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WEDGE seems like a sort of 2.0 alternative. Maybe more of a 2.1 alternative at this point.
Using more sensible data structures (in the code as well as in the DB) makes sense. First, write sensible, understandable code. Then optimize performance. I know that SMF 3.0 will have to do this. I wouldn't expect you guys to be thinking any differently.
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Right now it's a 2.1 alternative because most of what we want to do hasn't really been done yet... but it will.
The first step isn't writing sensible, understandable code, it's re-engineering the existing code to make more sense than it does now.
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OK -- the first step is somehow creating sensible code, whether from scratch or as a rewrite of existing code and its accumulated hacks/cruft.
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Which is what 2.1 should really be, ideally, fixing the bugs, adding the really important stuff (like IPv6 support), and clearing the legacy stuff, like the IE5 legacy code still lurking in SMF.
The difference is that 2.1 will be an SMF milestone but it's only part of the journey for us.
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Why does AngelinaBelle make definitive comments here like she's part of the dev crew?[
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Because she's part of the SimplePortal team?
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I'm not part of the dev crew at SMF, though I sometimes participate in discussions with them.
I just know that the SMF devs will have to adress these exact same issues. It is only logical.
Just as it is only logical to assume they'll also have to adress IPV6 -- failure to do so would cause problems on oodles of forums.
I'm always curious, and I respect the experience of Arantor and Nao. I've read small swatches of Nao's AEVA code and enjoyed it, too. They seem to make a good team over here, and I wish their knowledge and experience were feeding directly into designing SMF. But I can't always get what I want.
And, thanks for asking, you did get my gender right.
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P.S. I am not making definitive statements about what dev team WILL do, only my opinions about what they will NEED to do. I cannot speak for SMF's dev team. Or for any other part of SMF or the SimpleMachines organization. I'm apologize if I implied otherwise. Next time, I'll try to remember to say "I think they will need to do X"
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To be fair, the SMF dev team have different issues to address than we do. IPv6 is one of the same issues we both have to address, but there's plenty that we need/want to tackle that SMF doesn't have to, nor need to.
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All fascinating discussions. Seriously. I miss you guys frequently. Even though, Arantor, you are kind of still there on the friends board to share your acquired knowledge and help out in crises.
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The key qualifier missing from that statement was 'for now', because once 2.0 is done, there is no reason for me to visit sm.org, except what I've been doing a lot of lately - watching how badly a simple situation can be messed up.
Yes, I helped with the attacks earlier in the year, because it was in my interest as much as anyone else's to find something to stop the attackers dead, but that's about it as far as crises and help goes, and honestly, what reason is there for me to help the team any more? After everything that's happened, including the fact there are a few team members who, I understand, have admitted they are going to try and stop us, what possible encouragement is there for me to help? The only reason I have until now is a combination of frustration at you guys being a week late on your own deadline and STILL a little residual guilt.
It is not for nothing that our licence is going back to a variation of the SMF licence instead of remaining BSD. It is not for nothing that we have - currently - written exclusions into the licence specifically excluding certain sm.org members from using Wedge. It is not for nothing that Wedge even began.
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After the licensing change promissed with SMF 2.0Final, my understanding is that any fork of SMF 2.0Final is OK.
Some team members are not the "official" team, or even all team members, anyway.
I know you and Nao are far better matched over here than either of you was at SMF.
It *IS* sensible to work together when two groups have a common interest.
If you do drop out of SMF completely with the 2.0 final release, I'll guess I'll really miss you. That's just a fact. No guilt. Of course, I've been totally missing Nao over there for some time.
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Yup, we're aware of the licence change (I see the BSD licence is firmly in place in the source files now), but we made the decision to reclose the licence of Wedge for the forseeable future, to explicitly prevent our work going back the other way, because of everything that's happened. Once the code is far enough along that it can't just be reused without serious work, we'll look at that again.
The people I am referring to have team badges and thus are specifically team members at this time.
I'd also note that our interests and path is different to SMF's, we firmly dropped the idea of "being just a forum", which is why blogging support is built in, AeMe has been integrated (and will become deeper integrated) and so on. To me, this seems logical, to provide features that people want - I have yet to figure out what SMF is even going to implement in 2.1 other than jQuery and IPv6 support, and dropping IE6.
I should have dropped out of sm.org a loooooong time ago, I've been generally happier since I stopped posting for the benefit of others and to pass the time waiting for SMF 2.0 to get released.
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Of course, I've been totally missing Nao over there for some time.
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WEDGE seems like a sort of 2.0 alternative. Maybe more of a 2.1 alternative at this point.
Just look at the feature list... We have nearly 50 major additions to the core. I doubt SMF2 has even half of that.Using more sensible data structures (in the code as well as in the DB) makes sense. First, write sensible, understandable code. Then optimize performance. I know that SMF 3.0 will have to do this. I wouldn't expect you guys to be thinking any differently.
Being a visionary is his job, and he does it flawlessly. I do my part by working constantly on the codebase. I work by small improvements, while his fuel is full rewrites. I think it's great that we're so complementary on so many levels. We'd never dare to seriously question each other's work :)
Posted: June 7th, 2011, 09:03 PM
Just as it is only logical to assume they'll also have to adress IPV6 -- failure to do so would cause problems on oodles of forums.
I'm not sure why Pete seems to think his work on IPv6 isn't done -- to me, it's certainly ready for release...? He worked a lot on it.I'm always curious, and I respect the experience of Arantor and Nao. I've read small swatches of Nao's AEVA code and enjoyed it, too.
(I'd gladly blame it on Dragooon, but that would be unfair, since I know for a fact that I rewrote many of my own functions for Wedge :P)They seem to make a good team over here, and I wish their knowledge and experience were feeding directly into designing SMF. But I can't always get what I want.
I mean, it's always fascinated me that they all went on hiatus "until SMF's license is sorted out"... While at the same time, having no prior knowledge of the outcome of this, we worked hard for (what is now 9 months) on our fork.
Working on SMF is a privilege. I'm sad that the current team just doesn't seem to give much thought to it. They seem to think that SMF is in better hands by accepting only quiet people and rejecting the loud ones.
But when you do that, you also reject what makes these people loud: passion.
Wedge is the product of two loud people.P.S. I am not making definitive statements about what dev team WILL do, only my opinions about what they will NEED to do. I cannot speak for SMF's dev team. Or for any other part of SMF or the SimpleMachines organization. I'm apologize if I implied otherwise. Next time, I'll try to remember to say "I think they will need to do X"
BTW -- apart from a handful of SMF teamies, we don't have anyone we won't welcome here. As you may have noticed, some prominent SMF ex-teamies (mostly ex-devs, actually) have joined us and they're willing to help the project, for which we are very grateful. See, when I mention the horrible SMF team, I only speak about its representatives I dealt with, and the decisions they made by committee.
Posted: June 7th, 2011, 09:15 PM
It is not for nothing that our licence is going back to a variation of the SMF licence instead of remaining BSD. It is not for nothing that we have - currently - written exclusions into the licence specifically excluding certain sm.org members from using Wedge. It is not for nothing that Wedge even began.
A year later, it's still just as dead. Feature-frozen for 3 years and a half means it froze to its death.
Now, if Wedge could inspire SMF teamies into keeping SMF up to speed, then we'd be thrilled. However, we don't want them to benefit from our work to get into that position. Not because of our feelings for SMF, but because of how they treated us -- saying they were unfair to us would be an understatement. A year later, I still feel sad about how they handled us. How they used us, too.
When time comes -- when Wedge gets its name on the map of forum software, we'll reconsider it.
As we said earlier, if the SMF team resigned en masse and gave us control over it, we would do it. Our only goal is to resurrect SMF and show the outstanding possibilities of its codebase. It's not an ego trip (fortunately. Working for 9 months on an ego trip would be a fabulous waste of time.)
Posted: June 7th, 2011, 09:21 PM
I know you and Nao are far better matched over here than either of you was at SMF.
If you do drop out of SMF completely with the 2.0 final release, I'll guess I'll really miss you. That's just a fact. No guilt. Of course, I've been totally missing Nao over there for some time.
BTW, what part of me did you miss? The angry outbursts? The French loveur cynical bastard? Or just the nice codebase? :niark:
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I always thought the cynical bastard part was entertaining enough to keep me going over there even though I didn't need anything. There were a couple times I thought "squirrel who lost his nut" but mostly just entertaining. :)
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You could vote for removing his ban over there.
What mattered to me was making a stand and building something concrete, instead of wasting my time on the sm.org forums -- where confusion reigns for me.
One of the things we need to settle between Pete and I is the mod system -- given that Wedge rewrites much of the codebase, 99% of the mods won't be compatible out of the box. I'd love to go even further and disable the ability to edit code in Wedge files -- *at least* until we come up with a better way to do it, or at least add enough hooks for these 99% of mods to be able to make the jump to Wedge.
I believe Pete isn't too keen on that, but we could definitely use the fact that mods aren't going to break anyone's forums until we're done with our first gold release.I'd start a poll in the friends area
They'll keep saying whatever they said before -- that I'm too unstable. That I removed the link to sm.org on noisen.com (like they didn't do anything to deserve it -- and it will be a moot point anyway in a few days.) That I'd never use my account to help SMF, rather insidiously destroy it from within. I can already hear the sarcasm...
I just don't see the point in coming back. If I absolutely had to post on their boards, I would create a dummy account and sign as Nao... I have a dynamic IP with many ranges so they couldn't ban me without banning millions of French users. (And I would still have anonymizers left to use....)but I believe I'm hated by some team memers and won't attract enough attention.
Even Tim's(http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?action=profile;u=12) ban got removed and his friends badge was re-added.
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I'm sorry I've shifted this topic so far off-topic. I'm not going to try to heal any rifts today.
I like "floating topics" by any other name, because content is content to me.
Best
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Never heard about this guy... ID #12 uh? Must have taken place years before I registered...
(There's obviously more to this story, that's not for a public board, sorry. ;))
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Well, we have the private boards i f you want to say more :P
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Just before we wrestle this beast back on topic, let me explain why IPv6 support isn't done.
First up, bans. Since I figured as per our plans to be doing something different with bans, whatever is then done has to support IPv6 - I didn't go back and re-engineer IPv6 into the current ban system.
Other than that, there's a couple of niggly places where it doesn't push the IP address through the formatter. But it's mostly ready.
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My crappy ISP doesn't support IPv6...
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It's good to be in charge here -- and to have so many people trust us, so that it doesn't seem so bad to be under a Pete/Nao dictatorship (which is, ultimately, what this is.)
I will never follow a dictator (being born in Spain in the 50's I have a lot of experience about that) but I am very happy to follow a couple of good leaders with a strong vision.
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Sorry, looks like I'm another victim of Godwin's law ;)
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Sorry, looks like I'm another victim of Godwin's law ;)
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I'm sorry I've shifted this topic so far off-topic. I'm not going to try to heal any rifts today.
Off-topic is welcome here. We just need to use that 'Split Topic' feature more often, eheh. Like I did right now.I like "floating topics" by any other name, because content is content to me.
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I don't know that "floating topics" has another name.
When I brought the idea up, at Jaelta, it didn't gain much traction.
http://yourasoft.org/forum/index.php?topic=1492.msg29315#msg29315
But, then, I wasn't very clear on what I was talking about, either, was I?
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I guess it depends on the choice of terminology!
I tend to choose self-descript names that can be grasped by noobs, even if it lies about the (bigger) scope of the feature.
(Sorry for the delay, just re-reading through old topics I didn't reply to ;))
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I tend to choose self-descript names that can be grasped by noobs, even if it lies about the (bigger) scope of the feature.
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All fascinating discussions. Seriously. I miss you guys frequently. Even though, Arantor, you are kind of still there on the friends board to share your acquired knowledge and help out in crises.
...but if any fork comes up with a slick trackback scheme, buddy, I'm dropping interest in everybody else's products and will snap that one up.
So even if I'm not a dev person, I'm looking for how a development develops and chime in about what I'm looking for. (plus I just plain ole like these guys, ha).
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Track...back?
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The Friends board being referred to wasn't SMF Friends, but the board reserved for team members and ex team members, notionally for the benefit of the project but it ended up mostly as an echo chamber for those who for whatever reason didn't carry a team badge. (The one Nao was barred from, that is, after last autumn's events)
If you mean trackbacks in the context I think you mean, there is only one way to actually do it since it's an established standard used by WordPress. The fact that WP basically created it and it causes more spam than you would begin to imagine (of the spam on InI, I get 10-12 trackback spam per spam post)
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Ah, trackbacks... The only blog feature I failed to add to Noisen.com, really. I don't even remember why I didn't look further into it ;)
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Because what sounds like a really neat idea really isn't so neat? It's not like it's forgeable or anything *yawn*
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Is it bed time yet? :D
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Yes, trackback. You already know it by another name via a person who shall not be named because he usually gets banned. ;)
I have a use for that capability, and already 3 boards I've been active on are boards--boards that I wish had had that capability.--are now defunct and all that research is gone. Trackback capability would have preserved discussions/information of interest by making them portable, making the threads movable to another board before the plug got pulled.
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The Friends board being referred to wasn't SMF Friends, but the board reserved for team members and ex team members, notionally for the benefit of the project but it ended up mostly as an echo chamber for those who for whatever reason didn't carry a team badge. (The one Nao was barred from, that is, after last autumn's events)
If you mean trackbacks in the context I think you mean, there is only one way to actually do it since it's an established standard used by WordPress. The fact that WP basically created it and it causes more spam than you would begin to imagine (of the spam on InI, I get 10-12 trackback spam per spam post)
Posted: July 21st, 2011, 01:40 AM
Ah, trackbacks... The only blog feature I failed to add to Noisen.com, really. I don't even remember why I didn't look further into it ;)
Posted: July 21st, 2011, 01:44 AM
Because what sounds like a really neat idea really isn't so neat? It's not like it's forgeable or anything *yawn*
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To answer that...
1/ You misunderstand my contention regarding search friendly URLs. It is my contention that they do not help search engines, but the converse is also true: *not* having them doesn't help search engines either. The absence or presence of said feature, then, is virtually pure aesthetics. I'm not against pretty URLs provided that there is an awareness that they are purely aesthetic - to claim they have any kind of SEO benefit is BS.
2/ I didn't say that it was WP's code that was the issue, because it isn't. There is an established protocol for trackbacks where you have inter-site communications, which must be implemented for it to work. A trackback facility that only one system uses isn't much help unless that one system is by definition, everywhere.
Gri's discussions aren't about trackbacks, they're about having the same discussion physically *duplicated* in two separate places so that there is no ability of one party to edit them.
The trackback protocol, as designed, is endemically flawed: it has no mechanism for authentication, consequently any site can generate a trackback, which means any site can *spam* you with trackbacks. Imagine a system able to post that doesn't require registration, doesn't require to enter a name but only has to posts a small snippet of text and a link back to their site. I have deleted many many spam trackbacks from InI but have yet to see one that wasn't actually spam.
3/ The concept of a trackback is cute, but as explained, the moment you start applying real life to it, it starts to fall apart. If you then proceed to implement a new trackback scheme, it's only valid as far as Wedge installs go: until Wedge is ubiquitous, implementing it in a new form is basically useless.
Trackbacks do NOT make discussions portable if you listen to what the specification actually provides for: all it does is provide for a method for one discussion to reference another. Essentially it's the equivalent of an unregistered user saying "My post referenced yours, come read mine at <link>"
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Suggestion. Trackbacks viewable by post author and moderators only.
Done through analysis of referred, rather than the usual protocol.
Bit like the google keywords mod here, but from other places as well.
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So you'd record the different ways people find a given thread? Could be fun, could be a royal PITA as the log inevitably grows.
Being visible to author+moderators solves the problem of it being generally visible and problematic, doesn't quite so much solve the issue of it being generated in the first place.
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So you'd record the different ways people find a given thread? Could be fun, could be a royal PITA as the log inevitably grows.
Being visible to author+moderators solves the problem of it being generally visible and problematic, doesn't quite so much solve the issue of it being generated in the first place.
I'm sure there are PLENTY of places where we could eliminate user data from Google's eyes, and thus discouraging spammers from attempting to hijack Google's attention on a Wedge site. We're already doing it for signatures and website links through a permission, but maybe it should be a big on/off button saying, basically, "make spammers go away by limiting search engine options"...
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OK, look at it this way: while the onward effect of spam (it being visible to Google and regular users) can be curtailed, it's still there and it's still something that has to be cleaned up by the moderators in some way, and it's a source of incoming stuff that wasn't there before.
As it happens, there is actually a small module of Bad Behaviour tied specifically to trackback spam...
Just because spammers don't get any payoff, doesn't mean they won't spam, it just means that human spammers are discouraged (doesn't stop them trying!) and bots will do what they do anyway.l
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OK, look at it this way: while the onward effect of spam (it being visible to Google and regular users) can be curtailed, it's still there and it's still something that has to be cleaned up by the moderators in some way, and it's a source of incoming stuff that wasn't there before.
Just because spammers don't get any payoff, doesn't mean they won't spam, it just means that human spammers are discouraged (doesn't stop them trying!) and bots will do what they do anyway.l
Also, if we don't use XML-RPC to implement trackbacks, we definitely can't get hit by bots randomly trying to spam any single domain name...
Of course we still get hit by random referrer bots (i.e. bots that simply browse the web with their 'referer' set to a spam page), but maybe BB can deal with that.
Posted: July 21st, 2011, 12:44 PM
Or we could scrape the original pages when the referrers hit us, and see if they have a link to us indeed. If they do -- add them to the list!
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Hmmm...much to consider here...and a few things to clarify as well....
To answer that...
1/ You misunderstand my contention regarding search friendly URLs. It is my contention that they do not help search engines, but the converse is also true: *not* having them doesn't help search engines either. The absence or presence of said feature, then, is virtually pure aesthetics. I'm not against pretty URLs provided that there is an awareness that they are purely aesthetic - to claim they have any kind of SEO benefit is BS.
2/ I didn't say that it was WP's code that was the issue, because it isn't. There is an established protocol for trackbacks where you have inter-site communications, which must be implemented for it to work. A trackback facility that only one system uses isn't much help unless that one system is by definition, everywhere.
Gri's discussions aren't about trackbacks, they're about having the same discussion physically *duplicated* in two separate places so that there is no ability of one party to edit them.
You can't develop robots without being interdisciplinary, and being too interdisciplinary results in a lack of focus due toward each component. It seems that you, as a member of a development team, can see the need for the specialties of core, themes, and add-ons but also see where it's critical that they all work together seamlessly.
Gri just wants Freedom of Moving Thoughts because he gets his discussions interrupted by getting banned a lot. Me, I have other uses for this sort of capability, and have been on boards where I have wished THEY had this capability because of my going back to old posts and lines of discussions which have had to jump to a different board only to find that they've had to repeat themselves. A board-to-board trackback of a discussion would mean that people didn't have to repeat themselves when jumping to a different board.
I'm in the process of reconstituting a thread of discussion that appeared on the now-defunct PBS Discussions board, and it's a helluva lot of work; had those discussions been portable, this task would be a helluva lot easier (although still a lot of work); having specific trackback links would be able to produce individual posts in, say, a Google cache. Conceivably.The trackback protocol, as designed, is endemically flawed: it has no mechanism for authentication, consequently any site can generate a trackback, which means any site can *spam* you with trackbacks. Imagine a system able to post that doesn't require registration, doesn't require to enter a name but only has to posts a small snippet of text and a link back to their site. I have deleted many many spam trackbacks from InI but have yet to see one that wasn't actually spam.
mousetrap spammertrap and the world will beat a path to your door", as it were.3/ The concept of a trackback is cute, but as explained, the moment you start applying real life to it, it starts to fall apart. If you then proceed to implement a new trackback scheme, it's only valid as far as Wedge installs go: until Wedge is ubiquitous, implementing it in a new form is basically useless.
Trackbacks do NOT make discussions portable if you listen to what the specification actually provides for: all it does is provide for a method for one discussion to reference another. Essentially it's the equivalent of an unregistered user saying "My post referenced yours, come read mine at <link>"
From what I've read about the ongoing friction between the fork and SMF prime, I have to wonder if such a capability would have resulted in a smoother sense of team operation. But what do I know--I'm just an outside spectator.
Posted: July 22nd, 2011, 06:49 AM
OK, look at it this way: while the onward effect of spam (it being visible to Google and regular users) can be curtailed, it's still there and it's still something that has to be cleaned up by the moderators in some way, and it's a source of incoming stuff that wasn't there before.
As it happens, there is actually a small module of Bad Behaviour tied specifically to trackback spam...
Just because spammers don't get any payoff, doesn't mean they won't spam, it just means that human spammers are discouraged (doesn't stop them trying!) and bots will do what they do anyway.l
I would prefer to PM you about a slick li'l thing Gri did about spammers that I think is a minor stroke of genius. Don't want to talk about it in public, for now, but it's worthy of consideration, IMHO. If I implemented the scheme, I'd get into major trouble with my host...still...genius.
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I don't really see this as a realistic feature for gri...
If all he wants is to avoid the 'discomforts' of being banned, a 'trackback' conversation isn't going to help.
- Either he wants to prevent his posts from being deleted... Well, they're still going to be deleted from the remote thread, aren't they? One would have to know about his website to go there and read the rest...
- Or he wants to keep being able to answer posts on his site, even though he can't them on the remote site. What's the point? He can do it without 'trackbacks' or whatever...
In any case, when someone bans someone, generally it's with the intent of no longer being 'bothered' by said user. And that includes deleting all of their 'guest' posts or whatever posted after the ban took effect, generally...
As for non-banning trackback methods, I don't really see much of a point either. I do have a sort of trackback system as per my 'latest posts' box at cynarhum.com pointing to noisen.com messages (different servers really), but it's a hack, and I did that only as a way to easily redirect people.
It would actually be, uh... Simpler to implement a RSS->post/RSS->topic function, and have people post feeds to remote threads.
Anything more elaborate would encompass transmitting user details for each post though the pipeline, so that the remote forum can try and associate posts with its local members. It's hit or miss. But having guest posts for non-guest users is not desirable to me.
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Let me clarify something, as I did have a few meaningful conversations with Gri a while ago and the only reason I issued him a moderation-level warning on arantor.org was because he didn't understand the concept of 'no.'
Trackbacks are designed solely for pointing between posts, so that if one blog post refers to another, the later post automatically notifies the original and appears as a reply with a snippet of the post, and the link to the newer post - the idea that the later post will "continue the discussion" and interested parties can continue the discussion elsewhere, but the reality ends up being "oh, I found this post, it's cool, isn't it?" and generating not-quite-spam.
Freedom of Moving Thoughts is something else entirely, it physically copies posts between forums so that two independent forums have the same actual discussion going on, this way there is no risk of sanctions being levied.
I'll reply to most of this later, but the one thing I will add is that the concept you're referring to at the end is a honeypot, something that have been set up to log spammers by the httpBL project...
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On ubiquity: Gri is aware that FoMT is limited to SMF, he did ask me about the feasibility of porting it to other platforms a while ago.
On the facility as a whole: we're back to the standard question: what problem are we trying to solve? Trackbacks don't even solve the problem they were designed to solve properly, and any blog that's been around for a while will have a decent degree of trackback spam in it. On top of that, it doesn't solve the whole 'interesting discussion elsewhere' factor either, in fact the best way to do that is for an existing member, ideally participant, in the discussion to just post a little description and link to it rather than the other content saying "Hey look at me"
I suspect Clara's use is niche at best, and not really within the scope of this feature, but I'm not sure exactly what problem needs to be solved - though I AM sure trackbacks in either the WP style or cloned-thread style aren't the answer.
On RSS->posts, this is something that I have wondered about doing, it seems fairly common to add but we'd have to make sure we did it properly!
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Yeah, thanks for explaining that about trackbacks...my use for trackbacks is different than Gri's (Nao's right about Gri's interests, basically speaking. There does appear to be more than just that, but that's all I'll say on the matter in public). My interest in trackbacks and, indeed, FoMT, has more to do with research discussions that usually contain references to the discussion in question, and the progression of such a discussion is useful to track back on...and it's not necessary that YOU understand any purpose to such a mod, Nao. Just understand that I want one because *I* have a use for it, quite independent of Gri's use for it, thanks. Still, if it absolutely cannot be done, it absolutely cannot be done, and that's that.
Thanks for telling me about Gri's discussions with you, Arantor. That's certainly illuminating. Gri has popped up on a board in his quest for grivitational codes and as must be the case with everybody who knows good coding, the board's owner is already busy on priority projects and has already run into that won't-take-no wall, ha. Okay, so I'll give up, but there is another aspect (the one I won't talk about in public) that could do with further discussion via PM, if that's okay.
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-sigh- What do you actually want? Pretend I know nothing of Gri or WP trackbacks...
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Yeah, I'm not sure I understand either...
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Well, I've already described the situations I was in where I could have used such a capability on other boards (my attempts to reconstruct the 1900 House thread on the now defunct PBS Discussions board, which used a totally/completely different boardware. There were a good number such research threads on that board that got locked by the mods only because they couldn't otherwise control the influx of spammers, while we legitimate people wanted to discuss things further and post more links to research articles. ReCaptcha was tried and didn't work, and PBS et al had just had significant budget/staff cuts). A lot of work went into those research threads, and now all that work is lost.
Had that board been an SMF board with the capability of not only preserving the information but the progress of the discussion to reference later, things would be more desirable. But here's something that the PBS board did that SMF doesn't do adequately--That board gave you a choice between Flat View and Tree View. SMF defaults what amounts to their Flat View, which is fine when you're looking to read posts sequentially, but finding its Tree View capability isn't so intuitive. Tree View permits the viewing of who replies to which post and where a specialized discussion branches off from the main trunk, as it were. It was a sort of line-of-discussion map.
Trackback in SMF is what I latched onto, seeing what Gri had done with it on griv.tk (briefly--he took it back off), but as a reasonable substitute for that I would accept a mod that would provide a Flat View/Tree View choice just to follow a given line of discussion/branch-off. And of course, this arrangement happens only on the board itself rather than being across different boards (and the reason for crossing boards was already given in my different-community-boards-toward-robotic-development scenario. There are other efforts besides robotic that involve interdisciplinary research, I hasten to point out, and the ability for boards to cross-pollinate along those interdisciplinary lines is useful...ESPECIALLY when a line of discussion is preserved on one board when its related-but-different board goes out of service...but...you've both successfully pointed out that this is introduces a vulnerability, so I'm at a loss with this.
And yeah--in the PBS Discussion Board situation, the ability to carry on a discussion while referencing previously posted research information despite the thread getting locked is the one interest I share with Gri.
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And yeah--in the PBS Discussion Board situation, the ability to carry on a discussion while referencing previously posted research information despite the thread getting locked is the one interest I share with Gri.
He wants to be able to continue the same discussion in two places at once. You want to be able to reference something from somewhere else, which is literally as complex as copy/pasting the URL, or something very similar to the WP trackback which has never been implemented in SMF to the best of my knowledge.
Threaded view vs flat view is a discussion that's been had more than once by us, and is something Nao and I can never agree on (even though, interestingly enough, I was asked about it only yesterday elsewhere), if only because there is no good way that we can think of to actually manage it in performance terms. Storing the relationship of posts is easy enough, even the ghastliness of the UI can be ironed out (did you ever see how it is handled in vBulletin? Dear god that's messy) but performance is always going to be hurting in that respect.
/mewanders back ephemerally to the discussions only a day or so ago.
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Regarding your footnote--well, you ASKED what I wanted. You got your answer. Carry on.
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-sigh- I asked what you wanted, yes, to ascertain whether it was desirable functionality or not to include as a core feature, not because I was saying that I would build something you were asking for. Your tone indicates that you feel as though we are going to include it, which is not the case in the slightest.
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100% your own inference, sir--none of my doing. Speaking of tone, I don't accept getting ripped just for answering your question. Good day.
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I don't particularly find much joy in the "I would accept..." tone because it implies a relationship other than what we're doing, i.e. we build what we want and if people don't like it, *shrug*, because we're not in this to bow to the desires of everyone else.
But that shouldn't stop people from trying to convince us to implement something. They should just know it's "no" to begin with, and then maybe we'll change our minds later (or just give a definitive "no".)
As for threaded, I propose that we at least include and include the parent ID for all posts. It won't kill performance... As long as we don't use it, we don't even need to bother. But if we ever implement it in the future, it'd be nice that old posts get ID relationships immediately; even if we don't implement anything, we may end up releasing a mod for this, or even someone else... Really, it's something I'd rather have under the hand, even if the final threaded view smells like it was built as an afterthought, I don't really care -- some people like it that way. Some bloggers will want comment relationships (which, I believe it should be pointed out, doesn't help a discussion that is taking place currently, but is definitely helpful once a discussion is over. I think we could even make it so that a blog post's comments are shown in threaded mode by default if it has less than 50 comments and the last post is older than a week....)
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I don't particularly find much joy in the "I would accept..." tone because it implies a relationship other than what we're doing, i.e. we build what we want and if people don't like it, *shrug*, because we're not in this to bow to the desires of everyone else.
But that shouldn't stop people from trying to convince us to implement something. They should just know it's "no" to begin with, and then maybe we'll change our minds later (or just give a definitive "no".)
As for threaded, I propose that we at least include and include the parent ID for all posts. It won't kill performance... As long as we don't use it, we don't even need to bother. But if we ever implement it in the future, it'd be nice that old posts get ID relationships immediately; even if we don't implement anything, we may end up releasing a mod for this, or even someone else... Really, it's something I'd rather have under the hand, even if the final threaded view smells like it was built as an afterthought, I don't really care -- some people like it that way. Some bloggers will want comment relationships (which, I believe it should be pointed out, doesn't help a discussion that is taking place currently, but is definitely helpful once a discussion is over. I think we could even make it so that a blog post's comments are shown in threaded mode by default if it has less than 50 comments and the last post is older than a week....)
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I have no problem with people suggesting things, nor with people encouraging us to implement things they'll find useful. It is only when it goes into feeling like a demand that it trips my switch (and did I mention I've been extra touchy lately due to family stuff like a funeral?)
To be quite honest, I have no idea what the hell I was thinking when I agreed to this, because I knew this is how it would turn out, people taking a simple direct question (namely 'what is it you're talking about') and inferring that it is going to be built and making it sound less like a request and more like a demand.
You talk about huffy attitude but there is no way to interpret " but as a reasonable substitute for that I would accept" as anything other than a direct expectation of building something I had little desire or interest in building.
Going to take a few days off the internet. Hopefully I'm going to calm down and start being constructive again but frankly I doubt it.
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Don't find a good excuse to leave me again, you little, little man! :P
(hmm, where did I get that ending quote from? Tip of my tongue! must be British. Said by a woman. Can't remember argh.)
:edit: Ha! I remember now. It was Helen Hunt... Was in Mad About You.
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FWIW I took the "I want" as a demand also and seems to be confirmed by her using Arantors not wishing to do it to justify her requesting the same from SMF mod'ers what she finds acceptable. Commonly known as playing one off against the other.
Personally I like the original plan of you guys creating YOUR vision, what's important for the creativity is that it meets your needs and desires, not others.
@Arantor - condolences
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I was asked what I wanted and I demanded nothing. Going into something having a foregone conclusion before you begin is, by definition, pre-judgement (prejudice). Such is the nature of your wolfpack (and wild) imagination. I see now why working with a larger team isn't your strong suit.
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I replied to your request, you f**king asshole.
I've been going 'round many mulberry bushes about this feature all because of somebody whose name I dare not bring up lest this get confused with what he want
I'm certainly NOT happy with you!
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Personally I like the original plan of you guys creating YOUR vision, what's important for the creativity is that it meets your needs and desires, not others.
There always gonna be someone who wants Wedge to be something THEY want(heck, I am guilty of it too, trying to suggest stuff I consider good :P ) but in the end: follow your own goal, and see how it turns out. Only then can you adjust, if necessary - and only if you want to.
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Personally I like the original plan of you guys creating YOUR vision, what's important for the creativity is that it meets your needs and desires, not others.
There always gonna be someone who wants Wedge to be something THEY want(heck, I am guilty of it too, trying to suggest stuff I consider good :P ) but in the end: follow your own goal, and see how it turns out. Only then can you adjust, if necessary - and only if you want to.
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Can't we do both? :unsure:
Live> language to a lady! :P you may not care for what she asks for or demands or whatever, but manners please :P
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It's like this: there are other boardware available but this is one that's in development, and there are whiz kids who think that only their idea is the best thing since sliced bread when it isn't (and in this case, "whiz" takes on both meanings).
Attacking people for thinking their idea is best and then claiming yours are.Either you write code that other people will like, or you write code that only you like. Take your pick.
This goes for everything, software, music, movies and so on.
It's impossible to make something everybody likes. But for anything ever made there are people that do like it.
Freedom of choice.
English isn't my native tongue, but I hope it's clear what I mean.
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Thing is, now that SMF2 is BSD, anyone (anyone!) can make their own SMF fork... They don't *have* to wait for Wedge if they want to implement something, or have someone implement it for them.
(Of course, if they want to build something upon Wedge itself, they'll have to wait for Wedge's license to become BSD itself. Or join our development team of course. When we have 'positions' to fill.)
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Whatever someone makes, he/she makes it because he/she thinks it should be made that way.
This goes for everything, software, music, movies and so on.
Because of that, because of the fact that people of smaller and larger minds than I and Nao will judge the work in the end, there are compromises being made - I'm more of the idealist in that I'm building it more for what I want it to be, not what others want it to be, and honestly I have no interest (and I'm prepared to vehemently defend this) in building features for a minority.
What has really pissed me off so much is that I asked a simple enough question, without any sense of obligation, of what feature someone would be interested in, with the specific proviso of 'assume I know nothing of this', and I've had three completely different features labelled under one banner. I can only conclude that the person making the request doesn't actually know what they want (because if they did, they wouldn't be in the current position of being unable to actually nail it down in a single definition that isn't really three different things under one banner), and when questioned on it, they have reacted defensively to it.
So let me reiterate in no uncertain terms.
* WP style trackback (i.e. a separate post that links to a pre-existing post and sends a form of auto-posted notification, to say 'hey, I linked to you, isn't that neat?' and for an automated notification of that fact to appear as a reply to the original post)
* Freedom of Moving Thoughts (the ability to have the same discussion in multiple places at once, flat threaded, so that if one copy is censored or tampered with, the discussion can continue elsewhere, with the extra benefit of spreading the discussion)
* Threaded views (the ability to have a single thread diverge off into multiple sub discussions, that can end up totally separate to the original source)
And this was labelled all under trackbacks. I was almost as frustrated with the feeling of demand as I was exasperated at the fact that I'd asked a simple enough question, specifically to judge what was being actually requested, especially as the private conversation I'd had on the subject just made it infinitely more confusing by mentioning different bits of each, leading me to believe that the person concerned just doesn't know what they want, other than features that they used before that won't even solve their problem from the sounds of it, even if they were implemented.
As for the specific personal insults handed out in this thread, yes, there is an element of wolfpack about this. That's because we're two individuals working on it in the manner which we choose, unlike the expectation you seem to have that we are an organisation dedicated to serving your needs, which we're not.
The implication that I'm a whiz-kid who thinks my stuff is the best. Hardly. I have greater self confidence issues than most of you would ever realise, mostly because I'm so very good at hiding it. To be honest, watching Nao's code over the last year makes me feel rather inadequate because half of it I'd never have even thought of, and as for some of the rest, I suspect I could put a passable imitation together instead of what Nao coded.
As for the hint about not being able to work in a larger team... it depends on the team. If the team is disrespectful of the people in it, and have separate and hidden agendas, damn right I can't work in it. If the team has respect for each other, like the team I used to lead at a Fortune 500 company, it works incredibly well. But again, you're making the mistake of making this into something it's not. It's just two guys that have respect for each others' skills working on a common goal, nothing more. There's no bullshit, no hidden agenda, no backstabbing, no politics, other than what is brought here.
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Well said.
I particularly like the part about me :eheh:
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Well said.
I particularly like the part about me :eheh:
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Everyone likes to receive compliments about themselves now and again, especially when they're deserved.
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Yup. We are little puppies who strive for their self esteem to survive in this wicked world!
That is why wedge is what it is today. Because we all did our best. :)
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When do you think you will have the first public Wedge release out about ?
And when will you have a SMF2 to Wedge converter out about ?
Will this still be this year or only next year ?
or will this be faster out ?
Many thanks.
Regards, Stefan.
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Alpha target: late September. Personal target. Official target: none.
Beta target: before 2012.
Converter target: ask TE, the man in charge. I doubt it'll be available for alpha, since it won't be a stable release.
Final target: early 2012. The earlier the better. Because of the mod system rewrite, we should have a very short beta period.
As a reminder, I'm planning to make the alpha demo available in august. Admin demo not planned for now (Pete is in charge of the rewrite.)
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So... I was wondering was Clara was no longer visiting, after getting us involved in so many discussions about the threaded view.
Here's what I found:
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=443757.0
So, basically, she went ahead and asked, with the same aplomb, the SMF team about it. They replied pretty much the same as us, in the same way. And she went even madder. Then someone indicated that someone else had posted how to build a threaded mode in SMF, then gave a link, upon which she kissed him for such a present, and then nothing...
Probably because by then, she had realized the link he gave was to the very post where *I* was describing the implementation I made, and the reasons why it didn't 'work' in an SMF environment.
Full circle eh. She could have just asked here about my code... ::)
Now she's "shopping for other software".
Well, good luck to you Clara. And remember, even if you have to pay for the software, they're not your bitches either. If you can't find it, build it yourself. This is exactly what WE did.
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As mentioned elsewhere, there was an epilogue accusing me of misogyny and prejudice against her, followed by blazing hypocrisy on her part. It was pretty epic, actually.
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Oh, where was that?
(My problem is that I can't help but be more understanding/appreciative when I'm talking with a girl. Female geeks are rare so they're beautiful. But because it's a concious process I'm acknowledging and playing with, that will *never*, ever have any influence over the course of my work.)
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I linked it in the discussion we had in the private boards about the features in question.
http://meaningles.com/home/index.php/topic,64.msg291.html#msg291 - reply 23 onwards since # links are broken for some reason.
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Yeah I read the other topic after that ;)
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I've been accused of (and guilty of, to be fair) many things. But this one is new to me.
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Enjoy it then :lol:
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She gave up. After making it clear she wasn't even reading my posts, she promptly asked for an ignore button and was denied one and hasn't said anything since. I think she's headed off to vBulletin, she'll find their atmosphere even more friendly than ours.
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In the research boards I have admined we hate threaded view, much rather use boards and sub boards to and different topics to keep research organized, with footnotes tagging content and linking to related research could not be easier (well it could be a little easier, however it works.)
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I think threaded view has a place, and some forums absolutely swear by it. You can also tell which users regularly use threaded-view sites when visiting a flat-view forum.
I'm not sure there isn't a place for threading in Wedge, but I'm not sure there is either, really. Needs more work, I think.
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I think threaded view has a place, and some forums absolutely swear by it. You can also tell which users regularly use threaded-view sites when visiting a flat-view forum.
I'm not sure there isn't a place for threading in Wedge, but I'm not sure there is either, really. Needs more work, I think.
Almost wonder if wiki + threaded discussion would work better for others. Forums can't do everything ;)
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Sure, I wasn't saying otherwise. I just don't like it when someone tries to talk for everyone
Wiki + threading suits some kinds of types of sites, mostly when you have the wiki for an article and the threading for its comments, rather than anything else. Forums shouldn't do everything, they should concentrate on facilitating discussion, which a wiki doesn't (it primarily aims for content distribution).
As for threading, it seems to me that it's stronger on blogs than on forums, but it does engender a strange turning of the clock back since it harks back to how Usenet etc works.
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Almost wonder if wiki + threaded discussion would work better for others. Forums can't do everything ;)