Social Login

[glennk]

Sorry to find out the last topic I commented in about social login was closed. I couldnt see any problems with the debate that led to it being closed. If your not going to listen to your readers and users then whats the point ??

If any of you are interested the forum software I spoke of with social login in the core is Woltlab. New upcoming, very modern looking with all the features required for the future regular updates with new features.

In 2014 Social login as an option is essential. Without wanting to be overly nagative about SMF, this software is getting left behind. I have 2 large forums set up on smf and if it wasnt soo frightening to move them I would have done it a long time back. This software doesnt even have a mobile or responsive theme as yet and when you ask about when one is coming they close your topic and tell you not to ask.

Is this how to create user satisfaction ??

[Arantor]

And the reasons that causes SMF to choose not to include it have not changed any. The maintenance burden alone on the volunteer developers is considerable.

As for the previous debate, that was locked by its topic starter because he didn't get an answer he liked (which is for someone to spend many many many hours making something for him for free), not by the team.

[Kindred]

There are several responsive themes available on the theme download site... And 2.1 has a responsive theme as default.

As for social login...   Exactly what Arantor said...   We have said the same thing several hundred times, so it gets tiresome when people think that THEY deserve special treatment because THEY want something.   You want it? Code it! Social login belongs as a mod... Period. Much easier to update than the core... Especially when idiot coders like Facebook keep changing their API.

Oh, and woltlab is burning board...    And everything done in that, that I can see, can be done in smf with themes and mods.

[glennk]

I dont think I deserve special treatment, I believe all your users deserve a civil reply though. I asked about 2.1 and potential release date. Nothing specific just a basic idea on how long, A month, 6 months, a year ? I was told never to ask and my topic was closed.

In 2014 a responsive theme at the very least is essential. To be told not to ask and have your topic closed is not good. Im not asking for any special treatment just a basic idea on whats happening.

I also still believe socail login is an essential requirement in modern times. If woltlab can provide it why not smf.

[Arantor]

Correct, because you cannot get an answer. You are waiting for four people, working in their spare time, to make something. It will be done when it is done, and no meaningful answer can be given just for that reason. And when we get asked it weekly, having to repeat this is extremely tiresome.

Yes, we agree about a responsive theme. 2.1 has one.

We do not agree about social login, and were it to be implemented expect releases much much more often solely for maintenance, taking the little time devs have away from making anything new and interesting. Remember, these people are spending their time making this. They are not paid. They do it around their jobs and lives.

Edit, actually yes you were asking for special treatment. It is stated quite clearly in the 2.1 board that discussions about its release will be closed. See the board description:

Also, there will be NO DATES discussed on this board - so don't ask.

[Suki]

There is a lot of misunderstandings here. A lot of different issues been mixed up too.

Indeed there was nothing wrong or nothing debatable on that topic for it been locked, alas, it was the OP's decision to close it, not SMF's. People closing their own topics by their own free will doesn't constitute nor can be seen as censorship from SMF or the SMF team members nor it constitute a negative to listen to what other people has to say or their right to been hear as a customer. Its important to make that clear.

When you make an opinion on a public forum, it is expected to receive some kind of response for it, thats the way communication works, if you want to be hear then be prepare to listen to whatever response you might get.

Point two. No one is against social login, at least not that adamantly, despise of my very own personal beliefs about privacy, I wouldn't mind working on something like that, so no, from a pure "company" perspective, no one is against implementing something like this.

There is reticence on actually implement it and there are too many reasons for that, this also covers your question:

If woltlab can provide it why not smf.

- SMF is not a business entity. SMF's human resources is limited and scarce, thus, the way we handle those resources has to be more cleaver than a regular for profit entity.

- Facebook and Twitter employs way more people than they really need, so their solution to that is to simply putting their coding people into reinventing the wheel over and over again every 2 or 3 months. For profit gaining companies, or rather for people who code for profit gaining companies, this isn't that much an issue, its your job, you have to do it, you get pay for it, thats what you do for living, you don't have to worry about other things while you do it. It actually helps you to keep up your job, if Facebook and Twitter didn't change their APIs so often a lot of people would lose their jobs, how ironic is that

Yes, yes, of course there are ways to mitigate the annoyance of having to deal with the constant changes on their APIs, I'm well aware of that.

- Since we don't have that much human resources available, we have to prioritize what we have. What you miss when you say: "you don't listening to me" is that there are other customers who also believes X or Y features are essential for their needs and they have as much "right" to be heard as you.

It is our job to decide which features gets attention based on a bunch of factors:

- feasibility
- demand
- time for implementation
- server impact
- blend it with existing codebase
- maintenance

Pretty much like any other company except we do it on a much more limited way. Social login is one of those features that didn't met the cut, so to speak. This doesn't mean its a bad features or that we don't want it, it just means that for our very specific purposes and goals, it is not feasible to implement something like that.

This is the way we create user satisfaction, not optimal but it is what we got and what it works best for our limits and the customer's needs.

So please, next time you feel SMF isn't listening to you, try looking at it from another perspective.


Point three.

In 2014 a responsive theme at the very least is essential. To be told not to ask and have your topic closed is not good. Im not asking for any special treatment just a basic idea on whats happening.

This are two issues been mixed up.

A responsive theme.
A release date.

The first one has already been answered by many people on many occasions: 2.1 has a responsive theme by default, 2.0 has some responsive designs available as themes.

The release data is something that has never been made publicly, it causes way too much issues and hassles, here is a quick anecdote for 2.1 that happen a few months ago:

There was this guy who kept on asking for a release date (and demanding SMF to become a Xenforo clone for free) and kept on bothering another dev on another forum about it, this dev gave a vague estimation date to him, as a friend, off-record, while casual chatting, on a private message. When the estimated date wasn't met, this guy begun rampant about how SMF didn't met their "official release date" and other atrocities so out of context.

Theres similar cases for other releases been made before. A lose/lose/lose/lose situation for us, bad if we don't give a date, bad if we give a date and miss it, bad if we met the date and got burned out, bad if we don't met the date and still got burned out.

Since this isn't a company and we don't work 8h/6d, we cannot made a realistic date estimation even if we wanted to. So many things can happen when working on your free time, there is no scheduled time for SMF.

So yeah, the civil way to handle all of that is simply putting it straight forward:

Also, there will be NO DATES discussed on this board - so don't ask.

Which is what happen with your topic and has nothing to do with not been hear or been shut down whenever you ask something. The warning is there already, if you decide to bypass it, it means you already understood the consequences and are totally fine with it. Hence the lock.

If you are curios about the whole process why don't you try another approach to it?  why no begun to visit SMF's repo page at github, that page has a lot of data and info and you don't even have to register over there.

Why not been proactive rather than reactive? This isn't a closed company, this is an open source project where everyone can be involved if they desire to do so.

Lastly, this kind of lengthy responses has to be made every single time a person ask about this. Every person feels entitled and "special". If they just could spend a few minutes and read the 2.1's board description or go visit the repo page I wouldn't have to spend code time into this kind of responses (since, apparently, you aren't acquiescent
with the responses qualified people has given to you already), in reality and as ironic and cliché as it sounds: asking for a release date actually delays the release date.

Anyway, thats as civil as I can get on a Sunday morning hope is enough for you, otherwise please try to keep the different issues separately so they can be handle better. I see no reasons for this to be locked other than your inquiries been answered already but do please feel free to add anything you might want to add.

On a totally different note, I dunno why this got derailed from a mod request...

[DenDen60]

Can I suggest that a "Development FAQ" be created?

This way a lot of members could find out what they want without asking questions and developer/ support specialist could refer to the Development FAQ when questions are asked and answers are there.

SMF developers and Support specialist could include in in their signature "Please refer to the Development FAQ for questions about SMF's future development  ". 

[Kindred]

well....e xcept for the fact that the answers, 99.9% of the time are just "no. no and more no"

[DenDen60]

well....e xcept for the fact that the answers, 99.9% of the time are just "no. no and more no"

Then this is what the FAQ would show. It would still reduce the number of questions and responses.

[Arantor]

Evidence suggests this is not the case.

[Kindred]

given the already robust FAQ that we have, for general questions about the system -- and the fact that it has NOT reduced the number of questions asked outside the FAQ which are answered in that FAQ - I have to agree with Arantor.


We might, at some point...   but it's lower on the priority pole than 18-dozen other things

[Irisado]

Moved to Applied or Declined Requests, since this was a discussion about implementing social login as a core feature, not a mod request.

[DenDen60]

Of course no one must see this as a miracle solution. However, if it reduces the questions by 15%, 10% or even 5%, it is a productivity gain for everyone developers, supports staff and users alike.

[Arantor]

We have had a FAQ for years. No noticeable reduction has been observed yet.

Even 1% would be generous.

[DenDen60]

We have had a FAQ for years. No noticeable reduction has been observed yet.

Even 1% would be generous.

Arantor, Do you have numbers to back this statements? If you do, can you share them or send me a link to these stats

Also, the FAQ on the Manual section is not the same thing as a FAQ on future Development.

[Arantor]

I do not have the numbers to hand, I suspect you would not believe them even if I were inclined to obtain them and provide them to you.

And actually, in this case, there is no substantial difference. People will continue to ignore the information provided - as evidence in this very thread, people continue to ignore the fact that it is quite clearly stated 'do not ask for a release date', as has been reiterated for YEARS on this site, why would a FAQ suddenly change things?

No doubt you are about to rebuke me for being unconstructive but you really have not spent enough time here to be able to form a valid opinion on how this community will operate. I, however, have.

[Kindred]

yes, it is the same thing/extended, Denis....


With the addition of and frequent updates to the software FAQ, we SHOULD see a significant decrease in the number of questions which are answered in the FAQ. Evidence indicates the contrary. In general, people as their questions - regardless of the presence of the answer in the FAQ...   actually, regardless of the presence of the answer in a sticky post at the top of the very board they posted in.

Since software questions are asked much more frequently than development questions -- we can take the existing software FAQ as a baseline and determine that a development FAQ would have even less benefit - and we'd still have to be answering questions posted.

[DenDen60]

Alright then, and I am being the devils advocate here, would there be a way to develop a process by which users is forced to look at the FAQ before submitting. LinkedIn uses this approach and it seems to work well.

[Arantor]

You can lead horses to water, you cannot make them drink.
You can lead people to documentation, you cannot make them read it.

[DenDen60]

You can lead horses to water, you cannot make them drink.
You can lead people to documentation, you cannot make them read it.

don't you think this is a preconceived idea Arantor?

[Arantor]

I think this is an opinion formed out of years of doing this stuff. Not a preconceived notion fed to me but one honed over years of actively being involved here.

Let me compare something: your stats indicate a total of 7 days' accumulated time spent on this forum. My stats, which is only *this* account (and this is not my first account), has accumulated 241 days of activity here. That amounts to more than one year of full time-level engagement on this forum, and I don't recall what my stats were on my first account. But that previous account made in excess of 30,000 posts, so it must have been at least 100 days' worth of accumulated time.

That is a serious amount of experience in this community from which to have formed opinions. I have encountered the same mentality in the communities I was a support member in prior to this one, too. Years and years of experience have formed these opinions, not external views pushed upon me.

I do not share what I can only describe as your hopeful but naive optimism for how communities and especially this community operate because I have way too much experience of how they *do* operate to believe in a higher level of operation.

[DenDen60]

I think this is an opinion formed out of years of doing this stuff. Not a preconceived notion fed to me but one honed over years of actively being involved here.

I am not saying that this notion was fed to you. I am only stating that there are researches out there that proves that you can change users behavior.

This knowledge plus my experience on other boards, ( I have been using discussions forums for more that 25 years, I do manage a 8 000 member community of practice and my research led me to use many different types of boards ) tels me that you can effectively change users behaviors.

For example, if you just moved the FAQ that is buried in the Online Manual, put it in RED in the top menu , you could have a direct impact on how many users visit the FAQ. You would then change their behaviors.

This is something that could take 5 minutes to do.

[Illori]

we have the FAQ's listed in a sticky in the 2 support boards. that has not helped us at all get users to read them before posting their questions. i dont think posting a link to the category anywhere else would help.

[Kindred]

Except, my experience of 20+ years with forums and 15+ years with websites in general tells me that you are overly optimistic and, overall, mistaken, Denis.

[DenDen60]

First, I also have 25 years of experience Kinred and most importantly scientific research support my position.

Find me one research that shows that improving the interface does not change the users behavior.

If the sticky does not do the trick, then it is because, for the behaviour change you want to accomplish, it is not the proper approach.

[Kindred]

lol...     typical psychologist.    If something doesn't work, it's not because it doesn't work, it's because you're doing it wrong.  That's one reason I got out of that field.

[Arantor]

So that's how many years of theoretical study and how many years of actually discovering that people do not conform to models of how people think?

[DenDen60]

lol...     typical psychologist.    If something doesn't work, it's not because it doesn't work, it's because you're doing it wrong.  That's one reason I got out of that field.

I am also outside that field. I specialize in best practice and and productivity. Hence my questions to you and anybody here:

Find me one research that shows that improving the interface does not change the users behavior.

[Arantor]

And if we provide any paper, you will find some excuse it does not meet your overly exacting criteria.

[DenDen60]

And if we provide any paper, you will find some excuse it does not meet your overly exacting criteria.

First find one. Then we will discuss.

[Arantor]

What would be the point of my burning time only for you to casually discard it? I have wasted enough time on your pontifications as it is.

[Kindred]

you seem to be suggesting that a written paper (regardless of the author) is more "authority" than the combined experience of (at least) two of the more prolific and experienced admins who you are already conversing with....

[Arantor]

This reminds me of my stepsister, who is also a psychologist. You should see some of the conversations I have witnessed with her on the subject of parenthood. She also cannot possibly be wrong, about anything, ever.

[DenDen60]

you seem to be suggesting that a written paper (regardless of the author) is more "authority" than the combined experience of (at least) two of the more prolific and experienced admins who you are already conversing with....

What I am suggesting is that if what you say is true, then it will reflect on the scientific research.

[DenDen60]

This reminds me of my stepsister, who is also a psychologist. You should see some of the conversations I have witnessed with her on the subject of parenthood. She also cannot possibly be wrong, about anything, ever.

Let's keep the subject on scientific knowledge. That is the best way to stay on the subject and find real evidence one way or another.

[Kindred]

NO... what you are suggesting is that our experience, because it is not documented in some paper, must be incorrect because it runs contrary to the paper that you have read.

[Arantor]

Kindred: you are wasting your time arguing this one, just as I am. This is, coincidentally, the same reason I don't talk to my stepsister because my experience is worthless because it's not in a textbook.

[DenDen60]

NO... what you are suggesting is that our experience, because it is not documented in some paper, must be incorrect because it runs contrary to the paper that you have read.

I am not saying that your experience is incorrect, I am saying that others have a different experience.

Are you open to look at others experience and see if it can be positive for SMF? 

[Arantor]

You know full well that you have just rephrased your own point and changed it into something completely different as a poor argument tactic.

Honestly, at this point I legitimately cannot tell if you are sincerely trying to improve things or are flat out trolling us.

[DenDen60]

Kindred: you are wasting your time arguing this one, just as I am. This is, coincidentally, the same reason I don't talk to my stepsister because my experience is worthless because it's not in a textbook.

Sometimes its good to look at what works elsewhere. That is how we learn. 

[Arantor]

And of course the notion that we might have already tried this has completely escaped you. We do not all live in the world of textbooks and theory. Out here in the real world, things are very different.

[DenDen60]

Honestly, at this point I legitimately cannot tell if you are sincerely trying to improve things or are flat out trolling us.

You think I have the time to troll you.

Come on. Look at my project and you will understand that I have no time to waste. The only reason I am taking this much time is because my project relies on SMF. I have chosen it 8 years ago and it still is. I thus  want to share my knowledge about engagement, community of practices and usability to help out.

Now if no one is opened enough to even try to understand how that information can be useful for SMF, then I will become a social loafer and take what ever I can from you and don't give back. Is that what you want from your community members?

[Arantor]

I was under the impression that you were already in that latter category anyway.

[DenDen60]

And of course the notion that we might have already tried this has completely escaped you. We do not all live in the world of textbooks and theory. Out here in the real world, things are very different.

Well of course I do not know everything about what happened here. Do you know everything about what is going on elsewhere?

This being said, I have never seen the FAQ in red on the top menu to attract the attention of the user for example. Have you? If so, why was it there in the first place and why was it changed?

Anyway, you do as you wish, if you don't even want to explore the possibilities then I will just use the software and do my own thing.   

[DenDen60]

I was under the impression that you were already in that latter category anyway.

Exactly that an impression.   

[Irisado]

The mulberry bush is well past its sell-by date in this topic, so time for it to have a chance to regrow one day.  Topic locked.