Feedback requested on proposed change to FreeNAS project's bug reporting system

[HolyK]

Disclaimer: This is not a offensive post against FreeNAS or any FreeNAS team member or member of FN community. This is just how i feel it ...

Now for the forum software it self. I agree that XenForo is probably a bit too social and modern for it's target audience, but from someone who just got done evaluating forum software I'll throw in my 2 cents. The cold hard facts are that the vBulletin that everyone loves(used by the FreeBSD forums and other techie sites) has hit rock bottom. The company was sold, the main developers left after issues with the new owners, the former main developers wrote XenForo, the new developers wrote version 5 of vBulletin which is a complete disaster(If I recall correctly it was the bad switch to vBulletin v5 that happened right before the hasty switch to XenForo).

- Yes, I agree that XenForo is project with good potential, main authors/devs are former vB developers. They ran away from vB in time of big (and painful) changes in Internet Brands (owner of vBulletin). So the guys are well experienced, no doubt about this.
- vB 5 is a piece of c*ap. We bought (not here, another project on which I'm participating) license, but probably we will never use it. I had test environment and it was pain!
- I did not even know that this forum was migrated to vB5 before the XF. If so, then that person who did it didn't done proper homework. Anyway I still don't understand why he just did not restored the backup from time before update (there was a backup, right?) and just migrated to the XenForo, because this was no-brain decision, sorry to say that...

At the end of the day despite the fact I hate social media and social web sites I think the current site despite it's problems is workable and you really aren't going to get a better choice.

There is "a better choice" ... migrate back to vB 4 or something else (IP.B?) and stop trying to make a spaceship from bike and duct tape, there is no such a McGiver skill in the real world.

Keep in mind it is currently 1.x software, the only reason it's usable is because it was written by developers with experience with forums and is really the successor to vBulletin. Also take a look at this post for a bigger picture of XenForo.

Version 1.x is exactly the reason why its bad... or FreeNas is now an official XF beta tester community ?

About the link you provided. Statistics is one thing, but reality is another one. I believe that the migration helped to that web, but it does not mean that it will help everyone. That guy obviously just did not clicked on "Migrate to XF" button and rest of the things weren't magically done. He spent lot of the time to deliver forum on new engine with minimal impact on the community.

In our case, we are in RED numbers in most of the statistics, or at least in the most important. Users with lot knowledge left/leaving or minimized their interest since the migration. Hell with the statistics, we have several MIA here...

Let's be realistic...
- We're missing a lot (A LOT!) features here which we get used to use on vB, no replacemet till now.
- We have lot of bugs/requests which noone is going to fix/fulfill for months. (Even if some of them are like 5min job, like that post timestamp.)
- Admin panel of XF was made by someone on crystal because it is a one big mess, but hey, at least it looks cooool! (My personal opinion and i just cant get used to work with that)
- Template management system is crazy. Do i really need to do a template modification OF template modification function so i could modify a template?!!?!?! (and no, i did not smoked anything, this is true)
- and more

Cmon! This is not a forum for women about cooking and baking (i like all three things btw). This is TECH forum, there is no need to have a pastel skin, million trophies, likes/dislikes, and rest of the social things at the top of the todo list ...


We had a stable and safe engine with strong community support. We had a lot of the usefull features and we could add more useful things (syntax highlighting, better user-group management, thread tagging to match the related freenas version, templated forms, and more .... even the facebook functions like "like", "share" or "click to see an dancing elefant" could be added)

What we have now is just a semi-broken (if that's a word) forum where we can write (somehow, plaintext ftw!) and read. Yes, this is the main purpose just like the main purpose of a car is to deliver our ass from point A to point B and maybe pull down when we see a nice lady in mini skirt walking on the street. But where is the rest? Where are seat belts, srs, abs, air condition, xplood stereo, gps, computer, airbags, comfort seats and other (usual) stuff? We just sold our Audi X8 and bought some "Skoda Favorit 2013" with commercial slogan like "We worked on Audi before, but now we are making old fashion cars from '90 but with more shiny colors."

In summary I think the issue is more about communication of changes, the dislike of change, and the lack of attention to reported forum issues.

Yes, yes and yes. To be honest ... I am asking myself why I am still here and complaining. Why I just not send a message to several members (including these who already left this community) which will contain a text like "Guys, I have a spare vB license, let's build a nice place for freenas community with eye-friendly template and lot of the cool stuff including automatic announcement of new FN versions and things like that."

Maybe because i am too lazy, maybe because i don't want to have another project lying on my head and taking my time, maybe because I am too polite and don't want go against FreeNas which could cause community split, or maybe I still belive that there is someone behind, who will one day step in a say "Ok, we tried, but we failed (again, ... remember that year after migration from phpBB?), so let's do it by different style now.

I've learned this while working on another project(s)...
Successful forum(part of the successful project) is made by satisfied and strong community. To have community satisfied, we need to listen and do the best to make them satisfied. If there is a thing which is pi**ing several members, we should provide very strong reason why is like that or we should consider, discuss, plan and realize a change (in this order!) to make them satisfied again. And for these who are already satisfied, we need to do something to make them satisfied even more!
Once the strong (and satisfied) community is established, then we can celebrate and we just need to keep an eye on it and act in case of need. This is not a nuclear science (even I know we have several experts here)

So why not to ask community about the feelings?

In the end switch to redmine but keep XenForo is my vote.........

I respect your vote, no doubt about it.

From my perspective i can see several ways:

1] Roll back to vB4, clear the mess and stay on vB 4 like MMOch, or XDAdev (actually they are on heavily modified vB 3.8)
2] Migrate to IP.B like for example LinusTech did (because vB5 is fail)
3] Stay on XF and finally start with fixing the bugs, developing additional features and cleaning the mess. ... I don't like this, because i simply don't believe anymore


Phew ... i was on road via train for like 2,5 hours. I almost forgot to get off the train because i was writing this message. I feel it was like 10min trip, not 2,5hour ... anyway sorry for any typos or grammatical mistakes

EDIT: Whaaaat the hell !!! I was in quick edit mode (that shadowbox thing) and i accidentally clicked out of the shadowbox and whole quickedit just disappeared, offcourse without saving the changes .... hell with this thing !

 

[cyberjock]

Let's be realistic...
...
- Admin panel of XF was made by someone on crystal because it is a one big mess, but hey, at least it looks cooool!
...

I laughed so hard I cried on that comment.

That was priceless!

But yeah, I agree with you on everything else. But we'll see.. looks like it's "right after the 9.1 RELEASE and Redmine..."

 

[fracai]

Cmon! This is not a forum for women about cooking and baking. This is TECH forum, there is no need to have a pastel skin, million trophies, likes/dislikes, and rest of the social things!

Seriously?

This is where I stopped reading. If you want positive changes to the forum, I think it needs to start about here.

 

[HolyK]

If you mean that "women cooking and baking" part, then trust me it was nothing against women nor cooking or baking. I like all three things ( :] ), it was just a phrase, nothing more.

If you mean second part, then please answer the following question:

What is more important on forum relate do FreeNAS?
a) To have "like/dislike" function and awards/thropies
b) To have proper source code parsing in posts in human-readable format

Then ask me again if i am serious, really ...

 

[fracai]

It was the misogyny.

I don't really care if the social stuff is there or not. It doesn't big me to see the icons, as long as they aren't taking time from functional maintenance.

 

[cyberjock]

I hated the "dislike" because if I said something that they didn't like, even if I was right(for instance.. someone "disliked" a post because their P3 with 512MB of RAM was chastized by me as not enough RAM) they disliked it. WTF!? That's just wrong...