In the last 12 hours alone, I've seen three seperate threads get locked by forum moderators because a debate was starting to get heated. Agreed, we don't want xoops.org to become a boxing ring, but users are all entitled to their opinions on the XOOPS product, and on others.

Granted: foul language, insults aimed at other users and generally unethical conversation needs to be moderated, but I see little gain in locking conversations in the way it has happened today. If users really want to continue their debate, they'll simply open up another thread in which to do it, until that one gets locked whereby they'll open another.

I also noticed that Tom took a final swing at vB3Dev 4 minutes after ackbarr had called time on the browser debate, which to me appears to be a little unfair. If the topic is closed, it is closed to ALL, and those with forum admin privileges shouldn't use those to take a swipe at a user they know can't swing back.

If the moderators have a problem with the way somebody is conducting themselves within the forums, they should consider suspending or banning the individual and not closing a topic to all. By closing topics at a whim, you are simply conceding to the offender(s) and in effect handing THEM power over YOUR site. The browser debate, while temporarily taking a turn for the worse, would have been a good platform in which to discuss style sheet standards and the fundamental differences in the ways browsers handle Xoops. This in turn would lead to better, more advanced and more informed template development.

And remember - when two creative people get together they often have completely different ideas about how to do things. Each thinks that their idea is better than the others, and from the resulting argument evolves a third solution, better than either of the original two.

And before anybody starts to think I'm having a go at them, I'm not criticising anybody in particular. In fact, the way today has gone, I'd be scared of criticising anybody at all for fear of retribution. I simply want to point out that there are perhaps better ways of handling an argument, and sometimes it's best to just let the argument evolve and wear itself down.

That said - I'm going to continue work on a new theme... update in the morning (UK time)!

Per4orm, you raise valid points that I mostly agree with, but I do agree with the moderators' actions.

The XOOPS forum is not meant just as a discussion forum, it is also a knowledge archive. When this archive gets 'polluted' with off-topic discussions, arguments, or even duplicate posting, it becomes less valuable as a resource to our users. People come to xoops.org to solve problems, to get an idea of future changes in xoops, to see what new hacks/modules/themes are out there, to see what other people are doing with xoops, etc etc. Most users do not come here to take part in arguments and debates.

The debates about browsers, for example, have taken place here before (search the forums, including the CSS and templating issues), and have been discussed ad infinitum all over the net. There is no reason for another browser debate here, IMHO. Further discussions of CSS issues are encourage, but should continue in the previous thread(s).

We also have an image at xoops.org that we would like to uphold. Since I have been here, the XOOPS community has been *extremely* friendly, generous and helpful - much more so than any other forum in which I've participated. When new users come to xoops.org and see arguments in many of the top threads, they are going to get the wrong idea and think xoops.org is a hostile place. From nearly 10 months experience here I can say that is definitely NOT the case. I hope I am right in saying that most XOOPS users of all experience levels feel they can post *any* question and get a friendly and helpful answer. We don't want users to feel intimidated and that others in the forum will 'attack' them about it being a 'stupid question' or for some other reason. We'd like to maintain this friendly atmosphere.

Another point is that this resource is meant to be shared by all our users. The developers and other knowledgable and helpful people here have limited time to read and respond to posts. When one single user makes over 100 posts in just 4 days, something is wrong. If these 100+ posts were questions about XOOPS and/or helpful answers to other users' questions, I would have absolutely no problem; but from what I have seen, these posts offer little or no benefit to the XOOPS community. This user is *very* disrespectful and unappreciative of the amount of time and effort that has gone into the *free* product we know as Xoops. Not only does this kind of criticism 'piss off' the developers who have invested all this time, but it gives other users the impression that XOOPS is full of problems, when in fact it is one of the best CMSes out there. (Apparently this user things so too, as he/she is still sticking around after making comments like "I will go find another product which has the basic features".) Don't get me wrong, I am *not* saying we should ban any post that criticizes Xoops!! Criticisms help forum readers to make fair comparisons of CMSes and also help us to learn what people like/dislike about Xoops. We are not trying to 'hide' any of the current shortcomings of Xoops. On the contrary, we'd like all our users to be as informed as possible and the advantages and disadvantages of Xoops. That said, I totally agree with the moderators taking some action after **one** user decides to voice his/her opinion 100+ times in a few days. Enough is enough - the point was already made after 1-2 posts!!!

From past experience with another prolific poster, we (moderators and developers) got a lot of feedback from the community indicating that the majority of people were very upset with that poster. For this reason too, I am happy to see some action taken.

Per4orm, socialists and communistts have managed to dumb people down where criticism is something anathema to people. It is a real shame. besides, many good coders are highly immature so don't be surprised.

My psuchologist girfriend tells me most Open Source developers have a great need to have their egos strocked and it is the primary reason they do open sourse as are other types of sacrificial animals.

Some people can't take criticism at all. take for example one of my threads where I asked a question on keeping people loged in. I got 4 different answers from the TEAM and if I criticise their incompetence on that matter they would get bent out of shape.

So I'll leave them be, everyone grows out of their shell eventually.

Max

And notice that XOOPS hs no roadmap, which keeps business from sponsoring the project more.

vB3Dev,

Your comment about the auto login thread shows me that you don't even bother to read / think about the responses that you are given and anyone who responds to you is probably wasting their time (as I certainly am now). You were given only *TWO* conflicting answers and based upon the vagueness of your question both were reaonsable.

Anyways, you and your psychologist girlfriend seem to be very knowledgable about open source developers. If you *know* that all developers need to have their egos stroked, then you must know that your current attitude is not going to get you very far convincing developers to help you out. Good luck to you in this and other open source communities... you are going to need it.

mvandam:

You yourself raise valid points, which I must concede I agree with. I also agree that through my experiences of other CMS systems, XOOPS is definately one of the better and has in fact become my CMS of choice. This is, in part, because despite it's shortcomings I can see active devlopment within the comunity and a real ear from the devlopers' on user requests.

I also agree that XOOPS has an extremely friendly community which, I must admit, is in part a positive reflection on the way that these forums are run. And I definately agree that some recent posts have been entirely disrespectful attacks on the product and those who devote their time to it's development.

vB3Dev:

Please remember that by comparison to the likes of PHP-Nuke and PostNuke, XOOPS is a very young CMS. For it's age, I think it is a very mature and well managed system with an excellent community and bags of potential.

The lack of a written roadmap does not necessarily indicate a lack of a structured development plan. Quite the contrary in fact. Were the product to have a strict roadmap in place, I feel the community themselves would have less input into the development of XOOPS and suffer as a result - we create and edit the roadmap on a daily basis through feedback.

Y'all keep smiling now!

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With out getting into heated debate again, my post was going through before the topic was locked, and even before I knew it was being locked another example of this was when a topic was locked by Herko, vB3Dev's post still went through even though it was locked, as the post had already started, please don't make accusations. here is the post where the topic had been locked by herko and vBeDev's post still went through:

Releasing GPL software

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This would not stop them, they could still create another account and continue, ip bans are nor great on dynamic IP's.

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Unture my name was mentioned

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We can't simply let a arguement evolve this could look worse especialy when some people use swearing and other abusive language aimed at users.

I agree with all that has been stated by mvandam he has some excellent points.

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Maybe if you had asked the right question you would of got the right answer here was your initial post I was trying to help you with:

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ermmmmm in there you do not mention auto login, so I answered the questions assuming you was refering to session times, as you where being logged out, in another post to that thread you then mention 'Auto Login' to which I gave you links to information you required as this topic had been covered many times before and all it would take is a SIMPLE search, using the search feature, to find what you required

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Xoops is free and done in developers and cores free time, so these things do take time, Do you remember when I bought your socket mail, I had problems 4 weeks later my product was still not fixed by you and I PAID, in the end I got my refund back from share-it (Transactions on-line)

Now I suspect when I submit this there will be yet more to reply to, lol

Tom:

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Then please accept my humble apologies.

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I was in fact raising issues - stimulating thoughtful debate and stating my opinion, not making criticisms. So there! And put your tongue away, it doesn't attract me in the slightest.

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Stop greasing

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You got it!

By the way - don't you ever sleep either then?

I first joined XOOPS a long time ago, then disapeared for a while and came back again under a different log in (Coulsn't remember me old one, lol), I came back because of the support and friendliness, XOOPS became by CMs of choice too, I've tried many other nukes and os software and although some may have advantages I like to stick with something I see is leading somewhere, something where people listen and help.

You are also correct compared to other OS CMS XOOPS is still young, I would say an extreamly mature infant, other CMS where no where near this stage at this age

People want DOCs and road maps, we're working on this, look at this news article:

Want documents? Help us!

We need help aswell there are things people can do to help, but I don't see many replys there.

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this is very true, in fact development is very structured.

Many people are here for differnt reasons, some to use xoops, some to develope xoops, some to develope around xoops, but at the end of the day we need everyones support too, XOOPS is only this good today because we have the backing and dedication of a excellent team and community.

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Accepted, we're all friends here, I'm sure we won't aways agree, but we can agree to disagree

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All I can say to that is pmsl, do you like my avatar does she attract you.

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mmmmmmmmm, ok, but mvandam is a excellent person, so and speaks true words so I have to agree

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me never, I work a full time job, full time self employed, and currently recovering from a operation, so thought I would spend much quality time helping where I can on Xoops, also have a few problems with other families health issues too.