Michael Gerholdt wrote
Maybe his skillset is the ability to observe, to pull facts together, to ask questions and focus attention.
You don't have to be a programmer to notice and comment. Your response, Alex, is only a slightly veiled way of saying "If you aren't going to help us fix it, then shut up."
I consider such a response unwarranted, however veiled. Please allow such comments to be made without this kind of push-back.
On a separate but related note, I wonder if any of you have checked this out:
http://www.cmsshowdown.com/competition
The leaders of Drupal, Joomla and WordPress go head to head. Each builds a site in 100 hours or less with these goals and further strictures. It would be interesting to see a similar kind of competition involving DNN.
I thought you described me for a moment. I've actually logged thousands of specific issues in Gemini, I have not contributed a single line of code. I am an end user but have some development experience, I'm also from a network admistrator background and a qualified systems analyst.
I regularly look at UI issues (been banging on about it for ages, in fact there is some progress in this direction). Rather than post in the forums I actually try to point to specific issues rather than post threads up every five minutes making people who work here feel bad (although I still do that to a limited extent in the private forums!).
I also regularly monitor the forums and log issues as and when I see fit, I try to remind people to log issues when I don't have the time to log them myself (I should not be expected to log issues on other peoples behalf either, I am NOT a secretary). I also validate issues in Gemini, monitor Charle's excellent work like a hawk, and do my best to help here.
For all this I am not paid a single penny (I probably spend about two hours a day on this).
So I'm wondering if you guys can turn this into something positive, rather than sit back, whinge and complain.... How about a bit of positive help huh? If I can make a post like I did earlier and get this sort of negative reaction… well… I suggest you take a step back and look at yourselves in shame.
"Alex was once "famously" the biggest complainer on the dotnetnuke.com forums."
Yes thanks Cathal, I was just like some of the people who complaining here all the time, although I don't remember starting a new thread here every week, I certainly was persistent, I certainly NEVER made it personal. Nowadays I haven't changed much, I just do it in the private forums more often than not. Gemini was a total mess when I started out, and myself and Shawn managed to go through 1000's of issues, and finally got it into a somewhat “manageable” state. Try and imagine spending 5 x 12 hours days doing nothing but log gemini issues... how many crashes do you think I experienced huh?
The thing is I don't pay for support here, so I hope by contributing in the little way I do I might some payback in terms of help when I need it, rather than stand around on the sidelines and fingerpoint. I don't have a huge budget.
So I suggest to those who perist in post threads like these implementing one of these seven things:
a) Contribute.... somehow... stop pointing fingers.. if there is an issue - log it... be kind and patient.
b) Don't contribute - in which case don't expect support unless people are kind enough to give it. If you are a newbie then we do our very best to help (within resources, most of us have day jobs)… you’ve just got to look here for the evidence (yes sometimes we miss posts down to lack of time, or maybe not knowing the answer). If you are not so new you have to earn some sort of respect (up to you how you do it, being polite is a start).
c) Pay for support, in which case you can stand on your table and complain to those who don't perform to your expectations- you have every right as a customer
d) Make helpful specific suggestions in the appropriate forums, don't expect people to be your secretary when you need to log a bug... don't expect people to do donkeywork for you (i.e. writing the language editor is rubbish, sort it out ... you need to be specific and you need to make specific suggestions)
e) If you don't like DNN go for the competition rather than keep posting here.... you are slowing things down and are not helping. If you think that by moaning and.complaining week after week is going to make life "dandy" for you and other people and help improve things.... well... you are mistaken... get a life.
f) Put up and shut up... DIY.
g) Seek psychotherapy.
Which one will you choose?
Thanks for the love :).
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