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Vanilla Reactions and Badges - Would you buy it?

24

Comments

  • aeryaery Gtricks Forum in 2.2 :) ✭✭✭

    @hbf step up brother. We all are with you.

    One thing vanilla developers should undertand is that gamification is the core for any prosperous community. With so many communities out there (leave apart facebook and reddit but other thousands) if you want members to constantly engage in discussions, then gamification is a must.

    Why does all the forum softwares, CMS systems and QnA sites provide trophies, awards, medals, badges? Only vanilla is left out.

    Though, badges makes exellent pitch for sales of their hosting plans, they should consider the other model where vanilla will be popular in short time frame as Xenforo and then they could milk the popularity.

    @x00 Karma Bank is an exellent plugin and we all would love to see more inhancements.

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  • jason2007jason2007
    edited May 2012

    so any developer want to copy vanilla reaction and badges?

    I also want users to earn points for doing things on the site and a point shop to spend the points in. The shop will include account customizations (like adding prefix/suffix/icons to username, changing profile background or layout) and gifts to self and friends. So you earn points for contributing to community and can spend them on pimping your profile and buy items for you and friends. Also spend points on sending "pokes" to friends and users. Pokes can be friendly or not and can use 32x32 images or whatever size image. To send a poke you must pay X amount of points.

  • candymancandyman ✭✭
    edited May 2012

    I think we should wait for an official answer from the Vanilla developers.

    If they say that reaction&badges are for the the hosted forums only, then we could look for the developer (x00, the author of Karma Bank, could be our man) or for a team of developers.

    According to me the ransom could be the solution.

  • @candyman
    they've based their business model on hosting so an answer may not be forthcoming for the forseeable future. I'll give it till monday and hire a developer and vanilla will have some competition for their features.

  • brainolutionbrainolution ✭✭
    edited May 2012

    The feeling that we are running an inferior software when a better version is available, isn't great, especially when you are willing to pay for the upgrade.

    Though, badges makes exellent pitch for sales of their hosting plans, they should consider the other model where vanilla will be popular in short time frame as Xenforo and then they could milk the popularity.

    That's a common sense that seems to be prevailing among most members in this thread, but unfortunately eluding the Vanilla team.

    Just curious, is there any one in this forum who has switched to a hosted solution just for this plugin? (I seriously doubt there is.)

  • aeryaery Gtricks Forum in 2.2 :) ✭✭✭

    jason2007 said:
    I'll give it till monday and hire a developer and vanilla will have some competition for their features.

    Yupieeeeeee... :):):)

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  • TimTim Operations Vanilla Staff

    We have no immediate plans to release Reactions or Badges, either as one-time purchases or as open source downloads. The reason for this has been stated quite a few times, most recently by @422

    422 said:
    Thats not the issue tho. Releasing a version, paid or otherwise, to [the self hosted community], will bring with it a gazillion support requests, bug reports, 'I wanna do this' issues.

    The time we would spend dealing with that would make it unprofitable, despite what the business geniuses in this thread seem to think.

    Nothing stopping you from making your own version though. Go nuts!

    Vanilla Forums COO [GitHub, Twitter, About.me]

  • peregrineperegrine MVP
    edited May 2012

    Clarified!

    Nothing stopping you from making your own version though. Go nuts!>

    now this thread can rest :), while the development begins... maybe?

    I may not provide the completed solution you might desire, but I do try to provide honest suggestions to help you solve your issue.

  • Tim said:

    422 said:
    Thats not the issue tho. Releasing a version, paid or otherwise, to [the self hosted community], will bring with it a gazillion support requests, bug reports, 'I wanna do this' issues.

    The time we would spend dealing with that would make it unprofitable, despite what the business geniuses in this thread seem to think.

    Poor excuse really, as paid support services is a huge business and ongoing growth industry but what do us business geniuses know about making money and business in general.

    Did Mark O-Sullivan sign off on that comment, is it the official final word?

  • Tim was clear.

    I think that x00 solution is very promising!

  • I've proposed an alternative to x00 if he has the time to work on it.
    Waiting for a response.

  • We could use this thread to make a wishlist :)

  • brainolutionbrainolution ✭✭
    edited May 2012

    Tim said:
    The time we would spend dealing with that would make it unprofitable, despite what the business geniuses in this thread seem to think.

    Nothing stopping you from making your own version though. Go nuts!

    Disappointing response.

    What stops you from making it open source on an as-is basis? There are so many issues with so many "Vanilla approved" plugins and even some with core features. What support are you giving us on them? All the support that we get is from this community, which I must say is very helpful.

    You can afford to talk like this until you have better competition. And then you'll be trying to woo back these very same 'business genuises'. No business can afford to be complacent.

    Good luck.

  • hbfhbf wiki guy? MVP

    lets not get testy.. There's more than enough room in this world for different business models and development paradigms.

    At the point that we make this a competition with the core development team, i guarantee my support will vanish.

    That said, as @x00 mentioned, i will tackle the reactions portion of the code. I plan on doing it completely open source, and welcome contributions.

    My plan is to continue to evolve the I Like This Plugin, mostly for aesthetics at this point, with a fix in the data model to allow it to adapt to splits and merges properly. I will also allow users to dislike a post, which will either apply a -1 like to a given post or count and display the number of dislikes separately (so you could conceivably end up with a few likes and a few dislikes, depending on the comment and the mix of people on a site) other than that it seems a complete plugin from my vantage point.

    I will also create a companion 'flagging' plugin (maybe called 'what the hell is this.. plugin') that will allow users to flag something as inappropriate. It will request that the user insert a comment as to why they found the post to be in violation of a forum rule. I'm thinking that i will have, in addition to marking the post as flagged, a restricted discussion which only mods can see that serves as a collection point for each flagging and the related comment. I haven't thought it all of the way through yet.

    Anyway, im doing it for free but here's the rub, it will take me a while to do all of this. So, in the meantime i'm requesting feedback on the concepts outlined above. If you want to accelerate the process you can help motivate me by doing one of the following:

    1. Offer to help resolve some code challenges.. we can collaborate on github.
    2. Post some content on the Wiki << and let me know you did it ;)
    3. Do a bunch of thorough testing with the current i like this plugin with integration to karma bank and report your test results on a new thread.
    4. Donate money to my homebrew site (any amount, i don't care, the act means more than the cash value)<<-- can be with or without creating a user account, but user accounts are encouraged i love new users.
    5. Just sign up and participate on my forum, link above. PM me to let me know you came for this reason.

    I look forward to your interest in the project.

  • I asked for a badge plugin about a year ago and although you couldn't still see, seemed closer than is today .

    The development team has done its understandable choice.
    Create an alternative to the plug-in that they do not want to release it could appear disrespectful.
    On the other hand, this community for the daily testing and development of numerous plugins released for free, I think that can afford it.

  • hbfhbf wiki guy? MVP

    candyman said:
    I asked for a badge plugin about a year ago and although you couldn't still see, seemed closer than is today .

    The development team has done its understandable choice.
    Create an alternative to the plug-in that they do not want to release it could appear disrespectful.
    On the other hand, this community for the daily testing and development of numerous plugins released for free, I think that can afford it.

    i don't think anyone would find the decision to make an alternative plugin as disrespectful. on the other hand, there were some other posts in here and other threads that i do believe are a bit disrespectful and that i believe is unacceptable.

  • 422422 Developer MVP

    Mutinous comments indeed. As facebook operates, the platform is open src for others to develop for it and in it.
    Zuckerberg stated, we cant create everything everyone wants. But other companies and individuals can using our platform.
    I dont think the vanilla model is dissimilar.

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  • Sorry, I've misunderstood this passage:

    hbf said:
    At the point that we make this a competition with the core development team, i guarantee my support will vanish.

    :|

  • 422422 Developer MVP

    In other words , soon as it becomes an US AND THEM. Scenario @candyman

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This discussion has been closed.