MyBB Community Forums

(2013-09-06, 03:05 PM)labrocca Wrote: [ -> ]I don't see why the forum can't be used for bug tracking with a simple plugin.

A tracker is quite simple, right. But integrating it with the code repository isn't (referencing commits and tickets automatically). However this integration makes it more comfortable for us and the users.
I agree the Github has some disadvantages but overall it's better than our existing solution.

(2013-09-06, 03:11 PM)Nathan Malcolm Wrote: [ -> ]I have a much larger overview of MyBB, the community and the project as a whole, as do many other team members. I'm not denying there are problems. I've been working on both fixing the existing issues and pushing for change for issues which others aren't aware of. The problem I see here if you're not telling us anything new. You critique what you see. You can't critique what you don't. More importantly, you can't critique what you don't understand.

If there are things I cannot see or understand, it is the failure of the MyBB team to communicate those things to the community, not a failure of my intelligence.

I have offered to develop a community strategy for MyBB. I have offered to work on UX for MyBB. Other things, too. All of my efforts have been rebuffed, which is why I instead tried to write some helpful articles and give away some of the things I was able to develop on my own.

If the implication is that I am not talented or qualified enough to assist with anything ... I think that would be a conclusion that is provably false. So the only other explanation is that my help is not wanted. In that situation, you cannot complain about the lack of effort from the community.

Quote:I'm not sure if you've realized, but we have already posted parts of the tour of 1.8. We're waiting until the jQuery conversion is complete before we release the next part. It's been a few months since we've posted about the development but with a whole repository full of updates and changes, it's not going to hurt to look through there if it's so important to you. ...

You say it needs to happen... yet that's what we've been doing...

Yes, I've realized. The passive aggression is not appreciated.

This was posted roughly four months ago:

Quote:Further to this we are, as a group, undergoing huge changes to how we work to help make releases quicker. These past 12 months has seen an insane amount of work completed by our team, much of which is behind-the-scenes, and we hope to bring news of this to you very soon.

So, where is the news? Is it on GitHub somewhere?

Quote:https://github.com/mybb/mybb/commits/feature

Boom. Everything you need to see.

It's great that this exists, but this is not how you communicate information to your users. These are the kinds of things you talk about on forums, on blogs, in newsletters. Furthermore, most of these changes are not the types of things that end-users are interested in. Nobody cares that a "Minor Typo was fixed in showthread.php".

I don't care about the technicalities. I want to know the benefit. You don't sell the vacuum, you sell the clean house.

Unfortunately, there is no filter in GitHub for "stuff that is actually interesting." Typically, it would be the job of the community team to keep people informed and get them excited for the next release.

As always, despite my harsh words, I am available to help. Here's my resume.

Quote:If there are things I cannot see or understand, it is the failure of the MyBB team to communicate those things to the community, not a failure of my intelligence.

It's not an argument of viewing policies, it's the fact that you cannot see everything that goes on. That's how it should be. The team is here to make sure MyBB heads in a certain direction.

Quote:If the implication is that I am not talented or qualified enough to assist with anything ... I think that would be a conclusion that is provably false. So the only other explanation is that my help is not wanted. In that situation, you cannot complain about the lack of effort from the community.

You're trying to help but the way you're coming across is as if you're attacking the project and the team. It feels like I'm listening to the guy who says he could do a better job than David Cameron and that the government doesn't understand what the people want and need.

Quote:So, where is the news? Is it on GitHub somewhere?

As I said, the next part of the tour will be posted when the jQuery conversion is complete.

Quote:It's great that this exists, but this is not how you communicate information to your users. These are the kinds of things you talk about on forums, on blogs, in newsletters. Furthermore, most of these changes are not the types of things that end-users are interested in. Nobody cares that a "Minor Typo was fixed in showthread.php".

I don't care about the technicalities. I want to know the benefit. You don't sell the vacuum, you sell the clean house.

Unfortunately, there is no filter in GitHub for "stuff that is actually interesting." Typically, it would be the job of the community team to keep people informed and get them excited for the next release.

And that's what we've been doing in the tour. We don't want tour which is 16 posts long and talks about bug fixes. We want to focus on the important stuff. At this time, it's not suitable to post yet another part of the tour. Just like at this time it's not suitable to release 1.8.

You have to have faith in us. It's a rocky time with team members away, making some large, unpredictable changes to the software, experimenting with new methods of developing, supporting hundreds of users, and dealing with some of the technical issues we face as a team. We're doing our best.

[quote]A tracker is quite simple, right. But integrating it with the code repository isn't (referencing commits and tickets automatically).[/quote]

http://developer.github.com/v3/

What about using their API then to make some integration plugin? And even better releasing it public. Not only does MyBB bring the traffic back to MyBB but it creates what I suspect would be a widely used plugin by a lot of new sites that would want this type of feature integrated into their own forum. And I realize that what I'm suggesting isn't the simplest of tasks.

[quote]I agree the Github has some disadvantages but overall it's better than our existing solution.[/quote

Anything is better than the existing solution but that doesn't mean there isn't something better than what the team has done.

Here's another problem. When was the last time the team posted a public poll about suggestions or even opened up a public dialog about potential changes? Even the choice of the PHP Framework was just sprung on us. Eventually so much discussion was opened up that the team reconsidered. Why make ANY huge decisions like a framework or github without getting input from the community? And that's not to say we make the decisions but I'd hope the team would allow the public to have their say before the decision is made. Ironic that at a forum softwares forum we have no open forum to discuss these things.

The team doesn't even post in the Big Board forum requesting input. It's as if the end-users and admins don't really have much say in the future of MyBB. That sort of bothers me that a small group makes the decisions for a much larger community. And I think that's been a part of making the community actually smaller.

[quote=brad]If there are things I cannot see or understand, it is the failure of the MyBB team to communicate those things to the community[/quote]

Yes, I feel if anything can be a point of failure then that's it. The community gets notified every now and then about a potential change which might come when they get around to doing it.

As for Github....really disappointed we're asked to join another site to participate in the development and improvement of MyBB. Just doesn't make any sense to me.

[quote]It's not an argument of viewing policies, it's the fact that you cannot see everything that goes on. That's how it should be.[/quote]

And why should that be? What's the reason not to have development discussion where members can at least view them? You say you're going to push the development to Github because you want it more open. But then you state that we cannot see everything and that's how it should be. Which is it?

Either the team wants involvement and transparency or it doesn't even need Github.

And as for the repository and other Github features. I just wonder how many actually use it. My guess is that it's an incredibly small percentage.

This thread just shows how disappointed a few of us are. We want to be involved. We want to be active. We want to be part of the process and the progress. The idea to move to Github had that spirit and intention but is it helping or hurting that goal?

Quote:What about using their API then to make some integration plugin? And even better releasing it public. Not only does MyBB bring the traffic back to MyBB but it creates what I suspect would be a widely used plugin by a lot of new sites that would want this type of feature integrated into their own forum. And I realize that what I'm suggesting isn't the simplest of tasks.

I developed a "Push to Github" plugin so when users create new bug reports on the forum we can push them directly to Github. It's not a perfect system but it means users don't have to leave the forum to post a bug report. I've pushed for changes in development, specifically related to Github, but a bunch of the team thought that Github was good enough.

Quote:And why should that be? What's the reason not to have development discussion where members can at least view them? You say you're going to push the development to Github because you want it more open. But then you state that we cannot see everything and that's how it should be. Which is it?

I wasn't talking specifically about the development. Some of that is discussed internally (more on the technical side) but the team can see how many installs each version has, how many submissions are being made, the issues raised privately, and things that relate to the site, team member availability, blockers which are preventing progress (with whatever that may be). Nothing which really concerns the community.

Quote:You're trying to help but the way you're coming across is as if you're attacking the project and the team. It feels like I'm listening to the guy who says he could do a better job than David Cameron and that the government doesn't understand what the people want and need.

I am not a developer. So, any commentary I have about the development process should be taken with a grain of salt. (That said, governments often don't understand what people want or need. That's the goal of the democratic process, which this thread could be interpreted as. Of course, MyBB doesn't have to be a democracy ) Development complaints are best left to someone like Labrocca.

However, I am a marketer, a writer, and a community manager – both by hobby and by trade. And my primary issues are not with the development process, but how MyBB fails to engage with its userbase. Thus far, none of those qualms has been addressed, and MyBB has no community strategy to speak of. For a product that is actually about building communities, that isn't acceptable.

Which is fine. You're a developer. It's not your responsibility to address community issues. As far as I can tell, it's no one's responsibility. And I am willing to step up to that. And I am demonstrably good at it. So what's the problem?

If I sound frustrated, it's because I need MyBB to survive in order for my own projects to continue. And as it stands right now, there are features missing and less and less third party devs around to fill in the holes. It is going to cause very big problems for me.

And finally, because I love MyBB. I've built two really cool sites using MyBB and I've been using it for seven years! For perspective, you've been on the MyBB team for two years. This isn't to suggest that you're not as invested or more invested than me, but to say that I've sunk just under a third of my life into MyBB.

And for the past three years, I've been trying to get more involved. And it's not working. So at this point I'm thinking, well, whatever. It's not worth it. MyBB will go down whatever path it wants, its users be damned. I don't feel that's the MyBB team's intention, but that's how it's going down.

Quote:As I said, the next part of the tour will be posted when the jQuery conversion is complete.

Regardless of development issues, 4+ months for news that is "coming soon" is not acceptable.

After getting home from school I am too tired to post and visit forums unless they are interesting. MyBB just has a lot of people that are exhausted from work and school.

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It also seems that a lot of the MyBB team are kids. This has a lot to do with the decline of MyBB too.

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(2013-09-06, 01:43 AM)brad-t Wrote: [ -> ]

(2013-09-05, 09:36 PM)Jitendra M Wrote: [ -> ]Also I have said in my previous post, feel free to add some input on what you think needs to be done to improve the forum. 2 pages down and I still have not much apart from the conversation going as to how the site is dying, project is dying, how everyone is trying to give ideas to save it. I have still not seen any proposed solutions to fix the problem (again I may have missed it due to reading on my ipad). Feel free to list them in one easy to read post (preferably in bullet point please) and I promise to personally raise this issue and keep pushing it with the staff.

The fact that you are a member of the Community Team and feel that a reply like this is appropriate is shocking to me. This alone is indicative of a problem. Shouldn't it be part of your job to read the posts about the community and take the time to understand them, rather than asking me to sum up five pages of discussion in a few bullets? What does the community team at MyBB do, exactly?

#shotsfired

Quote:I wasn't talking specifically about the development. Some of that is discussed internally (more on the technical side) but the team can see how many installs each version has...

I've always felt that some of the stats only available to the team should be public. Like install stats.

When things concern the team I think then it should be only the team who can view it. But if it concerns the community then maybe you should consider a public discussion or at least allow us to view the discussion. I always read "we discussed this with the team already". So why not move the thread into a visible area so we can know what was said?

Quote:As far as I can tell, it's no one's responsibility.

http://community.mybb.com/showteam.php There is suppose to be a "Public Relations Team" which imho has not been effective. I'm unsure if it's something related to their mission statement or simply lack of vision and effectiveness.

Quote:And I am willing to step up to that. And I am demonstrably good at it. So what's the problem?

You mean you've never been asked to join the team? Ugh.

Quote:If I sound frustrated, it's because I need MyBB to survive in order for my own projects to continue.

That's a terrible feeling and I know what you're talking about. However I refuse to allow myself to get so wrapped up in a project that I have no other option. I suggest you do the same and always keep an option open. That's just good business sense.

I miss it when Chris B. was around to really push the project and create clear direction for us. We owe a lot to him and since his absence I feel the project has been languishing.

I'm real curious if the team has started a private team thread about this thread. I wouldn't doubt it and I wouldn't doubt that it has more team replies than this thread. Just some speculation.

I'm not interested by the development. My interest is to share information and the relevance of that use. It is apparent that what is best in MyBB came third (shade, WildCard and others). As you can see I do not speak English and do not write in English.

My opinion, as a user, is not welcome?

But if the King wants to keep things secret, ok, we can trust the King but if the good news of the king are insufficient?

Of course there are more talents MyBB outside than inside. This dialogue is very enlightening;


MyBB is free? Open Source?

Still? Free is not the future.

In the world we live in, the future becomes the past as a blink.


With talented people and I see a few years trying to get into the project why not create another project based on MyBB?

Quote: The problem I see here if you're not telling us anything new. You critique what you see. You can't critique what you don't. More importantly, you can't critique what you don't understand.

Guy. That was rather ... aff.

I often wonder what the process is for simple things such as creating a new post on the blog. I wonder if it is the responsibility of one team member.

I'm not suggesting posting power being designated to one person is a bad thing, but if it is, it might work to restrict even new ideas being made known by other members of the MyBB team. The 'Interview with...' feature is good, and it is entirely the sort of thing that should be posted more often. It does not even rely on a new MyBB version being released. I feel the MyBB Blog needs to be taken advantage of much more frequently, and I agree with the comments about integration (with the Blog, and also the rest of the website).