[Sugestion] Vitalize Mods Section

[4Kstore]

actually, I can kinda understand it.
Previous attempts at the overhaul failed for a variety of reasons, including too many cooks in the kitchen.

In this case, we have (I think) worked out a fairly clear list of basic functionality that we think is needed and Gary has taken on the design and layout tasks for building it...   It's not quite as "insular" as Yoshi portrayed it...   

Glad to read that.... I hope it ends soon and I am sure that would be great.
regards

[FragaCampos]

Well, I'm glad this was a subject of some interest and discussion. That's always good from my perspective.

- Ratings System
I don't think the argument "someone unhappy with the product is more likely to respond, than someone who is happy with it" is a valid one. Valid in the sense of striking out the idea. We all know that ratings are always subjected to all kinds of opinions; Bad, mistaken, with vengeance etc., but the most important is the feedback that's received and the medium point of ratings as an overall indicator of the quality of something. If the "pure" ratings system is not an option, it would be easy for a coder to implement a list of reasons to choose from when an user is voting. That way, you can always eliminate a great deal of "static noise".

- Donations.
I knew this would be a polemic issue due to the nature of SMF itself, which, plus the flexibility of the software, made me stay on board all these years.
Nevertheless, I think this could be viewed by another prism.  SMF didn't need to be involved with this. Each mod could have an option to donate directly to an account given previously by the author. Of course, this option would be available for those who wish to use it.
Maybe there could be some kind of balance regarding those aspects that involve money. Recognition works to some extent, but money is the most direct and effective way to give stimulus to those who don't belong to the community and act just because the need of coding something for themselves. Also, a 5$ donation multiplied by 10 or 20, is much more useful and much sincere than a simple "thank you, but could you...?" 

I know this is a subject open to great debate, but my goal is just to make that section much more busy. Not only in my own interest, but in the interest of all those SMFers.

[Kindred]

fraga...

actually, it is a KNOWN statistic that people are more likely to complain than to commend. The same goes for ratings. Additionally, there will be the 25% of users who get a "mod can not auto install" and instantly rate it -20 stars...   It's an issue with ANY ratings collection... and is one that we have opted to avoid.

on donations...
we already have that. We have an open text field and any mod author can put a request for donations in the mod description (as indeed several already do).
If SMF is involved with the donations or collections of anything other than ourselves, then we become liable - so, it is unlikely that we will ever have anything dedicated to "make a donation"

[NanoSector]

It's not quite as "insular" as Yoshi portrayed it...

Please stop denying ******. Have you *ever* seen a piece of code from the overhaul? The only thing I have ever seen so far are screenshots. Which weren't even functional.

If Gary doesn't want the code public, that's fine. But it's not getting through with me that he doesn't want help *and* shows no progress.
Don't start with "he has no time", in two years you can find plenty of holes in your schedule to both work on it and say "hey I have an update".

God I'm so over with this...

[FragaCampos]

Actually, it depends. It depends on how it's implemented and depends on the health of a community. I understand and recognize the existence of those 25% in every ratings you can name, but I still think the important ones are the other 75%, or better, those who accumulate enough to make a solid statement on the quality of what is being rated. The idea is not to boost egos, but rather to improve the feedback and give some kind of stimulus due to the concrete nature of users' participation.

IMHO, as it is, donations are not helping the mods section. Maybe it's not well implemented or it's not well used, I can't really judge that. It would definitely be good to have a rebuild to make it more user friendly. As I said, my goal is to start a public discussion on this and try to accelerate processes. I'm not into the inner workings of SMF team, but from what I read here, it does seem that things are not moving forward. Maybe that's why many users are going to other CMS and prefer to pay for something that works and have continuous support on many of its mods. And I don't want/wish SMF looses its prominence and support, even if I have to pay sometimes to avoid that.

fraga...

actually, it is a KNOWN statistic that people are more likely to complain than to commend. The same goes for ratings. Additionally, there will be the 25% of users who get a "mod can not auto install" and instantly rate it -20 stars...   It's an issue with ANY ratings collection... and is one that we have opted to avoid.

on donations...
we already have that. We have an open text field and any mod author can put a request for donations in the mod description (as indeed several already do).
If SMF is involved with the donations or collections of anything other than ourselves, then we become liable - so, it is unlikely that we will ever have anything dedicated to "make a donation"

[MrPhil]

If you're going to have people give their opinions on a mod (or other piece of software), they should have to come up with a few words as to why they found it bad (or good). This could be done in the support topic, or off to the side in a separate commentary/opinion/thanks topic. Simply picking from 0 to 5 stars (say) is open to abuse (too lazy to look for a solution, personal conflicts, etc.). I still maintain that someone mildly unhappy with the mod is more likely to register their (poor) rating than someone mildly happy with it, and AFAIK research backs me up. At least, with some text, they have to be motivated enough to write up some coherent words. And if they can calm down enough to not sound like a raving lunatic, useful information may actually be passed along.

Systems such as eBay have had this problem for a long time. It's so easy to rate a transaction as unsatisfactory, without giving any real reason, and the seller (or buyer) gets a mark against them for all to see. A "rank it 0 to 5" with comment required is better than just "rank it 0 to 5". If the comment is "asdfghjkl" you know enough to ignore it. However, until some neutral party edits out that feedback (both the ranking and the comment), the negative mark will still be in any cumulative number. The mod owner would have to ask SMF to remove nonsense rankings/commentary, and that opens up a whole can of worms (i.e., can be very subjective).

[Kindred]

also, I will note (on the subject of "supported" mods) WordPress (one of the more active plugin communities) has literally thousands of plug-ins available for which the first line in the description is: "This plugin is no longer supported"