I’ve released alpha 2 of my Custom Title MOD. This version fixes some missing code that wasn’t ever added to alpha 1 by mistake. Upgrade instructions for those of you who have already installed can be found at the phpBB forums.
It’s finally here! The very first alpha of the Custom Title MOD for phpBB 3.0.x. This is still an early release, and may have some serious bugs that do all kinds of horrible things to your forum. Then again, it works just fine on my test installation, but converting a diff into an installation script isn’t exactly foolproof.
In any case, test it out, and let me know if it works or not. If testing is favorable, we could see a beta, release candidate, or even a final release within the next couple of weeks. Though I probably won’t release the final 2.0.0 version until phpBB 3.0.0 goes gold.
By the way, there aren’t really any new features since 1.0.3. There is one major change, in that the permissions system of phpBB 3.0.x is utilized in order to control who can edit her title and who can’t.
With phpBB3 well into its release candidate cycle, it’s apparent to most observers that the final release can’t be far behind. As some of you may be aware, I’m the author of the popular Custom Title MOD. The only problem, of course, is that it’s designed for phpBB 2.0.x, which is, while not obsolete, going to be the second choice for most webmasters, I’d guess.
I’ve noted some small interest for a phpBB3 version of the MOD, and given time this week, I’m going to try to look at working something up. Featurewise, it’d be mostly the same, but if you have good ideas, feel free to share them here. One change is that the ability to edit one’s own custom title would likely be a user permission that you could allow or deny. This would mean that you could restrict access to certain groups only, for instance. I’m not sure how the required days/posts ties into this, and it may just be a global setting, perhaps with one additional user permission to the effect of “Can ignore required registration days/posts requirement.” I’ll have to see, but there’s no guarantee I’ll find time.
If anyone else out there manages to write a MOD with similar functionality, let me know, and I’ll be glad to add a link. I don’t personally care about the feature myself, anymore, but I know it can be popular.
It’s come out slowly over the past couple of weeks that Mozilla Thunderbid is looking for a new home, as the Mozilla Foundation wants to concentrate more on promoting Firefox. I’m not entirely sure what to think of this, but it does bring up something that’s bothered me about certain free software projects out there.
Mozilla’s been mired down in what I’m going to call corporate bloat for a long time. Since it ultimately came from Netscape, this is more due to its history than anything else. The creation of the Mozilla Foundation only cemented this further, which leads to the biggest problem I see with both Firefox and Thunderbird: their development cycles are incredibly slow. Then we move to large businesses (or the so-called corporate world) where development cycles are on the order of a couple of years. For instance, we see a new version of Windows about every 3-5 years. We’ve seen a new major version of Firefox every year or so, I suppose. For the end user, this can be somewhat slow, but maybe it’s okay for most people. In particular, it helps to provide a more stable platform, and like it or not, that is an important thing for many people and businesses.
Finally, we move down to small groups that tend to follow the “release early, release often” mantra, where you can sometimes see major releases every couple of months. Staving off major feature improvements for a few months doesn’t bother me so much, but sometimes simple bug fixes can hide in the Mozilla (other projects aren’t immune, of course) repository for a year or more before it finally sees release. It’s kind of disappointing, really, but I wouldn’t entirely blame Mozilla. Large, mature projects tend to fall into this trap a lot, and while the Linux kernel isn’t incredibly large, it isn’t small either, and it seems to have maintained a rapid development cycle.
In any case, I wish Thunderbird well, wherever it ends up, since I do currently use it as my primary mail client. But something tells me that with regard to web browsers and e-mail clients, it’s time to get back to more rapid, agile releases that truly innovate. But maybe I’m just too wed to the bleeding edge… that’s life, I suppose.
(As I’m sure you can tell, I’m not a very regular blogger. At least Google Reader can completely hide feeds with no new headlines, so don’t hesitate to subscribe, on the off chance I say something interesting someday.)
Wikipedia has taken a lot of flack recently from various people about its supposed inaccuracy. There were a couple of interesting comparisons with Encyclopedia Britannica, which just goes to show that nothing is ever truly completely correct. I look at Wikipedia as a stepping stone into learning more about a given topic. I suppose the biggest problem with Wikipedia is the fact that it’s not fact-checked prior to publication, but I know I personally try to correct blatant errors or poor work on the off-chance I come across them.
The key thing to remember is that when using Wikipedia (and I’d say the same thing for any source, be it the Encyclopedia Britannica, the New York Times, or a blog written by some 8-year-old in Argentina) is that you shouldn’t ever trust a single source about anything. People make mistakes, and people are occasionally even wrong. It’s in your best interest to read a variety of different sources from people with different motivations in order to eliminate bias and factual errors. In the end, you probably won’t get an entirely correct picture either, but it’s better than nothing. Just don’t throw out Wikipedia entirely due to a potential for error. Use it as a guide for subjects to research in more detail, and if you find something wrong, correct it. We may as well improve our collection of human knowledge while we’re at it.
(As a side note, Citizendium looks like it may develop into an interesting alternative, but especially with some subjects, I’d be just as wary of content written or reviewed by so-called experts, because of a potential source of non-random bias, but it’s just another reason to read a variety of sources instead of relying on one place. Citizendium might prove a slightly better “one stop shop”, in that factual errors are more likely to be bias instead of simple random nonsense written by some random person. But we shall see.)