, 2011, 04:50 PM »
Yes, you are right about all above but lets think that way i'm blogging in my site nearly 2 years, and i'm waiting wedge beta to move from vBulletin. Not saying "hey you must do WP-Bridge" but i'm saying is you can't just say people to we got our blog system throw your past with WP (and hits etc...)

Arantor

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Re: Plugins I refuse to do
« Reply #2, on November 2nd, 2011, 05:12 PM »
Then someone else can develop a bridge for it, because I see no reason to do so, which is exactly what I've stated. I have no need of a bridge and thus no incentive to write one.

Dragooon

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Re: Plugins I refuse to do
« Reply #3, on November 2nd, 2011, 05:30 PM »
I see that you are not against a pizza plugin, I'd make one but I got stuck at the cheese part.
The way it's meant to be

Arantor

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Nao

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Re: Plugins I refuse to do
« Reply #5, on November 2nd, 2011, 08:40 PM »
I'm sure TE will like the challenge of writing a WP importer (not bridge) if Pete doesn't do it first ;)

As for look boards, I was thinking we could show topic lists without them being linked to the topic. Just like we are doing with profile urls.

Arantor

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Re: Plugins I refuse to do
« Reply #6, on November 2nd, 2011, 09:03 PM »
A WP importer, yes, but no bridge from me.

As far as topics go... There is no good reason for it. It puts people off registering, because it puts a hurdle in to see the content, and invariably the same content or at least comparable content is available elsewhere.

Plus it makes it harder for users to find the content in the first place, which will undo every ounce of SEO that could possibly be done.

Nao

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Re: Plugins I refuse to do
« Reply #7, on November 3rd, 2011, 12:05 AM »
I don't know, I just don't feel like 'look board' is a horrible thing to implement. It's something I could have used at some point a few years ago, so it doesn't strike me as bad really. Then again, I'm not exactly in a hurry to implement it, either. Maybe something for Wedge 2.0 if we find a good way to implement it...

Arantor

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Re: Plugins I refuse to do
« Reply #8, on November 3rd, 2011, 12:13 AM »
Quote
I don't know, I just don't feel like 'look board' is a horrible thing to implement.
It's not that it's horrible to implement, because it isn't. It's horrible because it's flawed, it undermines everything about encouraging people to participate. It's the stick as compared to the carrot, and anyone who joins and posts because of the stick is not likely to either hang around or be a good contributor while they're there.

TE

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Thorsten "TE" Eurich - Former SMF Developer & Converters Guru

Nao

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TE

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Arantor

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Re: Plugins I refuse to do
« Reply #12, on November 3rd, 2011, 09:16 PM »
I spent about that long doing a crude HTML to bbcode converter and post inserter script ;) I know that it helps that the phpBB password importer is the same as WP's ;)

TE

  • Posts: 286
Re: Plugins I refuse to do
« Reply #13, on November 3rd, 2011, 09:28 PM »
to be fair, I've only ported my old WP to SMF converter in one hour to match the new importer structure, the initial developement (checking out the table structure, writing the script etc) took me IIRC five or six hours at all (don't know exactly).

Nao

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Re: Plugins I refuse to do
« Reply #14, on November 4th, 2011, 05:30 PM »
In one hour I barely have time to write a couple of lines of JavaScript... :whistle:

(Heck, I'm currently cursing at myself for not being able to make a decision. Opera doesn't like the back/forward buttons when I'm visiting Wedge in a small window -- it tends not to trigger the resize event when navigating this way. If I move the code to below the jQuery init code, it starts working normally. But it also means that the pages, when reloading, spend a tenth of a second with a full sidebar, and only then does the sidebar go away. In the current SVN, you don't get to see the stray sidebar at all. Meh.)
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