As many of you know, I’ve been working with phpBB for a long time, and I’ve been an active user on phpBB.com for almost four years. Nine months of those four years were spent as a member of the MOD team. While their team members do a great job (particularly given that they’re all volunteers), I still find that I have a number of bones to pick with them, and my greatest bone to pick has to do with how they communicate with other members.

I’ve been reading a book that I got from Patrick O’Keefe (of phpBBHacks.com et al) about how to create and run successful community forums (which I’ll be reviewing in full on this blog in a week or so), and one of the biggest things that has been stressed in that book is your relationships with your users and staff. Quite frankly, it’s a book that I think the phpBB team members should read, because I think that they really need to improve their relationships with the users on phpBB.com. Although they’ve repeatedly claimed that they’re trying to work on improving this, they usually tend to carry some kind of “I’m better than you” or “I know more than you” connotation when they communicate with the members on phpBB.com.

A very clear example with this happened yesterday. A few days ago, I started a topic on phpBB.com in response to the phpBB2 Retirement, and the topic started off well. Some people were very glad about the change, others were reluctantly accepting of the change, and some others were disappointed about the change, but it was an intelligent, productive discussion. However, around about page 5 or 6, when some of the team members (who shall be unnamed in this blog post) began arguing with the points that were made by some of the users. This in turn resulted in those users arguing back, which began to cause the atmosphere of that topic to turn a bit sour. (I wasn’t posting through this time, just watching.)

It was on page 6 that a user who had just registered called big_board_owner started making some admittedly poor comments about phpBB’s support policy, as well as claiming that the development process only took like 20 minutes and that he was “offering” his services to do security fixes for phpBB2, even though he flat out refused to listen to the team members who were saying that it takes a WHOLE lot more time than that to produce updates.

Now, granted, that user was agitating the topic and not behaving appropriately. But by the time I got towards the bottom of page 8, I started noticing that the posts that the team members were writing seemed just as rude towards him as he had been to them. Eventually the whole topic turned into a big fist fight between the team members and other members who had ganged up with big_board_owner, to the point where derogatory language was being exchanged in a couple of posts. Eventually, one of the team leaders had to end the dispute by locking the topic on page 12.

I’m not going to deny that the user was being inappropriate, but I feel that the team members sank to that user’s level by arguing with him. The point of the topic was not to argue about who was right or to argue that phpBB2 shouldn’t be retired, it was to discuss the fact that phpBB2 was being retired and to share our opinions on it. Quite frankly, I’d blame the team members for being the first ones to blame others of having “invalid” opinions and for hurting the general atmosphere of the topic. We all have opinions, nothing is going to change that, and the team members shouldn’t consider it their duty to “convert” everyone to the “correct” way of thinking.

The team members need to understand that they are the ones who set the atmosphere on phpBB.com, and as such, they need to hold themselves up to a much higher standard than the other users. This is true for ANY community. Any community will end up with users who sign up simply to cause trouble, and it should be up to the administrators/moderators to deal with that user in the appropriate fashion, NOT to argue with those users. What does arguing do? It makes them angrier and gives them even more reason to misbehave, and this hurts the community at large. Because of the way that the team members mishandled this situation, that topic for discussing (not arguing) the retirement of phpBB2 is now closed and now no one has the opportunity to share their opinions on this very important topic. Having worked with the team members before, I know many of them tend to prefer arguing with these users for their own entertainment and enjoyment rather than thinking about the interests of the community at large. As team members, they should have dealt with that user privately and not permitted him to take the conversation in a bad direction, but they chose instead to argue with him and effectively helped him with his goal to take the conversation in a bad direction.

The way that that topic materialized should be embarrassing to the phpBB team members because it shows that they do not know how to deal with users who register simply to stir up trouble. I for one think that if any reasonable kind of friendly community discussion is to be able to persist on phpBB.com and not fall into the kind of wormhole that the phpBB2 Retirement topic fell into, then the team members really need to take a look at their actions and rectify them, or they are going to find that their rapport with the users will turn sour very quickly.

Tags: administrators, community, discussion, forums, members, phpBB2, shame, team members, topic, users

I don’t frequently talk about politics on this blog, but it seems like pretty much the whole internet agrees that last weeks’ ABC debate between Clinton and Obama, run by “Gibsonopoulos,” was a complete joke and an insult to the point of even having debates. Absolutely insane.

This particular blog did a good parody of this by showing what the Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858 might have been like had they been moderated by Gibson and Stephanopoulos, and it’s absolutely hilarious. You’ll want to take a look at this. Props to the guy that did this because it’s very well done.

Tags: ABC, Clinton, craziness, debate, Douglas, Gibson, Lincoln, Obama, parody, Stephanopoulos

The short answer: Because I don’t refer people to things that I don’t think are worthwhile.

Yes, I have liked some of the things that MacHeist has done before, but this seems stupid. As if they didn’t have enough to play around with from their December 2006 and January 2008 bundles, they’ve now decided that they have to throw another bundle out the window once again. I mean, how many times do they expect us to throw $49 away? I know that these are large savings on totally random I-never-even-intended-to-purchase-this-otherwise selections of shareware, but it’s not like money grows on trees.

But now, apparently, they’ve decided to step up a notch and sell this as a retail package, but not before offering the same thing for sale online first. While I personally think that one defeats the purpose of the other, who am I to think things through logically?

But what’s crazy about this bundle is that NOTHING IS NEW. A few of the applications are from the original December 2006 bundle, but the majority of these are from the January 2008 bundle that was less than three months ago. I mean, who do they think they are kidding?

Well, they’re not entirely insane, in that they’re admitting this themselves. In an e-mail that they sent out to all of us longtime MacHeist members (I’ve been there since the beginning thanks to an invite that Larry sent me back in October 2006), they acknowledged this glaring fact:

“As an already registered member, we know you may own a lot of these apps, so in an effort to keep you interested, and involved in the world of Mac software, we’ve been hard at work putting together a truly awesome referral program. It’s time to call up those old friends… because this time around, we will be unveiling multiple tiers of software prizes, each crammed with several options.”

Well first of all, for the first part of that sentence, let’s correct “own a lot of these apps” by indicating that I own all of them courtesy of these geniuses. And so what they’ve decided to do is instead turn all of us into pawns in order to annoy our friends and family and website visitors to urge them to spend $50 on software that most of them don’t need, and on stuff that the majority of the concerned internet already has anyway. I seem to recall the January bundle having sold tens of thousands of copies, enough to raise $500,000 for charities in that go-around. So what makes this bundle worth it? No, they want to make us pawns to try to urge people not only to buy this software, but to use our referral links rather than someone else’s.

Well, I’m not going to play that game. I’m not going to try to refer people to something just for the sake of getting benefited for the referral, and I’m certainly not going to try to refer people to something that I think is completely pointless myself. That’s not the way I roll. I don’t know where MacHeist thinks they’re getting this idea from, but I don’t expect to see them getting anywhere close the the amount of participation that they’ve had in their last two bundles, because I think most people (except the people greedy for those referral apps) recognize that this is a pretty lame offering. Therefore, I’m not going to post a referral link for you to go get the bundle–consider this a “deferral” for the bundle. And if you decide that you still want to purchase it, go find someone else’s referral link and use theirs.

P.S.: I do think that MacHeist’s little “trailer” for the retail bundle is pretty cool though, kudos to them on that.

Tags: bundle, MacHeist, referral, retail, sale, shareware, Software, stupid

This past week, my own San Mateo County (along with a small portion of neighboring San Francisco) held a special election on April 8th to vote for a successor to the late Tom Lantos, who had been our representative in Congress. Well, despite a very low turnout for this very small and under-advertised election, Democrat Jackie Speier (whom I have met on a few occasions) was elected with 75% of the vote, thus eliminating the need for a runoff election in June and making her our Congresswoman for the rest of this term (until January 2009).

Below you can see her being sworn in yesterday. Her initial comments were wonderfully provocative, and I sure couldn’t imagine seeing Tom Lantos saying some of the things that she said.

Anyway, congratulations, Jackie! Hope to see some good things from you up there in Capitol Hill.

Tags: comments, Congress, election, Jackie Speier, special, swearing in, Tom Lantos, Video, YouTube

Okay, I’m sure that if you’re looking at Webmacster87.info, you’re wondering, “Whoa, what happened? Where did the great big W go? Where did the beautiful-looking theme go?” (If you’re reading this post in some kind of RSS fead reader, go to Webmacster87.info and start reading this post over again.)

Well, today is the third annual CSS Naked Day, and also the first one that I heard of in time to make the necessary preparations to participate in. The purpose of today is to promote the purpose of web standards and its importance in our everyday use of the internet. In fact, I think that Lorelle VanFossen said it best:

This is the third year of the annual CSS Naked Day which honors web design and designers around the world who help make our websites and blogs look “pretty” to the eye while still being totally functional under the hood. Dustin Diaz wanted to give the web world an opportunity to remind everyone of the benefits of CSS web page design. By removing the stylesheet for the day, the world would see naked web pages, giving a little more appreciation for the skills of web page designers.

Webmacster87.info is one of hundreds of websites going naked today for this cause. My blog will be entirely CSS-free all day today (in my timezone, anyway, as defined by the clock on my website), and since the event is done in honor of designers, I want this to honor my good friend Hans Reikmann (macattacks10), who has graciously volunteered his time to do numerous designs for me over the years, including the artwork for both this version and the previous version of my website, some of my 2005-era forums, and all of my podcasts.

If you want to go naked on your blog or website today, there’s still time, and Lorelle has suggestions for how you can participate. In the meantime, enjoy this low-fi version of Webmacster87.info!

Oh, and while we’re on the subject, today is the 100th Day of 2008! Woo hoo!

Tags: blog, community, CSS, design, event, internet, naked, standards, web design, Webmacster87.info

I may be kinda “out there” in the tech world, but I still have enough senses to smell something creepy when I see it, as was definitely evidenced a year ago when a special PreviewCast episode started talking about some strange thing for Second Life.

Well, the world gets creepier as last week, Congress apparently held hearings on these virtual reality “world” things–and weirder, the real hearing was apparently simulcasted on Second Life. Luckily for me, Jon Stewart considers this stuff to be as freaky as I consider it, and he even pulled out one or two of the degrading jokes that I’ve used for the past year on this segment to make fun of Congress actually caring enough to hold hearings on these things! Boy, I’m glad I’m not the only one with some good, common sense!

Tags: Congress, craziness, hearings, internet, Jon Stewart, online world, Second Life, The Daily Show, Video, virtual reality

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Well, WordPress 2.5 has been released for about a week now, and I’ve been able to grace Webmacster87.info with its presence after spending some time last night doing an update. I’ve had some opportunities to play around with the new admin interface and some of the other changes, and since this is such a significant update to WordPress, what better time to do a review of the update? So, I’m going to take the time now to discuss some of the things that I like about the update, some of the things that I don’t like, as well as talking about some of the things that I’ve done to Webmacster87.info during last night’s update.
Continue reading »

Tags: 2.5, administration, Dashboard, features, interface, review, update, widgets, WordPress

Easter is one of those weird holidays because it is one of the few holidays that doesn’t have a set-in-stone date. It’s not on a specific date, it’s not on a specific day of a certain month. The only hard-and-fast “rules” for Easter is that it always falls on a Sunday, on one of the thirty-four days within the range of March 22-April 25 (inclusive). As for how the date of Easter is calculated, it’s a very complicated and involved method that’s so complicated and involved that even Wikipedia doesn’t detail it. Furthermore, there has been controversy behind it many many times, including many attempts to “standardize” the date that Easter is celebrated, most of them to no effect.

Well, this year, Easter fell on March 23rd, the second-earliest possible date that Easter could fall on. Wow. However, today I was shown something that actually puts this date into some interesting context. The fact of the matter is that for everyone who went through Easter this year, they have gone through the earliest Easter that they will ever go through again in their lives. Wow! Here’s the facts:

Easter was on March 23rd this year, 2008. The last time that it fell on March 23rd was in 1913, meaning that no one under the age of 95 has lived through an Easter this early before. Furthermore, none of us will again, since the next March 23rd Easter will be in the year 2228 (220 years from now!). But what about the one possible earlier date for Easter, March 22nd? Well, the last time that happened was in the year 1818, and it will not happen again until the year 2285, 277 years from now! None of the over 6 billion people alive today have ever experienced a March 22nd Easter, and they never will.

Not that any of this has any practical importance, but it is interesting to think about.

Tags: dates, Easter, event, fact, holiday, interesting, landmark

I must say that I am. Granted, WordPress does have the best admin layout of any blog/CMS platform that I’ve ever used, but I have had my share of picky points to complain about here and there. But yesterday, the folks at Automattic released WordPress 2.5, which they have deemed to be the biggest UI change since 1.5 came out three years ago. The main attraction of 2.5 is a brand new administration layout that is much more user-oriented. It has a much nicer, better-flowing layout that also permits a nice amount of customization. (And the Dashboard is actually useful now, woo hoo!)

So, the good news with WordPress 2.5 is that it’s got a lot of great new features. However, the bad news with WordPress 2.5 is that it’s got a lot of great new features. That means that if you’ve heavily customized your WordPress installation with plugins or theme tweaks, you may need to think a couple of times before you begin the 2.5 honeymoon. A wide number of incompatible plugins have been listed by the community, and if you use some of the more popular plugins listed at the bottom of the page, you may need to hold your horses for a week or two until the authors start rolling out some updates. I know that I’m going to be holding off for awhile until I have a significant amount of time to dedicate to updating. Also, due to the size of this upgrade, doing a very comprehensive backup will be HIGHLY recommended.

However, congratulations to Automattic on this release, and I look forward to examining it in more detail.

Tags: 2.5, administration, Automattic, backup, blog, Dashboard, layout, release, upgrading, user interface, WordPress

This is an interesting movement that is taking place today, where many residents and cities around the world, including my native San Francisco, is agreeing to turn the lights off for one hour starting tonight at 8 PM. It seems like an interesting movement. If you are able to, consider doing your part for the movement, and help conserve energy usage by turning your lights off for an hour tonight.

Tags: climate change, Earth Hour, global warming, movement, San Francisco, Video, YouTube