I do not think anyone here in the forums who has used DNN is hostile towards the Core teams. But... In forums as one Benefactor noted people can read into words more or less than the original poster is trying to state. This especially is the case with "excitables". So one's been working hard on program code, testing on and on... Then some Joe/sephine comes in and says things that are upsetting to those developers. The developers see the user as at best uniformed and not skilled in the arts of engineering.

But! Both parties have (or may have) valid points. An end user should never need wrestle a release candidate when it comes to it and core modules. These should have been thoroughly beaten' upon by a several Beta teams before a release.

Unfortunately (and I do it too!!!!) developers code, test, run code against production code... All seems fine, unto the next thing... over and over. Then, release. Then the users start going, "Blah blah blah!!!!". The best way to get rid of this syndrome are to make sure that high traffic sites with webmasters who will pound the beta code are reporting back to a lead, who tries and work through the problem(s). If he/she cant, it goes to core. Those webmasters sites need use the core projects only, no Billy Bob's Forms Engines allowed.

I not so fondly remember working with QMI Inc. on a product for the old Atari ST computers. I'd put in GOBS of hours on it as of the three of us developing the software I was the only guy who knew assembly language... So I was working my little fingers to the bone with 68000 assembler. I get it all done, run code against it simulating. Looks good. It was in fact the first "ROM cartridge" ever made for the Atari ST series of PC's.

Anyways... I get it all done and that weekend we all get together at QMI HQ. Lead engineer asks me, "All set"... I went, "Yup!" and commenced to spew all the immenities and wonders of my hand tuned/coded assembler! Tootin' my hoot! LOL

He walks up to the computer and literally just slammed his two hands down across the keyboard pressing whatall, 70 keys all at once... two three four times in a row... And there sits my code locked up tight as a drum LOL. I never considered someone just overrunning the keyboard buffer in my "interrupt processing" code. Easy fix, but rather red-faced rosey cheeked.

Assembly language is a lost art (how sad).

Anyways... point being, we all know bugs exist in software. We all know that in diverse computing environments we can end up with diverse results. I do not think anyone is "faulting" the DNN team. I am a programmer and I am an "optimizer" type, in other words non-traditional code mechinisms that end up running rings around traditional algorythms. I'm the cat who gave Mike Abrash (master optimizer) the skivvy on how to make Quake line drawing WHIZ along for example. Knowbody ever thought of it back then, but I'd had coded it up for the Atari ST in ST Lightning (a 80% faster graphics kernel than the machine shipped with).

DNN's core code that I have examined is excellent. I can tell. If it were not impressive I'd not be wasting my time. Its the kind of toy I really like getting into the guts of. I do not presently have the skill set Shaun or Joe or Mike have. I'm rather .net .new and have been spending many .nights going .nuts learning all this .new .net stuff transitioning to VS 2005.

I for one appreciate what these guys have accomplished and hope and some point in time I can be of help. Until then perhaps some of what I am saying might be helpful?

.nuff said.

So when you say every beta tester is a "potential support problem", I get the feeling it means that you do not value the feedback. The word problem in that phrase is what gives me that feeling.
Here is an example of a sentence that would not make me feel that way.  "Although there is a lot of valuable information to be collected in a public beta, I do not feel we have the resources to adequately filter that information in a way that would achieve the desired outcome". 

basically  I think the two statements are the same - the problem is not what is being said but why it is being said. The Community has grown from the days of mainly developers to mainly end users - the problem is as evidenced on the forums most of these end users sit waiting for the next release to update their web site. - They are end users they simply expect to update and run they assume that the latest version will run perfectly.

The problem then is that the forums and I assume Gemini gets bogged down with duplicate posts. The feedback system is simply using a forum appraoch where as it should be more to a knowledge base system approach - the filtering should not have to be done after the post but during it - this would not only clean the duplicates and non development posts up but I would assume free up core team time and developers time looking for solutions to a specific problem.

None of the software - forum or Gemini actually take this approach so it needs to be designed and written - the core team is a bit busy I assume  - I would als0 assume that there are quite a few developers out there that could think up a good design for such a system. Such a system should  ask and direct the poster thro the feedback or request rather then using an open ended post system. If there is an answer on file then it should be displayed directly to the poster if not then it should be filed and passed on to the right team member. Basically an interactive ticketing system that increases it interactivity as the database is built.

Actually it would make a good module for DNN for multi client use.

Such a system would filter out all the non beta test feedback. OPen source has its advantage in the width of beta testing available once that data gets unmanagable then its time to build a better feedback system not decrease the Beta tester numbers.

I must admit that a large section of the posts on the forum are it appears from people who want to use the latest release as a production release and do not fully understand the product. but a good system should be able to filter those out.

I'm with you Joe.

As I stated earlier there are limited resources available when validating issues. Right now the pace, quantity and quality of issues that get logged is just about dealable. A wide-open beta would be the straw that broke the camels back.