Quality of moderation of the forum and (dis)honesty overall

[zakius]

It's a long standing issue of falsely marking not implemented feature requests as done (even when team members admit they aren't done yet!) (configurable toolbar), archiving request critical for project existence (better extensions API, at the very least adapting WebExtensions instead of even more broken Chromium API) and ignoring all my reports about it. Besides that, not directly related to Forum there's issue with blog post titles that two times already stated configurable toolbar is shipped already while it clearly isn't, all that makes you look not credible, what's the point?

[luetage]

@zakius Clearly everyone’s goal here is to make you as unhappy and uncomfortable as possible. With that in mind, what can I do you for today?

[DoctorG]

@zakius said in Quality of moderation of the forum and (dis)honesty overall:

ignoring all my reports about it.

Which are your bug reports?
Or do you mean feature requests?

[zakius]

@DoctorG past reports about unreasonable behavior of moderators, dishonest titles and so on are just swept under the rug with excuses like "we're a small team so we can't do everything at once, that justifies marking things in progress as done, right?" and "most of users aren't aware of importance of this request so there's no traffic here, we should just archive it"

[lanala]

@zakius said in Quality of moderation of the forum and (dis)honesty overall:

there's issue with blog post titles that two times already stated configurable toolbar is shipped already while it clearly isn't

My Vivaldi definitely has configurable toolbars. Not sure why yours doesn't. Perhaps you have a different definition of what "configurable" means?

[DoctorG]

@zakius Discussing your disappointment here does not solve it.
If you have trouble, please contact @jane.n by chat.

[zakius]

@lanala as long as BrowserActions and bookmarklets aren't first class elements of the toolbar it's not done

and again, it takes time and I understand that, it's only about honesty, if it's an incremental update of a WIP element just say so, everyone will understand
when people are worried about Mv3 killing uBO don't say "we have built in blocker and it will work just fine", say "we're aware that our solution isn't as robust as uBO and that uBO already underperforms due to Chromium API limitations; it should cover most of usecases but it isn't a drop-in replacement for the most demanding users" and so on

I understand it takes time, I don't expect miracles, just more transparency about the current capabilities, plans and progress being made

[lanala]

@zakius said in Quality of moderation of the forum and (dis)honesty overall:

@lanala as long as BrowserActions and bookmarklets aren't first class elements of the toolbar it's not done

Saying that Vivaldi does not have configurable toolbars (or in your words it "isn't shipped") just because it does not have the exact specific features you want seems at best to be disingenuous on your part.

[zakius]

@lanala the topic requesting that is marked as done for years now

and that's the most intuitive definition: you want to move elements around with no asterisks or small print

[luetage]

@zakius said in Quality of moderation of the forum and (dis)honesty overall:

BrowserActions and bookmarklets aren't first class elements of the toolbar

What does first class elements even mean? And I assume with BrowserActions you mean page actions, or regular commands? Anyway, all of the above (page actions, commands and bookmarklets) can be custom buttons in your toolbar. Bookmarklets and commands can be put into a command chain and command chains are available from the toolbar. You personally might think this is too hard, but it gives users the most freedom. Anyway, we’ve always been able to create any button with any functionality in the UI, right from the start. With custom toolbars it got way easier, even for beginners. Just because it doesn’t work exactly the way you envision doesn’t mean the functionality doesn’t exist.

[Pesala]

@lanala You are wasting your time trying to reason with Zakius. We have tried for years; the moderators and community managers have explained at length, but he will not listen.

You are correct. My own request, posted after his, for Customisable Toolbars is also closed as DONE.

No doubt there is more that could be done, but the important things are available. I linked to two other threads in the solution post of my own topic. There may be other topics on custom buttons, or whatever.

[zakius]

@luetage BrowsewrActions are the toolbar (not address bar) buttons added by extensions, currently these are bundled together, again, while having everything built in would be perfect, but since that's impossible users shouldn't be punished with worse UX for using extensions when some feature is missing or has too rough edges still

okay, looks like command chains can indeed be used to execute bookmarklets and I missed that, sorry about that (but at the same time I rediscovered a bug related to these again)

@Pesala "we did something so we can announce this as completed" will never be a reasonable response, take all the time you need to implement it or even mark as not planned if that's what you wish but don't claim something is done when it isn't

I'm tired of seeing "worried that your uBO will stop working? our built in blocker will be still supported!*

*though we forgot to mention it lacks a lot of features"

"open your mail and calendar comfortably in your browser!*

*with the tiny caveat that two biggest personal and corporate providers aren't fully supported so you won't have access to your calendar or contacts this way" (and sure, it's their fault for not supporting standards, but at the end of the day that won't make users who need that functionality happy)

[pafflick]

@zakius You're bringing up (again) a lot of specific aspects of the "configurable toolbars" feature - but it is actually proving that your original request was breaking the forum's rule to "post only one feature request per topic." So, if anything, it should've been archived right then and there. The Team and Moderators decided to allow it. But it was also up to them to decide when it was the time to mark it as "done".
You were asked to post follow-up requests, and that's what you should've done. I think I can safely assume that to the majority of users it's more important that we focus on fixing bugs and implementing/improving features rather than debating whether some topic on the forum should be moved or not.

The purpose of the Feature Request forum is to share and discuss ideas, and to get an insight into what the Community is interested in. Your request served its purpose in this regard, and there was simply no point in keeping it with the rest of the pending requests anymore.

So, instead of arguing time and time again about whether some vaguely described request should be considered finished or not, you can make better use of your (and everyone else's) time by posting more concise and specific requests in the future.

[dude99]

@zakius Take it easy bro, Vivaldi is not a person, it's a corporation run by many people. This forum have volunteer as moderator... so yeah, most of 'em aren't getting paid to moderate this forum & they do make mistake often, & most of 'em aren't very "professional" either. But you can't expect much from free labor no. LOL

It's especially frustrated when you spend time reporting bugs & waiting for it to get fix for like eternity yeah. But that's how things run with tiny little company with limited budget, & there are nothing we can do about it except waiting for the fix months after months. Just look at this with a more realistic perspective, Vivaldi owe all user nothing, cuz they provide the browser & services to us for FREE (with limited amount of ads). Just consider your bug report & feature request as donation/support to a company that have given you so much, & it will feel a bit better, right?

I have filed over hundred of bug report, & I think about half of 'em got fixed. Then 99% of feature request I posted never get done, most of 'em are achieved & I have completely forgotten about 'em. So, I decided to look for solution via extension & some DIY solution via CSS & JS mod. So, we don't have to always rely on v team to get the feature we need, but I do wish they put more emphasis in fixing old bugs & polishing existing feature instead of adding more new half baked feature on every major update.

All I can say is don't expect Vivaldi to be expertise/exceptional good in any feature, because Vivaldi is actually a Jack of all trades, master of none browser. Most feature in Vivaldi have been very basic & underdeveloped, they can't compete with other specialized apps, extensions, or alternative browser, cuz Vivaldi have choose to spread out their resources to support as many features as possible instead of focusing in only a few major/popular feature & make 'em the best in the market over time.

[pafflick]

@dude99 said in Quality of moderation of the forum and (dis)honesty overall:

I do wish they put more emphasis in fixing old bugs & polishing existing feature instead of adding more new half baked feature on every major update

I know it's very easy to focus on the imperfections and overlook the under-the-hood changes that go into every release, but there are two important things to keep in mind. The product needs marketing to survive on the market - and usually, marketing requires adding new stuff. But if you look at the changelogs, more than 90% of the changes in each release are bug fixes.
It's all about finding the right balance between providing new stuff to attract more users and keeping the browser as issue-free as possible. It's a lot harder task than many people would think. But what can we do? We're trying our best.

[dude99]

@pafflick I agree "Innovative Never Seen Before Superduper New Feature" made more interesting headline & it's an easy eyeball grabbing tactic for maximum buzz from the Internet. But forcing the team to chunk out new feature every few months will eventually become unsustainable in the long run, because the more feature you added into the browser, the more resources it will take to maintaining 'em & fixing more bugs come with every new addition. And realistically, good & mature feature always take a long time & many hard work to made near perfection. Thus IMHO rushing to release a new feature every few months & then leave it on the back burner for another new feature sake is waste of resources. Because as of now Vivaldi have already won the most jam-packed feature browser award, I don't think any browser in the market can steal this title from Vivaldi for the next decade or so (seriously, you guys have absolutely destroyed everyone in this area 10 times over already). LOL

I don't want to make it sounds like I'm not appreciating the goods of Vivaldi & only focusing in the bads, but IMHO when a browser is packed with so, so much features already, adding another underdeveloped new feature on top of 'em is becoming less & less exciting - it's a diminishing returns. Especially when I noticing there are far more underdeveloped features in Vivaldi than matured features that actually manage to resolve existing problems. For example, the newly implant Autoplay blocker awhile ago is completely useless to me, because it doesn't work reliably & didn't resolved the real problem mentioned in many similar feature request, & I end up disappointed & resorted to AutoplayStopper extension as before the implementation of Autoplay blocker - that's a waste of resources! Why implant Autoplay blocker that doesn't work properly & then move on to another new feature the following month? And the same situation with Content Blocker, I disabled it & proceed with UBO when it brick more & more website over time (I only use the default filter list) & the only viable option is disable the blocker on website that got bricked. While UBO allow me to disabled specific problematic blocker rule for specific domain while continue blocking unwanted content reliably.

But what can we do?

I think new feature development should take more time in the oven, and then continue to be work on for a few months after released, instead of put aside to chase after yet another new feature. Because as of now, Vivaldi is piling up with more & more underdeveloped/half-baked features with unrealized potential, Vivaldi need to slow down with new feature & work on old features to iron out existing problems.

I hope I can boosting about how awesome Vivaldi's feature compare to the alternative when introducing it to newcomer, because Quantity doesn't always woo people as much as Quality. I know, I know, it's not hard to get G.Chrome noob to install Vivaldi, cuz GC is getting bloated by the day... However they always compare Vivaldi features to their beloved extensions, & that's where Vivaldi fall flat. LOL

A legendary game developer Shigeru Miyamoto once said:

"A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad."

[Ayespy]

@dude99 Vivaldi's primary public relations route is "earned media." This is free coverage in tech magazines, conferences, etc. There are no millions of dollars to blanket the airwaves with ads like Chrome, DuckDuckGo, Brave and PCMatic have. The ONLY things earned media will cover is novelty, danger or controversy. Vivaldi has novelty.

Lucky for the consuming public, who would never otherwise hear of it, the original vision for Vivaldi included expansive features and configurability from the very beginning, and that vision is still well short of being realized. Hence, just to build the browser they were thinking of from the very beginning, the Team will continue to turn out features. No one is "under pressure" to do this. It's simply the natural evolution of the product on the way to meeting its founding vision.

You know you will never see a tech reporter write an article that a product is smoother, more stable, more refined. This is not novelty, danger or controversy,

So when Vivaldi finally reaches a mature state, it may have enough usership and income to pay for more kinds of public relations, enough staff to burn the midnight oil primarily on refinements, and enough accumulated public exposure to continue to grow and to survive based on reputation built up over time.

But you will never, ever, see vivaldi stop trying to achieve what it set out to achieve from day one - expansive features and configurability. It still doesn't even have the full feature set that Opera abandoned in 2013. That would strike me as a minimum feature set.

[barbudo2005]

@Ayespy

I think the subject is divided into two philosophies:

1.- A browser with full features and configurability:
Most likely coming from former users of Opera where there was no web store.
The concept ingrained in many people that extensions are bad per se also plays an important role.

2.- A browser with full configurability and a powerful core for browsing the web, its real reason for being:
Because as @dude99 says, it comes out with many half-baked features that can't compete with very powerful extensions or window's software.

[dude99]

@Ayespy said in Quality of moderation of the forum and (dis)honesty overall:

The ONLY things earned media will cover is novelty, danger or controversy. Vivaldi has novelty.

Novelty that's not just a gimmick & actually work properly will win more audience in the long run. Because at the end of the day, everyone want the best available sets of tools, as being the first to introduce it doesn't means it's good or better. But pumping out gimmicky new shiny feature every few months that doesn't work properly, or render obsolete by existing alternative will only have short live attention retention, it can't convert audience into core user for long terms.

Quality vs Quantity is a never ending debate, but in practical usage, Quality will win most of the time, because most people would rather install 10 extensions/apps to get 10 best usable tools than install 1 browser with 50 inferior half-baked tools they don't want/need.

For instance, Opera & Vivaldi both have Vertical Tabbar build in first, yes? But you know who have the best & most practical vertical tabbar nowadays? The winner ain't Opera or Vivaldi, because their vertical tabbar didn't evolved much since it's inception, (or new addition end up in half-baked/impractical state). It makes me really sad when Edge manage to get it right a few years back with less feature than Vivaldi, but what it did right make Vivaldi vertical tabbar feel like an obsolete & unpractical implemented feature.

Since then, we have feature request popping up in various forum asking for "Edge style vertical tabbar" from time to time... The irony is it's not even a new idea, because it has been floating around in Vivaldi modification & feature request forum since the very beginning - before Edge is even a thing. Vivaldi is sitting on a goldmine of great ideas & don't know what to do with it, while MS keep snipping 'em one after another & parade it around like it's their innovative new feature!

You know you will never see a tech reporter write an article that a product is smoother, more stable, more refined. This is not novelty, danger or controversy

Huh? There are more article like these across the net, these are just from one site I found...
https://www.ghacks.net/2021/11/02/chrome-is-using-less-memory-crashing-less-and-loading-search-results-faster-according-to-google/
https://www.ghacks.net/2021/12/10/google-chrome-on-windows-has-become-a-lot-faster-recently/
https://www.ghacks.net/2022/06/06/google-says-chrome-is-20-faster-than-before-on-macos/
https://www.ghacks.net/2021/03/30/vivaldi-explains-how-it-managed-to-speed-up-the-browser/
https://www.ghacks.net/2021/03/17/vivaldi-3-7-with-major-performance-improvements-released/

Vivaldi can made news headline if they actually implement an Autoplay blocker that works better than AutoplayStopper, plus a suspend media player function, cuz there are no browser actually can get it right yet...

[pafflick]

@dude99 said in Quality of moderation of the forum and (dis)honesty overall:

forcing the team to chunk out new feature every few months (...)
rushing to release a new feature every few months (...)

None of it is the case, as far as I can tell. Nobody is being forced or rushed here. Some people work on new additions, and others focus on fixing bugs. The users expect us to add more features. You've posted quite a few of them as well. Now you seem to be complaining that we've already added too much. But I can assure you that it looks a little bit different from what it might seem to you.

@dude99 said in Quality of moderation of the forum and (dis)honesty overall:

the newly implant Autoplay blocker

That's true - that feature shouldn't probably be there. But you're also missing the fact that the feature request has not been marked as done, and this feature was never announced for the Stable branch. The developer who implemented it never managed to polish it before leaving Vivaldi, and for now, it waits for someone else to pick it up and finish the job. Perhaps we should hide it behind an "experimental" flag, or something, as it might confuse some users. I'll discuss this with the team.

@dude99 said in Quality of moderation of the forum and (dis)honesty overall:

And the same situation with Content Blocker

So, here you proceed to complain about the lack of specific functionality, that requires investing a lot of effort and resources to implement. However, delaying the release of a working content blocker just because it lacks some specialized tools that only some users need would be irrational.
The same goes for those other, so-called "half-baked" features. People often seem to use that term in relation to a perfectly functioning feature, just because it's missing some very specific functionality, that only a few users would use anyway. And then they demand new features and complain that we're adding new features instead of polishing old ones. You get to see how impossible it is to please some people.

One thing I noticed for sure (and this is not about you, but more in general) is: the less people know about developing a product, the more vocal they are about telling us what we are doing wrong.