Newbies that don't want to read...

[varenne]

Did someone add a Newbie Hiyoko to Tamago/Hiyoko when I wasn't looking? Seems we're getting over run with them and they don't want to take the time to read.

[rynak777]

While there certainly is plenty of room for stupidity - just like with any halfway popular game - newbies have to make use of the information and tools provided.

I've used computers since 1982, work in tech-support, and do programming myself, when i was new to LPK i was highly frustrated with what i found:

- The forum search function is just as broken, as it is on most other forums nowadays (i guess that's part of web 3.0. When did it become rocket science, to implement a simple plaintext search?). In fact, sometimes i went to google, to search loverslabs to find something. And that was despite me knowing the EXACT topic title.

- Many links were dead.

- For various reasons, the various lovers plugins are a large collection of tiny plugins of different versions. Which versions work with which versions, installed in which right order, and installing dozens of external ressources in just the right order, sometimes copying individual files back and forth, and then getting the loadorder right.... was more trial and error for me. And no, the loadorder topic didn't work for me.

(To be fair, the new LAPF and creatures20 packages are a giant step forwards and are much easier to install)

- At the time i joined, a lot of plugins were listed in the official plugin index, that were actually crashy.

- Checking docs/readmes again after the fact, was very difficult, because for some reason, most people thought it was a good idea to only post docs in the forum - which then would become deadlinks, or one has to fight with the broken search function again.

- LPK itself has some very unusual... incompatibilities. For example, for half a year, i had issues with invisible actors during sex. Eventually, it turned out that it was a "plugin" i wrote myself - but calling it a "plugin" would be an exaggeration, because all it contained, was different zoomspeeds and rotation speeds for the vanity cam. Why on earth would vanity-cam settings conflict with lovers? I mean, its not even the freecam - lovers never uses the vanity cam. And yet, that's how it is: vanity cam settings conflict with lovers' freecam enforcement code.

- At the end of the day, both newcomers and veterans like us get frustrated and angry at each other. This is my second account. My first one was banned long ago, when i too was a newbie.
 

[varenne]

I think and feel LL has improved tremendously in regards to Oblivion. Part of the difficulty with LPK MODs is they were not created by the English speaking community and there are gaps due to translation from one language, in many cases Japanese, to English.

 

Still this does not excuse anyone from thinking they can simply post, in some recent cases in multiple forums to find answers to stuff they can actually find on their own. I know as I've pushed for a lot of this to be consolidated, updated and published. Is it perfect or easy? Hell no! But what new members and users must do is their homework, and that entails at least making an attempt to learn the basics, which is published not only here on LL but elsewhere as well.

 

And yes, I agree the LL search engine could have been better, but it is one of the limits of this particular web tech. Google Site Search is much much faster and more efficient when it comes to finding info on LL.

 

The heavy lifting here continues to progress, due in large part to moderators and contributors, old and new. Members, especially new need to do their part and read when and where they can. If they feel something can be improved upon then report on it so we can try to. But posting questions on basic stuff that can be found with minimal effort is IMO a waste of moderator and contributor resources, which these days has been decreasing, not increasing. The I Want Immediate Gratification Crowd needs to get a clue and do some work on their own.

[movomo]

Moderators are not here to serve. They just happen to help and rightfully so. This is not a commercial software support site.

As long as they (or we) don't get paid, everything they do, even if that is a lousy readme, is the pure benefit to the community.