Location variable definition in Author Pane

Yeah, I know how my module works. ;)

There was some reason that variaible was $location but I can't for the life of me remember why. I think it actually was part of a different preprocess at one time. At any rate, you're right, that never got changed in the template. D5 probably isn't getting any more releases but I'll get it changed in the dev.

Michelle

Heh, ok. I just thought it was funny that you were explaining to me how it works. :)

Anyway, I'll get it fixed soonish. Taking a little break from AF but will be back to it soon.

Michelle

Committed to 6.x, both modules. Still need to do 5.x

Michelle

Thanks Ron!
I have been trying to figure this out, but I was feeling crazy. Looking forward to testing this.

Yeah, I took the code from a user submission and put it in untested since I don't use it myself. I guess no one else uses it, either, since it's been in there a long time with no one noticing. :) I think I need to have a policy of not adding integrations that I don't personally use. They can always be added to the integrated module's project if that maintainer wants to take on the responsibility.

Michelle

@ron_s: Erm... I'm not seeing the point in your comment. Sort of like you just wandered by and mentioned the sky is blue. Am I missing something?

Michelle

As the maintainer of this module, I need to be sure I can support all code in it. Adding module integrations to modules I don't use was a mistake, which is obvious by the fact that there are now issues with the integration that were never found because I don't use it and therefore it is untested.

There is nothing stopping those who do use a module from adding the integration. I've just decided that I will no longer include integrations for modules I don't use in Author Pane core. Those already in there will stay as there's no reason to rip them out. But I won't be adding any new ones.

Michelle

I think the location module is very valuable in fact the CCK add in for it had almost 10,000 users as of late. It really does provide some well thought out functionality. With the the rise of Twitter and the desire for people to know where everyone is I think this is a fantastic tool. It also looks very nice in the AuthorPane. Anyway, I did test this and it solved the problem without incident.
Ron thanks for the code and Michelle thanks for the implementation.

Advanced Profile Kit, Author Pane and Advanced Forum Modules

Michelle, after more than 1.5 years of running across your comments and attempting to work out your modules-the only modules I have issues with-something finally needs to be said that gets across to you, pertaining to the method you've been using in your development and maintenance of those modules. I've been polite to this point-the last 40 hours of work you directly cost me, simply because you are too arrogant or insecure to post the known issues to you, or to refrain from marking unfixed issues as 'fixed,' (i.e. Advanced Profile Kit, Author Pane) do have me feeling a bit bitter at the moment. I have the highest respect for the drupal community and its members, so for me to be feeling this irritated-and with one developer in particular-is very unusual. Your actions in regard to your sub-class modules is less than inexcusable. And your work, actions and attitude are not in line with the spirit of drupal. You're obviously very used to new users 'kissing your feet' for the creation of a module they believe they need, that will change their world-so they put up with your rude and arrogant responses; little do they know that your module will change their world-and add many hours of pointless work in order to try to get function occurring correctly.

You've made statement after statement similar to the most recent above of "you know how your code works," like the one made to Ron (always marked with a smiley-face or wink, because you want users to know just how arrogant and/or irritated you are with what you feel to be their 'stupid' communication to you; that said, someone obviously needs to be the one to finally communicate to you that a) that is either not the case that you are so familiar with this code, or these issues wouldn't be arising in the amount and seriousness they have, or b) you do know your work but could care less to fix it (the posts you've made to users definitely confirm some degree of this scenario). It seems to be a bit of both. You cannot possibly know your code as well as you say, or these serious issues that keep arising consistently with Advanced Profile Kit and Author Pane wouldn't keep happening so often; you also have full knowledge of many of the issues, as confirmed in your own, scattered posts/replies-it seems you prefer to keep those to yourself, even though they're caused by you directly, so that others can suffer and waste time.

First off, I agree with Ron wholeheartedly, and he's probably only the second person I've seen to actually have the faith in himself and ability to clearly address your arrogance in a concise and professional way; probably a bit more professional than my comments are about to me. Your modules (Advanced Profile Kit/APK, Author Pane and Advanced Forum) have issues and do not function correctly, particularly APK, as you know-and it's not the users' fault. Kudos to Ron-because he's actually trying to help other users, like myself, who are experiencing the same issue: the issue that you yourself previously claimed didn't exist-when it sure as heck did, and which you had knowledge of. I've been having this location issue for weeks, to find that another user had actually brought this to your attention months ago. You've personally cost me more than 40 hours of work in researching what the issues are with APK and thier interrelations to Author Pane and Adv Forum.

If you don't know what's occurring with a module or issue, then you just don't know-and as a developer that's fair, maybe it needs more work or info to be sorted out; but when I find threads from 6 months previous where you do in fact allude to actually knowing the issue source, but then turn around and in the same breath, tell another user in another thread of the same subject, that they must be doing something wrong because it is not your work that's incorrect, that type of behavior is not ethical, fair or decent-and it makes me angry for your waste of my time; it makes users feel crazy, wastes hours of their precious time for no reason, isn't kind or respectful, and can easily be corrected by you with only sentences notifying users what is occurring.

Your known issues-and they were known, and addressed in thread after thread, could (and ethically should) have been posted by you clearly in your module area description and/or docs. Posting a sentence or two would have cost you minutes and saved user after user many, many hours of wasted research. Let's be real here-serious issues have been going on for many months-you claimed they had nothing to do with you, but then threads show up proving exactly the opposite.

After many hours of work I found you'd told many, many people the exact same statement: ironically, that you "aren't sure what they could be doing wrong," effectively sending the person with the tail between their legs, by intentionally and effectively leading them to believe the problem lay solely with their work or install or lack of ability (which seems to be one of your favorite themes and sarcastic remarks); that in fact I find extremely interesting-that you can be so degrading and sarcastic with users, when in fact it's your inadequate code and/or lack of testing that's causing the issue. Because you specifically chose to never link those related issues, those people didn't know you'd made responses to the same or similar questions on another thread-nor did they have a clue that the problem actually lay with your work and coding, and not with their actions. I've got thread after thread here I could post, that make things look very bad for you, however I'm trying to be nice by communicating the point in writing instead rather than providing the straight embarassment that would be delivered through your own date-stamped words.

Quite frankly, this appears to be an ego issue; if ego or major insecurity, and not actually giving back to the community, is truly your top priority as it seems to be, then maybe this isn't the perfect fit; it's certainly not working in any positive manner the way you've been working with this. And you certainly seem to be in over your head. More and more modules with each falling to pieces-missing filefields, content, etc, as you know. I've seen threads where you've berated people for no reason (or simply because they don't know better at the time), then occasionally apologized in instances where you've been shown that you were actually incorrect in your initial assumption; but mostly your berating of other users works, and the user (who is often newer) slinks away, incorrectly believing it was their error or stupidity. This behavior is unprofessional, classless, and a complete waste of users' time, for no reason other than your own selfish purposes; when you know there's a problem, it should be posted or clearly documented; you seem to have time to document that you don't want to be bothered at the moment with questions-that area could just as clearly be used for the far more beneficial purpose of listing your known issues occurring with the module-so that users know to stay far away.

In addition to everything else, you apparently believe it easiest to 'archive' the issues you don't want to deal with by, simply through marking them as 'fixed'; that's right-I was wondering why so many other maintainers had open issues and why, when I had so many issues with your modules, it seemed no one else did; that is until I got wise enough to do advanced searches and find that you'd marked them as 'fixed' when you had actually not fixed them at all. That type of behavior is always so helpful to the community whom is sharing-hide the information; apparently it made you feel better to do so, but it certainly wasn't helping anyone out. no other developer or maintainer treats inquiries in the rude, arrogant, time-wasting manner-and, just so we're clear, your arrogance is entirely unwarranted; if your code was pristine, it might be a different story. But all this wasted time-and all you're doing is wasting more and more of people's time.

Let's not play the blame game here: if you're choosing to institute code and you as the develop choose not to test that code as you should, that is on your shoulders; untested code should never have been instituted by you-and that's your fault, not the person that wrote it. God help us, and the entire drupal community, if you plan to begin having modules based on functionality or dependency with yours-your modules have issues on their own, let alone what would happen to try to sort out user issues when a user has them all installed and is trying to decipher the problem-which ineveitably would again lead back to yours. I had to make fix after fix to get your modules working right, as you apparently didn't even properly test your own code-which makes it all the more ironic that you'd be now making statements about a cause being sourced from untested, outside code you'd chosen to include.

You've taken on too much and you're in over your head-and I'm sorry to say that it's negatively affecting the drupal community. You seem to like to 'play nice' with the drupal developers however inaccurately believe yourself heads above the drupal users; that, and your attitude, could not be more than apparent; again, if your code was actually good, a bit of arrogance can be forgiven or even understandable. But when you're arrogant and intentionally misleading about being 'clueless' as to the problem, or directly telling users it has to do with their install or use, when you know it has to do with your code as you've posted in certain specific discussions, arrogance just makes you look that much more stupid.

Now is the time for someone to step up and build a user profile module that actually works effectively, without missing fields, conflicts, and workweeks worth of pointless headaches. Someone whom can actually be honest about their work, and its issues.

Advanced Profile Kit, Author Pane and Advanced Forum Modules

Michelle,

You responded the following to Ron's comment: "@ron_s: Erm... I'm not seeing the point in your comment. Sort of like you just wandered by and mentioned the sky is blue. Am I missing something?"

Michelle

In Regard to Ron's comment:

"If someone just wants straightforward forum functionality, then modules such as location, groups, and user points will probably not be of much value. However on the longer term view, the integration of these pieces are going to be very important.

Larger businesses are starting to see the value of Drupal. They want more advanced solutions, and being able to integrate forums with a variety of modules is going to be key."

Ron

Yeah, you did miss something about Ron's statement-something about as equivalent as an anvil dropping on your head; but apparently you were so absorbed in responding arrogantly that you simply missed the point in entirety. What I believe Ron was stating-and, Ron, please correct me if there is something I am not fully stating or needs addendum-is, Michelle, that if your modules are not geared to provide a needed service or solve a problem, they'll simply become useless to users; the less you're able to offer, the less people will care, and the more they'll look or design elsewhere; so you can personally design in exactly the way you want to design for Advanced Profile Kit, Author Pane and Advanced Forum and, as Ron said, you most likely will-but in the meantime your modules are going to become more and more irrelevant, while you continue to act blindly and block all appearances of what the community truly needs.

If a module doesn't fill a need and isn't even able to function properly like Advanced Profile Kit, it'll be dead in the water; if users don't need your modules, because they won't need a module that doesn't fit their need as technology and business moves forward, that will mark the end. The module will be essentially useless. Not sure if Ron was looking up and enjoying the sky while pondering the lifespan of your modules but, yeah, you're definitely missing something. If Drupal is to succeed, it has to be adopted by larger businesses; and if larger businesses are adopting, they need their needs fulfilled by the modules-not your individual needs or ego. So, yes, you're in fact missing a lot.

copythat: Please remember that this is an open source project, and what Michelle provides she provides for free. If you've spent 40 hours of your personal time fixing stuff, perhaps you erred and you should've spent that 40 hours writing your own solution.

Frankly, I find your attitude disagraceful. It is never appropriate to attack a module maintainer in such a fashion. You get so much from the Drupal community for free, and yet you feel entitled to lash out at the people providing this stuff to you, at no cost -- and in fact their own personal cost -- because it doesn't happen to do what you want the way you want. Especially with APK which is kind of a difficult concept in Drupal to begin with.

You should be ashamed. Instead of writing this long winded attack post (which you seem to think is not one) you should be actually fixing the bugs or making your own contributions. However, you've been a member of drupal.org for 2 weeks and 1 days. Michelle has been here for four years. You do not have the community capital to speak for the Drupal community. You speak only for your own selfish needs and desires, and when those are not fulfilled you attack. I see this all the time, and it's just very sad.

If you've really been using Drupal for 1.5 years, yet have only had your account for 2 weeks, you have no room to be making comments like this on anybody's contributions. Whatever the flaws on Michelle's modules, Michelle is a do-er in the do-ocracy and you appear to be a leech. Taking everything, giving back nothing, and then finally giving back...abuse.

Wow, what a hateful venom filled diatribe to wake up to. I'm stunned. I cost you 40 hours of work? Do you have any idea how many hundreds of unpaid time I have in these modules that I provide free to the community? How many hours I have spent giving support for these modules again for free? Maybe you should have spent those 40 hours writing your own module.

There are so many things wrong in your post, it's unreal...

My comment to Ron about knowing how my module works had a smiley on it to indicate gentle teasing. I wasn't irritated and didn't find it stupid, just a little funny that he was explaining the preprocess system to me.

I don't mark issues fixed unless I believe they are fixed. Can I make mistakes? Sure. Sometimes I think I've fixed something and it turns out I haven't. I do test my modules. In fact, I still run this 5.x version this issue is about on my own website. It does work and works well for me. That doesn't mean there aren't some edge cases where it doesn't work, unexpected interactions with other modules, etc. And I do often put notes on the project page when there's a known problem that I can't get to right away. Most of the time, though, I simply try to fix it.

Ego? That's so laughable it isn't even funny. If you knew me at all you'd know how ridiculous that is. The fact that posts like this make me alternate between angry and crying and nearly throwing up show just how insecure I am. I barely have any self esteem, let alone an ego.

As for the "blue sky" comment, you missed that one totally too. I wasn't arguing with what he said; I completely agree. I just didn't know why he posted it because it seemed to have no context. Of course I want my modules to integrate with others and be able to expand past just what I need them for. The only thing I was saying is that I wasn't going to include code on behalf of other modules that I don't use because I can't properly test it. Seems like you'd agree with that since you claim I don't test my modules enough as it is.

The one thing you managed to get right in your post is that I have taken on too much. It's very hard for me to support these modules and continue to work on them, too. But at least I'm trying. There are plenty of other maintainers who simply ignore their queues. Even when I declared I was taking a support break, I still kept coming back here and tried to help when I could. I don't like leaving users in the lurch and feel bad when my modules aren't working for them so I keep trying and trying until I hit a point where I just can't anymore and have to say sorry, I can't help you. I had to do that with someone recently and I hated it. I felt horrible telling her I couldn't keep going. But I can only do so much. Evidentally it's not enough. No matter how much I give, I get people like you telling me I'm not giving enough.

So, since my modules are obviously not good enough for you and cause you so much pain, I hereby request that you stop using them. I wouldn't want to cause you any more wasted time. Please go write your own.

Michelle

-copythat

Seriously? STFU.

Talk about ungrateful. Don't even talk about the spirit of Drupal, you have no clue..

Michelle has saved me literally hundreds of hours of work over the last 2 years, and you are whining about 40 hours of researching and troubleshooting? Welcome to open source, you complete ingrate.

Now go write your own modules, and quit subjecting us to your long winded diatribe, nobody wants to read it except you. I'm sure Michelle has better things to do with her time, (like raise her family and earn a living), then dealing with your bs posts.

Heh, thanks, TC44. I don't actually earn a living... Raising my family is my job. All this Drupal stuff I do is just a hobby, mostly unpaid.

Glad to have saved you time. I hope my modules help people. That's why I keep working on them.

Michelle

Hi Michelle,

Yes, thanks for all your hard work. I know most of your Drupal work is unpaid, which is what I wanted to convey. Rasing a family is a full time job in itself, plus all the Drupal dev work, which is like another (unpaid) full time job, plus whatever else you've got on your plate..

I routinely spend 16 hour days working on site development (for my own projects and clients), so it irritates me when someone complains about having to do 40 hrs of their own research and troubleshooting. I do that every other week.. big freakin' deal..

Anyway Michelle, your work is greatly appreciated by the vast majority of Drupal users. (We get it).

- TC

Spending 40 hours to compare the variable in the preprocess against the variable in the template seems a bit excessive anyway so I suspect it was a huge exaggeration. I missed it because I don't use this feature and I did note that on the project page so accusing me of not testing my modules when I come right out and say I didn't test this bit is pretty silly anyway.

Anyway, thanks for the words of encouragement. I try not to let posts like these get me down but I have a thin skin that isn't showing any signs of getting thicker, so I tend to feel like I've been punched in the gut and wonder why I bother when someone comes along and flames me like this. :(

Michelle