WHY do people ask about phpBB3 so much?

[smithy_dll]

well,

Because the moderators do it. Although we try to be as curteous as possible, but sometimes slurs get through when your at the end of your tether.

Saying "it will come out when it's ready", "every time someone asks it gets delayed a day", "We don't give ETAs", "life", etc... gets old real fast.

Re: supplying an answer. We do, unfortunately no-one is ever happy with the answer and proceed to ignore the answers given 20 minutes ago and create a new topic hoping to get a better response, either that or their blind.

Even giving ETA's even more broard than Longhorn has given has gotton us flamed. e.g. "Sometime between next year and never"

People by nature as impacient. I know I am, I can barely get to sleep Christmas eve, or the night before my Birthday. But the difference is I suck it in and move on, and not whinge about it.

[neodaemon]

Because we have every right to. If you don't like people asking about it, then you should never have announced that you were working on it, and furthermore, what features to expect. Since PHPBB was first born years ago, you have developed a community of people who have given TONS of their free time and energy into supporting this effort. I myself have submitted plenty of articles and helpful posts to get people migrated from other boards to PHPBB. Face it, PHPBB developers can't even begin to answer all the support questions that flood these boards. It is us, the user community that have championed that cause. We have, in SUM, contributed as much to PHPBB as the developers themselves, and it's insulting for them to turn around and condescend us when we get curious as to the status of the PHPBB3 development.

Here's a crazy thought: Update the main PHPBB site once at LEAST once a month as per the status of PHPBB3 - in the announcements section. Even if it's just to say, "we're still workin' on it - no news". Then you can simply copy the link to that announcement and supply it every time you get ticked at a loyal follower who asks for an update.

[Yoda_IRC]

Here's a crazy thought: Update the main PHPBB site once at LEAST once a month as per the status of PHPBB3 - in the announcements section. Even if it's just to say, "we're still workin' on it - no news".

Although I have absolutly no offical standing, I can say, "They're still working on it".
And how do I know this? Because two developers added to the CVS testerday!
http://www.opentools.de/statcvs/commitlog.html" target="_blank <-- commit log
(admitidly one was to correct a typo).

You really think you have done as much for phpBB as the people who wrote it? Are you aware of how many lines of code there are? If not, according to CVS stats there is over 75,000 lines of code in phpBB3. psotfx has 40,000 lines in CVS (he will be missed). Thats a hell of a lot of posts to make upto that number, and don't forget the devs post in forums aswell. And you can't forget that you tend to write more lines of code than end up in the final product. And yet you cliam to have contributed as much as the developers? I haven't contributed much and I openly admit it.

[Acyd Burn]

He said all people as a whole contributed such amount, and i have to agree. The community is very strong and this is one reason why phpBB became so successful. There are a lot of people writing modifications, styles, articles, giving support, spreading the word, etc.

As i have written in my blog, i see the problem is that we announced phpBB3 too early. Of course this conclusion can only be made now, because we did not know that this would take so long.

[w3neo]

Acyd, as one whose contribution to phpBB has been less than insignificant I cant tell you how much I appreciate your post above. I too have always felt that every supporter of phpBB contributes in some small part to its success. Even such a small part multiplied so many millions of times has some important place in the whole.

Thank you, and as I have for the last several years I will continue to be a loyal supporter (and of course user) of this tremendous effort that such an amazing few have given freely to the world.

w3

[Corvaith]

Why do people ask so much?

My forum has run on phpBB since v1.4, in late 2001. 2.0 coming out was a huge thing, and it was so wonderful, and it had all the features I wanted, and I was happy. And then they announced 2.2, with even more new and wonderful features.

2.2 became 3.0, and they've been promised without actually happening now for a very long time. I'm not going to ask because at this point, it seems like additional new features are just going to continue to be added and extend the release timeframe indefinitely. But that doesn't mean I don't want to know. As the time extends on, people wonder. People think about whether it's really worth it to wait, or whether they should find a new package, or just install a lot of mods to v2 to get the functionality they want, which could make upgrading more difficult, etc. The first release of v2 was two and a half years ago, which is a long time in the world of the internet.

In context, the first release of v1 came out in late 2000. The last release came out in late 2001. The first release of the next version came in early 2002. I think a lot of us expected 2.2 to take the same path, and therefore to be out sometime in early 2004, and that now we'd be looking at the successor to it.

People will keep asking until there's information, because they want to know.

I find it sort of sadly ironic that the post of mine that remains here was the gratitude thread in anticipation of the v2 release. A very long time ago indeed.

[mansuetus]

posting that, I assume you know that you still...

... act as if you asked the question ?

[Corvaith]

I have asked the question. Ages ago, as I recall. I got bitten for it. I learned my lesson! People act as though it's a strange and unnatural thing to ask, though, and it isn't. Three weeks after the last release, yes, it's silly to ask. But when you've been talking about it this long, people will wonder.

That doesn't mean the devs have to answer, or have to *have* an answer, but the questions are going to continue until there is one. Just as they have since, well, since the v2 release.

[smitjel]

My question is will people even use phpBB3 given the number of really popular phpBB2 mods that won't be featured in phpBB3. People aren't going to upgrade to a new board that doesn't have the features they are currently using...

[Marcus26]

I've been waiting for over a year for the latest version to get features like Attachments for my site and am starting to feel like a vapourware user.
Yes I could use a mod to do it, but I have done mods in the past that break with an update, no thanks, tired of it.
I can understand that this is a free board and I try to support the board for that reason, but when you start seeing no progress it makes you wonder if it will ever actually arrive.
The announcement of version 3.0 instead was a huge disappointment for me, I thought "oh, code changes, should be another year off" and I'm sad to say I think it may be longer.

I think had you guys NOT announced the new version then users (like myself) would have dumped the board ages ago. The announcement of 2.2 kept me with it, but I must admit I am getting tired of the wait.

Now this begs the question, what do existing PHPBB users do?
1) Stay as we are while our competition using vBulletin move ahead of us?
2) Risk using CVS versions? Are they stable enough?
3) Change companies?