[RFC|Rejected] Removal of subsilver2

These RFCs were either rejected or have been replaced by an alternative proposal. They will not be included in phpBB.
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Christy
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Re: [RFC|Accepted] Removal of subsilver2

Post by Christy »

naderman wrote:It was a hypothetical example. Some people complained about prosilver being slow.
I hate to sound like a dolt but slow in what way? Like when you use the style your forum loads slower? Or development is slow?

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A_Jelly_Doughnut
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Re: [RFC|Accepted] Removal of subsilver2

Post by A_Jelly_Doughnut »

Yes, slower as in the forum loads more slowly.
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Christy
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Re: [RFC|Accepted] Removal of subsilver2

Post by Christy »

A_Jelly_Doughnut wrote:Yes, slower as in the forum loads more slowly.
Okay, thanks for the information :).

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Re: [RFC|Accepted] Removal of subsilver2

Post by Marshalrusty »

bolverk wrote:
EXreaction wrote:Nobody is required to support anything.
Since when? Last I knew the *Official* phpBB Group policy is that they provide support for anything they release. Don't confuse volunteer community participation in support with official Support Team duties. You also have many terms and conditions under which this support will be provided and by setting and publicizing these policies you are requiring that support be an official service you provide as a project. phpBB requires that support be provided for officially supported packages per it's own mandate. :P
While I don't agree with the phrasing of what EXreaction posted above, it is, in its essence, absolutely valid.

The entire community, as well as all team members, are volunteers. We consider all phpBB team members to be representatives of the project in one way or another and recognise that their behavior reflects on the project (either positively or negatively). Of course, the behavior of the entire community reflects on the project, and that is why we have rules and a team dedicated to enforcing those rules. The set of rules that team members follow are simply more strict because they are more "official" and we expect them to be more professional.

Having said all that, we are definitely not required to support anything. The software is provided with no warranty and the support provided is offered completely free of charge by the community because they want to continue providing it. If the entire community quit tomorrow, you would have no claim to support because we never entered into a contract guaranteeing support.

Of course, we generally do not think about things in this way because we are "here to help". Why else would anyone stick around? Anything and everything we do is for the betterment of the project and while you may not agree with this or some other decision, at least understand that it is made because we believe it to be the right one.

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Re: [RFC|Accepted] Removal of subsilver2

Post by imkingdavid »

@Nils.... You put me on the wrong list in that long post of yours. :P I'm in favor of removing subsilver2. Sorry if I didn't make that clear. xD

And I agree with what MarshalRusty said there.
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Re: [RFC|Accepted] Removal of subsilver2

Post by naderman »

Fixed.

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DavidIQ
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Re: [RFC|Accepted] Removal of subsilver2

Post by DavidIQ »

To put into perspective on the amount of styles out there that are subsilver2-based, I asked the admin of phpbb3styles.net for some numbers and here they are:
  • prosilver-based: 292
    subsilver2-based: 318
Seems pretty even to me and what I would expect, seeing that subsilver was in phpBB2. Based on these numbers I think the decision to remove subsilver2 was a sound one. We do have to move on...
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Re: [RFC|Accepted] Removal of subsilver2

Post by Phil »

DavidIQ wrote:Seems pretty even to me and what I would expect, seeing that subsilver was in phpBB2. Based on these numbers I think the decision to remove subsilver2 was a sound one. We do have to move on...
I would expect there to be a clear bias towards prosilver unless there were some barriers preventing style authors/users from using it (which seems to be the case). It seems rather unwise to remove it as, at this point, there is very clear statistical evidence that style authors (and end-users, based on the download counts of these custom styles) favor subSilver2 by a small but not trivial margin. It seems much more logical to focus development time on rectifying the problems that cause users to favor subSilver2 (be it aesthetics, ease of customisation, the moon phase, etc.) instead of simply removing on a whim.

Now, let me make it clear that I personally do not like subsilver2 and would not be particularly upset if it were removed from the package. That being said, as this development process is evidentially guided by the userbase, it seems to me that it is very hard to reasonably ignore the decisions and preferences of a non-trivial portion of the userbase.

If we want to remove subsilver2 (and it should definitely be done in the 3.x line), it would be much better to resolve the issues that are keeping people away from prosilver first (I am sure many style authors/style users would be happy to provide their insight in a survey or similar; I recall the MOD team doing something similar regarding MODX), then announce a long-term intent to remove the style in a later version. This will hopefully remove the roadblocks causing people to favor subSilver2 and will subsequently give users more time to decide how they want to address the impending change.
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DavidIQ
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Re: [RFC|Accepted] Removal of subsilver2

Post by DavidIQ »

Thing is they've had time, ever since phpBB3 came out. To me the fact that there is a bit more ss2 styles than prosilver styles just means that there was some transitioning from phpBB2 (subsilver) to phpBB3 (prosilver) and during that transition there have been users favoring ss2 just because that's what they were used to in the previous version. Thus I think we'd have a hard time saying not to remove subsilver2 from 3.1.
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Re: [RFC|Accepted] Removal of subsilver2

Post by Marshalrusty »

Phil wrote:
DavidIQ wrote:Seems pretty even to me and what I would expect, seeing that subsilver was in phpBB2. Based on these numbers I think the decision to remove subsilver2 was a sound one. We do have to move on...
I would expect there to be a clear bias towards prosilver unless there were some barriers preventing style authors/users from using it (which seems to be the case). It seems rather unwise to remove it as, at this point, there is very clear statistical evidence that style authors (and end-users, based on the download counts of these custom styles) favor subSilver2 by a small but not trivial margin. It seems much more logical to focus development time on rectifying the problems that cause users to favor subSilver2 (be it aesthetics, ease of customisation, the moon phase, etc.) instead of simply removing on a whim.

Now, let me make it clear that I personally do not like subsilver2 and would not be particularly upset if it were removed from the package. That being said, as this development process is evidentially guided by the userbase, it seems to me that it is very hard to reasonably ignore the decisions and preferences of a non-trivial portion of the userbase.

If we want to remove subsilver2 (and it should definitely be done in the 3.x line), it would be much better to resolve the issues that are keeping people away from prosilver first (I am sure many style authors/style users would be happy to provide their insight in a survey or similar; I recall the MOD team doing something similar regarding MODX), then announce a long-term intent to remove the style in a later version. This will hopefully remove the roadblocks causing people to favor subSilver2 and will subsequently give users more time to decide how they want to address the impending change.
I agree with Phil here.

It would be helpful to know how many users are still using subsilver2 based styles. Failing that, it would be helpful to know how many of the subsilver2 based styles versus the prosilver based styles are being regularly kept up to date by their authors.

Rather than pulling the plug on what is, either for more or for less, a significantly popular style, we should increase the appeal of prosilver to encourage users to migrate to prosilver based styles in 3.1 and only remove subsilver2 when it is clear that this has happened.

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