I believe IPS is a great company, and I support it as much as I can. I've watched the company evolve, and I feel very much apart of it. The software has gone from something messy, compared to todays standards, to something that is, for the most part, organized and very functional.

I understand that it takes time to improve certain elements, and things certainly have improved. The AdminCP gets better and better with each update, the posting box has immensely evolved, and many other things have changed. But there are certain elements, mostly in the moderator area and privacy, that I feel is being neglected. Simple changes that would take me, a non certified zend engineer, no more than a half an hour, or less, to figure out how to do. One could argue that I could simply make modifications to IPB to fit my needs, and I have been doing that for a long time. But the problem is there are so many changes, many of which are simple enhancements or fixes, that I have to make that it takes me too much time to modify my forum after every update. And I'm not talking about "unnecessary" stuff like PHP processed custom BBCode, ability for members to see their own invisible posts, or simply seeing how many are viewing a forum from the board index. I can live without things like that. I'm talking about small things that any normal person would have no problem with, like being able to leave out the year on your birth-date so no one knows how old you are.

I don't want to have to modify my forum for simple common sense things. I've been extremely patient and understanding and now I'm starting to loose that patience. I'm starting to feel that you guys really don't care one way or another anymore, and that frustrates me.

Now I can care less what you do with the version numbers. You could jump to 10.0 and I wouldn't be upset. What bothers me is with a release that you claim to be more important, as much as that may be true, you don't consider other additions, no matter how small they are. I can understand you wanting this update to be not big enough to effect skins or existing modifications.... But what I asked for are only few line changes that wouldn't have any kind of large impact. Being told a blank "No" is like a slap in the face for me, and I don't feel like you have any respect for me, or any of your customers. Note that I said a blank "No'. Shall I highlight the difference between a "No" and a "We don't feel that this release should be any larger than it is, but we may consider this for a future release."? Imagine for a moment saying that to a customers face.

And no disrespect intended, but who gives a crap about being able to set a skin for a specific link? Most forums, as it is, only use one skin as it is. And you talk about caring what the customer wants? I don't remember ever seeing that suggested anywhere. Not that it isn't going to be a useful feature. I bet it will be. But up until now I don't believe for a minute it was on anyones mind before it was announced.

How hard is it to make it possible to leave out the year on someone's birthdate? I mean come on... I'll show you how easy it is.

Take this:

        foreach ( array('day','month','year') as $v )
        {
            if ( ! empty($this->ipsclass->input[$v] ) )
            {
                $c_cnt++;
            }
        }
        
        if ( ($c_cnt > 0) and ($c_cnt != 3) )
        {
            $this->ipsclass->Error( array( 'LEVEL' => 1, 'MSG' => 'calendar_not_all' ) );
        }

And change it to this (I removed the ",'year'" and changed the "3" to a "2"):

        foreach ( array('day','month') as $v )
        {
            if ( ! empty($this->ipsclass->input[$v] ) )
            {
                $c_cnt++;
            }
        }
        
        if ( ($c_cnt > 0) and ($c_cnt != 3) )
        {
            $this->ipsclass->Error( array( 'LEVEL' => 1, 'MSG' => 'calendar_not_all' ) );
        }

For the most part that's ALL you have to do, other than fix the calendar so it doesn't display the current year as an age, and maybe some minor tid-bits in the new profile. Heck you could optimize that code slightly and eliminate the foreach loop if you really wanted to bother.

I think another thing that upsets me the most is how much you think I don't know. Something is brought up and it's dismissed quickly because it's "too much of an effort" to look into, when I myself can tell you, for the most part, how to do it without having to look at the file.

As far as the birthday thing: I've been patient. I've been waiting and asking about it since 2.0 was in RC. How patient do you expect me to be before I snap?

I hope you don't snap and go on a killing spree because of an IPB forum-the world has enough issues as it is :( :cool:


I have to agree though with some of your points...though I am sure IPS has a lot on thier hands and we can't expect them to put everything we request into thier software...but I do like the leave year out of birthdate suggestion :thumbsup:

I read the post which you are talking about, and I agree, I think that was a pretty poor, unprofessional and unacceptable response really. With things like that, I almost wonder why people bother trying to help out with some feedback. I mean these suggestions are us doing IPS a favour, not the other way round.

I understand you want to be able to leave out your year in your profile. But this causes us to have to update upcoming birthdays, calendar, profile, usercp - that's 4 files off the top of my head not including any language bit changes.

This release is nearly packaged up and ready to go, minus testing. For us to start adding things at this point is not a good idea. We're going to be opening ourselves up to bugs when the build is about ready for release. It just doesn't make any sense to do that.

The skin url mapping feature Matt added in an hour or two, based on something else he was working on. He thought it would be nice to throw in at least one new feature that wouldn't dramatically affect the board.

This particular release's goal was simple - fix IPB so that it works smoother with Converge. Fix the major outstanding bugs. Fix the performance hits we've been seeing. In order to concentrate on the areas we wanted to concentrate on, it meant not adding new features and code.

Your suggestion isn't ignored - it's just not feasible to add at this time.

And I didn't mean anything personal by the blanket 'no'. I'm very frequently told I talk to much and go into too much detail. I was just shortening my reply a bit.

I understand you want to be able to leave out your year in your profile. But this causes us to have to update upcoming birthdays, calendar, profile, usercp - that's 4 files off the top of my head not including any language bit changes.

This release is nearly packaged up and ready to go, minus testing. For us to start adding things at this point is not a good idea. We're going to be opening ourselves up to bugs when the build is about ready for release. It just doesn't make any sense to do that.

The skin url mapping feature Matt added in an hour or two, based on something else he was working on. He thought it would be nice to throw in at least one new feature that wouldn't dramatically affect the board.

This particular release's goal was simple - fix IPB so that it works smoother with Converge. Fix the major outstanding bugs. Fix the performance hits we've been seeing. In order to concentrate on the areas we wanted to concentrate on, it meant not adding new features and code.

Your suggestion isn't ignored - it's just not feasible to add at this time.

And I didn't mean anything personal by the blanket 'no'. I'm very frequently told I talk to much and go into too much detail. I was just shortening my reply a bit.

Brandon sometimes you have to say a little more, and maybe think what you say through before you say it. I read my posts over three times sometimes just to make sure what I'm saying is being construed in the right mannor. It is extremely easy to tick someone off by saying it the wrong way, especially when they're not sitting right in-front of you.

As far as your comment about the birthdays: The upcoming birthdays is not effected because if it was it would have a problem with my forum having the year blanked out. At worst it would show the current year as the current age, and all you need is a simple if statement to not include the "(##)". As it is now it doesn't show the age at all when the year is set to 0. The calendar does show the age being the current year, but that's also easy to fix. The UserCp: I just showed you what to change. The profile, same thing: If the year is equal to 0 don't display the year and age.

Now I understand that you don't want to add any more in because of how far you are now. But next time you have a release coming out, no matter how small it is, think about small things like this. It would make a world of difference to not just me, but everyone else. I'm not asking you add anything big.

As far as me wanting this.. I could care less about letting someone know how old I am. This is more of a privacy issue for younger kids, especially for communities that have a larger population of kids. Not only do I feel this is a privacy issue, but a safety issue as well.

Yes, I understand - there are literally HUNDREDS of "small things" suggested by yourself and other customers. For the last 2 releases, this is practically ALL we have concentrated on. Suggestions like this aren't ignored. It just didn't make it to the top of the list this time. Look at the changes in 2.3 - one new feature. Everything else is bug fixes, converge enhancements, and resource improvements.

I'm not saying removing the year from the birthday input is the end of the world. It's certainly not, and not going to take a week to do either. But when you add up the 10,000 similar requests we get, it takes time. We decided not to add anything new in this release (which originally was pegged as 2.2.3 until we ended up adding all the major converge changes and resource improvements) but rather instead concentrate on what our goal was to fix.

Again - I'll extend my apologies for coming off "standoffish". Working on 5 things at once, perhaps I just replied to your post a little too fast. ;)

I've been suggesting over quite a long period of time that the IM profile fields be turned into custom fields, but IPS haven't acted on this yet or said why they don't wish to do this. That said, I do understand that this release is about improving the board and not about adding new features; and this is a new feature. What I think they should do is have a list of minor improvements and keep adding to them, and every major release work through the list, allowing minor and point releases to be focused on specific improvements.

I accept your apology Brandon. In the future please have some thought to look over what you say before you hit the "Add Reply" button. As hard as it is to communicate with text, as emotions can be misinterpreted, you can take the time to re-assess things...

From reading "Antony"'s reply it got me thinking about future changes and community involvement. Sometimes we don't know what is considered, and what isn't. Posting forums is a bit messy, just like it would be for keeping track of bugs. Maybe it would be a good idea to have an area, similar to the bug tracker, where you can flag a suggestion for future release, and maybe a rough time-line of when it could seen (estimated version). Of course suggestions that are flagged for a version could be done earlier, or pushed back, as that is the nature of things. But it would be useful to see some type of "dynamic roadmap" so things aren't suggested over and over again, and it would give us more of an idea of your thoughts. Of course you wouldn't put "top secret" things here, but only "up coming" things that were suggested by customers.

I would also agree with the IM thing, but to me that isn't critical. On my site I would remove IM's completely because for me it's a safety issue. I just end up removing IM's from the profile template... But if we were able to customize IM's, I would customize it out :)

Luke -


I know it can be frustrating to seemingly have suggestions ignored. I assure you, we do take feedback on board and our last releases have reflected just that. The problem is, you only see a small portion of our feedback and therein lies the problem. Much of the shaping of 2.2 and 2.3 have been based on feedback received by our sales/customer service teams as well as via support tickets. Sometimes this contradicts the small percentage (relatively) of suggestions and feedback posted on the forums. That's not to say that applies in this particular case, I'm simply illustrating the point that developers are not able to just start ripping code apart (regardless of how small an edit may seem) without other departments signing off on it after carefully evaluating how such a change could impact other customers, product performance, quality, etc. While the act of editing the code may seem easy enough, there's much more involved than opening a file in Edit Plus.

We've incorporated these procedures to ensure the utmost quality of the product and I think the quality of the past few releases is a testament to the policies and procedures at work.

We do listen - there's just more than meets the eye sometimes. :)

Thank you for understanding.

I understand. I'm just a little frustrated that something that I consider to be a safety issue for younger members not making it when I've been asking about it since 2.0, nearly 2 years later. I understand you have policies to follow, and I appreciate that, and I do see the improvements that it has made. If it was any other feature I would continue to be patient and hope for the best. But this is something I consider to be a serious issue... And after being told "No" it just pushed me over the edge.

I would really appreciate it if this was something you could throw in, or at least put in a near future release. Any other features, no matter how useful they can be, I can wait. If I could do this myself by just changing template bits I would have done so by now. For me to continue to modify my forums source files... That isn't without consequence. As time goes on I have less and less time... Upgrading is a lot easier when I can simply upload the next release of source files. That's why if I absolutely need something, I work extremely hard to do it without changing code.

I'm curious as to your reason for not wanting members to have IM fields? Seems that should be their choice to make whether or not they fill them in.

I'm curious as to your reason for not wanting members to have IM fields? Seems that should be their choice to make whether or not they fill them in.

Hardly no-one I've seen on many forums fills in ICQ anymore. I never want Yahoo to display - what's the point of a blank space? I'd much rather replace it with GTalk or a Jabber ID. The freedom to do this would be great.

My other niggles are just things like the checkboxes in PMs, but I'm hoping they'll be addressed when a (well-needed) rewrite of the PM system occurs.

Given that a majority of my community ranges from 10 to 16 (sometimes as low as 9), the last thing I want is for some predator to find a way to contact them to a place that isn't monitored. The site is a fansite for a Disney's online game. This game you cannot "chat" (typing) with other players unless you have a "secret code". Normal friends you have to use a ton of pre-defined phrases to communicate in-game. I even have the contact by email thing removed.

Even though we allow PM's, as it would be an issue not to when member A wants to say something to member B, I have a custom PM monitoring system that allows us to bring up messages when needed. When a message is deleted from their inbox it stays in the database and shows up as "deleted". Where we do not sit there and read these messages as we do the forums, there is an automated system that will flag PM's if it has certain key words, or word patterns, and brings it to our attention. To give you an example if it contained "meet me" the PM would be held for review until we released it to that members inbox. If we considered a message to be a serious nature we could investigate all messages sent or received by the offender.

I take safety very seriously.

I've been suggesting over quite a long period of time that the IM profile fields be turned into custom fields, but IPS haven't acted on this yet or said why they don't wish to do this. That said, I do understand that this release is about improving the board and not about adding new features; and this is a new feature. What I think they should do is have a list of minor improvements and keep adding to them, and every major release work through the list, allowing minor and point releases to be focused on specific improvements.

I suggested it when 2.x. was being developed and I got the old well we will put in 3.0 and maybe consider it not now junk. Recent Topic: http://forums.invisionpower.com/index.php?showtopic=234179

Much of the shaping of 2.2 and 2.3 have been based on feedback received by our sales/customer service teams as well as via support tickets. Sometimes this contradicts the small percentage (relatively) of suggestions and feedback posted on the forums. That's not to say that applies in this particular case

Well then I see all of our suggestions here are not taken "serious", since we are not the big paying corporations that your company is looking to tend to. Why don't you construct a Enterprise Version and Personal / Small Business Version?

I'm curious as to your reason for not wanting members to have IM fields? Seems that should be their choice to make whether or not they fill them in.

I agree.
http://forums.invisionpower.com/index.php?showtopic=234179

Luke I agree with you on privacy.

Well then I see all of our suggestions here are not taken "serious", since we are not the

big paying corporations

that your company is looking to tend to. Why don't you construct a Enterprise Version and Personal / Small Business Version?

:huh:

He didn't say the suggestions weren't taken seriously. And by no means are only suggestions from coporations taken into account. From my input in the development, from common issues in tickets, I can say that 0% of my input was based off an issue brought to me by a large corporation.

I received the same "No", while Lindy said it in a much more subtle and polite way: "We will continue to provide support for 2.2 for the foreseeable future, although you will be encouraged to upgrade to 2.3 for performance enhancements and bugfixes."

Not that I really mind, it's better than being ignored. :)

Since we are talking about birthdays...


I think it would be very useful to be able to edit a member's birthday... sometimes you don't want the birthdays of banned members to show up...

Since we are talking about birthdays...

I think it would be very useful to be able to edit a member's birthday... sometimes you don't want the birthdays of banned members to show up...

Or just not have banned members appear in the birthdays list...

Or just not have banned members appear in the birthdays list...

Yep, that would be good too, maybe better.

I received the same "No", while Lindy said it in a much more subtle and polite way: "We will continue to provide support for 2.2 for the foreseeable future, although you will be encouraged to upgrade to 2.3 for performance enhancements and bugfixes."

Not that I really mind, it's better than being ignored. :)

I have to be honest - I sometimes think the English language is interpreted differently on the IPS forums. :lol: I said we will continue to support 2.2. Of course we will encourage you to upgrade, we would still be using Windows 95 otherwise, but encourage does not mean require. I'm unsure how that equates to "No" but such is the beast that is interpretation. :)

Well then I see all of our suggestions here are not taken "serious", since we are not the big paying corporations that your company is looking to tend to. Why don't you construct a Enterprise Version and Personal / Small Business Version?

Again, I didn't say that suggestions here are not taken seriously, I merely said that they do not always reflect what our customer base on the whole is looking for. To address the latter part of your interpretation of my statement, I did not say large corporations. As I've said before, the majority of our customers (ranging from people who setup communities to talk about pet rocks to "large corporations") do not frequent these forums. We're often told "we have our own community, we don't need or want to visit yours." We would be doing everyone a disservice by not evaluating feature requests and enhancements and looking at things from all angles.

We appreciate feedback and suggestions from all sources and all customers. I'm simply asking (read: pleading) that you understand that we're far past the point of simply being able to drop in a line of code here and there without consideration as to how it impacts other areas and other customers. You may think it's a simple 5 minute thing to, for lack of better example, rip the year out of the profile. Some customers require ages to be displayed, so thus spawns a setting (on/off toggle) and skin edits, which then prompts the "why are there always skin edits?!" complaints. Cause and effect, folks. That's not to say we won't get to it, it's simply a matter of prioritization - at this moment, continuing our efforts towards efficiency, usability and even further stability is taking precedence over the minor (in popularity, not importance to the requester) edits. We'll then be able to give all of your requests the full attention they deserve. :)

I do like the idea of incorporating more of this into the bug tracker - we'll bring that up at our next internal meeting. Thanks.

Or just not have banned members appear in the birthdays list...

I don't understand why it shows birthdays of banned members. :whistle:

Isn't that more of a bug? Surely that's just a query change? :)

Thanks for the explanation, Lindy.

May be, it worth to make some kind of "bugrtacker" for suggestion? I did some suggestions too, and almost every time status is unclear. That's a bit irritating.

It whould be much better to know exactly, if suggestion is accepted or not. And nearest (expected) vertion to be implemented.

I feel myself impolite to ask the same suggestion twice, until get any answer, but now we have no choice.

Now

I can care less

what you do with the version numbers.

...

I could care less

about letting someone know how old I am.

Sorry to be an English-nazi and to derail the topic, but the phrase is "I couldn't care less", not "I could care less" - They mean very much the opposite. ;)

Dan...

Leave me alone with your superior English :'(