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Vanilla Reactions and Badges - Would you buy it?
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@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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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.
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.
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.
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.)
Yupieeeeeee...
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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
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]
Clarified!
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.
This is basically what Karma bank is for, and the Market Place is currently begin developed for the second part. Market place would be able to spend karma, but it is also for premium services with other payment options such as Paypal or Stripe, if you are interested in sponsoring this then contact me. ATM I'm only taking as far as necessary for current client, so manually added products are not a priority right now, only API, so this would be your prerogative to fund that.
However I have to prioritise.
As I mentioned before. Karma Bank already works in a way conducive with Badges, only it rewards Karma.
I have proposed Karma Bank Accolades as a solution. it work with Karma like rule only you are reward Accolades based on meta rules rather then Karma. So you can set up the rule exactly what you want, and use the graphic and description of your choosing for the Accolade.
It would be good to get around five or so sponsors who are interested to get started Accolades.
As @hbf contacted me and wanted to be involved I suggested he have a stab at his version the reactions side of things, as he has created I Like Plugin. I have give him some pointers suggestions, however we may work something out if he requires some input. However this can be ostensibly his concern for now.
It make more sense for me to just get on with Accolades, as I know how it would work, and really don't need any input.
Regarding graphics. Accolades would not be bundled with any default graphics, as you could upload anything you like.
Designers like @422 could come up up with their own graphic packs and distribute/sell how they wish.
However I should point out, that accolades are custom rules and targets, so you have to think that way when designing graphics, either the pack has to be versatile, or simple to modify, or we can talk about using programmatic overlay of sprites and/or text to enhance the graphic to be applicable to what you want.
I also suggest that accolade to have small and or larger size. Smaller suits some styling allowing you fit more in the panel, without begin an eyesore.
grep is your friend.
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
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.
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:
I look forward to your interest in the project.
Vanilla Wiki, Tastes Great! 31,000 viewers can't be wrong. || Plugin Development Explained
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.
Vanilla Wiki, Tastes Great! 31,000 viewers can't be wrong. || Plugin Development Explained
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:
In other words , soon as it becomes an US AND THEM. Scenario @candyman
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