Wedge

No one say you need to, just looking for options rather than building a plugin or in the core that I don't want like you do.

Now I remember about privacy, I tend to forget about that. Didn't mean you any harms, Arantor.

I guess my last post was a little misunderstood which wasn't clear.

I appreciate what you have done so far, so please don't stop :cool:

I have to be honest, that's encouragement I do need right now.

It just seems like every time I suggest something of late, I'm presented with the feeling that it's a stupid idea and that I should just use someone else's work instead (never mind whether it's suitable or not, just that I shouldn't bother with my own ideas and just work on reusing everyone else's)

I am 62 YO so believe me I know life is full of these hiccups ::) but what you and Nao have built here is something unique and precious, as very few are able to do the same as what you both have accomplished in so sort a time. When it's released and being used on millions of websites you will be proud. :eheh:

Reusing code only works if its right for the project, you are a smart man and between you and Nao you all know what is best for your project.

And therein lies the problem. I actually had a sort of related discussion earlier on today that touches on this.

Nao and I have an awkward position: we're just not able to throw any old code together and push it out. Even if we were cowboys without scruples, we certainly shouldn't be doing that. Being the project developers is a responsibility - buying into our platform[1] means we have certain responsibilities as part of that.

One of those responsibilities, as far as I'm concerned, is making sure users have their data to themselves. If they want to integrate it with third parties for whom privacy is a buzzword to toss around, that's their problem, not mine. But that's not really the issue that irks me so much.

What gets me is when people are quite prepared to suggest that I toss aside something I've spent a lot of time and energy on, so they get their shiny thing quicker (because if I'm not working on something, presumably I can drain my spare time off into fixing some of the other stuff). They forget that what gets done around here is solely down to Nao and I having the time and energy to do it, and every time I hear 'you shouldn't bother with that, you should just use <x>', I can't help but see hypocrisy in it. And that annoys me immensely.

Take this very example. There are reasons why I could dispense with the calendar. Some people don't want it, and that's cool. But to suggest I should stop working on it (when I was quite enthusiastic about it!) just because there are 'more important' things to work on is a great fallacy and one only enjoyed by the ignorance of what's involved.

See, Wedge isn't just a forum software. It's a platform at the heart of a (currently very small) ecosystem. The core doesn't need a calendar, as evidenced here. But the ecosystem does, and I can't rely on third parties to develop it (either as a self contained feature or integrated into Google Tentacleplex), so I have to do it - and I think a lot of people actually forget things like that. But I can't forget it. I don't have that luxury, I wish I did, because it would make my life a lot less stressful.

Let me add a little something to the party. I have a spreadsheet listing SMF mods. I'm not ashamed to admit this, but it lists every mod on the mod site as far as I was able to compile it, and by the name of each mod, I have a listing for 'yes', 'no', 'maybe', 'should be core' and 'is already core'. There are about 1600 items on this list, of which there are nearly 300 to-do items on there, almost 600 no's, and about 500 maybes, the rest being made up by as-core or already core, or in 11 cases so far, ones where plugins exist to replace that functionality.

That is, ultimately, how I see the ecosystem. There's so much left to do. And I would really appreciate people not telling me that I shouldn't bother and just hand it off to a third party who cannot be trusted to do anything.

1.	Remember, it's not all about money, not all investment is financial.

Yep, sure some of us want our shinys and think that ours is more important then everyone else's. From my own programing experiences, I found that you need to do what you want to do first. Always caving to someone else's wants and priorities, only burns you out.

That said when hitting the proverbial brick wall, it's sometimes better to take a break and work on something else. Who knows you might stumble on that thing that had you stumped while working on something else.

Then sometimes you just have to release without certain "non-critical" features, with the intent of adding them in later, no matter how much you want them in at that moment. One, it does give you that break and allows those that were crying for it, to have something, even if its not perfect (feature wise of course). Two, It will appease some but you will always have those that will say its not enough. Well forget them and just do what you think is best. :)


Personally I'm glad you have that to do list based on SMF mods. There are many mods for SMF that I often thought should be part of the core. There are somethings that just preform better when part of the core and when something is so widely used, maybe it is better to have them there, perhaps with the possibility to shut them off for sites that may not want them.

I'm sure you have a lot on your plate and somethings it might be easier to say let someone else do it, except for the fact that I know that you would do a much better job then just about anyone else including the original concept author. When nobody knows the way Wedge works better then you and Nao... As big of a fan I am of Mr. Bracket's work on SMF and YaBB SE, even he doesn't know the variations in this code as good as you guys. So I'm quite certain that just about anything you guys may want to add either as part of the core or as a plugin will be better then anyone else working on it. For that reason alone I would never tell you to "let someone else do it". Beside you'll just end up redoing it later and possibly offending the person that was working on it in between. :)